N.C. Wyeth's illustration from The Yearling
John Gardner states in On Becoming a Novelist, "Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. If you have a plan and a course laid out, that's helpful. If you drift off course, checking the stars can help you find a new course. If you have no map, no course laid out, sooner or later confusion will make you check the stars." Right about now, it's very cloudy and I've a feeling I'm heading in a more southerly direction than planned. Say, the Caribbean. It's a good thing that there's only another month or so to hurricane season. Ophelia, perhaps through the calming of rue, is still a tropical storm. The novel, the ocean canoe, the ride across the blue-green waves. Still, I'm heading out.