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People who know me know I'm a big fan of sustainability. I walk the walk... literally: I walk instead of drive to many places, like the bank, the grocery store, the farmer's market.
Problem with that is, if you don't drive your car enough, your battery will die. Actually that's not the full story. Your battery will die if you drive your car the wrong way.
I wonder if that's true for Tesla vehicles...
Anyway, that's what the guys at my car dealership explained to me. Little short trips are far worse than not driving at all—-good news for all you walkers and bicyclers out there! Starting your engine requires a certain amount of power, and if you don't drive long enough with your engine revved high enough (30mph minimum) to replace the energy lost at start up and then some, the next time you start your car your battery will drain a little more, and then a little more, till it's sapped altogether.
That would explain why my car started up just fine after close to 2 months of sitting in the garage when we were overseas, but died after (more than) a few weeks of driving it here and there around the neighborhood in those lethal mini-trips.
If you already knew this, hat off to you. If you didn't, make sure you take your baby out on the freeway at least once a week!
The real reason I'm sharing this experience is because that's what powers—pardon the pun—literary inspiration. Sure, driving a brand new Tesla is something to write about, but it's the little things, the little ordinary mundane routine things that build up the mulch where story seeds grow.
Even as something as simple as a road in Slovakia.
~ Birgitte
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A writer never sleeps. Even when we are actually physically sleeping, our brains are planting new literary seeds, pruning our works in progress, and fretting over the marketing campaigns for the mature fruit that's about to be sent to market.
And so it is that now that my novel about the history of chocolate is in editing, that the two stories I left waiting for six months can finally receive their due TLC.
They're both old souls, as they say. One, an allegory about the global financial system, I wrote as an essay for the International Relations program in Madrid in 1999 (as in, A.D.).
The other was inspired while I stood waiting for a colleague by the revolving doors of the Met Life building in New York on a crisp January morning in 2001. (For those just getting to know me... I'm known to fly off into never-never land on a nanosecond's whim and come back full storylines later.) I can't disclose the narrative but let's just say it addresses the two fundamental forces that rule human existence. It also includes baby crabs.
And if you can guess what they are, (the two forces not the baby crabs!) you're getting the story for free when we release it.
Why, you ask, why is it that most of the work you've published thus far takes so bloody long to get out there?
It's true. Confession, Bakaly, Verse in Arabic, and The Seventh Crane were all written in the late 1990's-early 2000's, my "European Return" Period. Not published till recently... when technology popped open the publishing industry and I became a mother. Nothing like changing diapers to make you realize you better publish those stories you've been sitting on. You gotta do it before your child turns 13 and you can't save face anymore.
There's more that awaits publication from my European period. Good news is, an entirely new harvest of ideas is now maturing as well, grown right here on US soil. The chocolate novel is among the first of these new books.
By the way, what is it about birthdays in February and March? My three-year-old has a social calendar that puts mine to shame!
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SIMCON 2014
And now for something completely different: the University of the Pacific is putting on simulated international policy negotiations where students can experience what it feels like to participate in diplomatic talks on issues ranging from trade, child labor, and gender rights to world health and climate change.
I'm one of several "members of the press" who will interact with the students in a simulated press conference. I'm thrilled to pieces about this project. Will report on the experience in the next issue of The Muse.
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