Writing From Nature – Day 1

Spring isn’t as far along up here in Boyds Mills, Penn., as it is at home in Mississippi. The day dawned sunny, though, and I was able to get by with wool slacks and a wool sweater. This collection of rusting implements sits atop a rock outside my cabin.

Some leaves are budding out on hedges outside my cabin. I am working on my tiny laptop and I don’t have access to my Photoshop Lightroom. I am having some trouble cropping using Gimp, an open source program. You’ll see that in the photo to the right I could have cropped off the top. I am considering the best way to do workflow when I have on-the-road tools. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot in the next few days about how to do this best.

This morning, before the workshop began officially, I sat down with Tim Gilner, the art director at Boyds Mills Press, and Andy Boyles, the science editor. We talked about trim size and design of my next book. It was nice to be in the same room talking about the issues in real time.