I went away this weekend to write.

This was my view while writing one night:

And this was an especially invigorating breakfast:

Since I’m between deadlines—and thus lacking in panic, which actually helps me write—I kept switching between projects. One was in synopsis. One was in rough first draft. Decisions were made in both, the kind of sharp and dazzling decisions that seem to only be able to come when you’ve removed yourself, physically, from your real life.

I sent an exhilarated text message to my other half late last night revealing the terrible things I was about to do to my characters. I’m dangerous.

And a spider climbed into my MacBook—I think?—and I did not see it crawl back out.

Now I’m home and I have a busy workweek ahead. But before that? I treated myself to a good book.

Sara Zarr’s new novel comes out on October 18: