“The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” –Randy Pausch

I’ve discovered that when you’re writing a book, you lose some of the filters you’ve set up against the world. Words, sentences, ideas, thoughts, feelings, colors, moods, the weather, and the shit your Dad says all strike you as inspiring or instructional or something you should steal. These words, sentences, etc. can come from anywhere.

It’s no secret that I love trains. The characters in my novel work on trains, ride trains, try not to get run down by trains, would enjoy consensual sex on trains. I was reading the latest newsletter from Lance Mindheim, the man to go to if you want to hire a craftsman to build your model railroad, when I found this gem:

At some point, there will be folks who want to transition from casual recreationalists to modelers. Doing so entails moving out of your comfort zone and learning how to use new tools and new techniques. The techniques are usually pretty simple. The moving out of your comfort zone? It’s a lifelong roadblock for many.

Mindheim was talking about using an airbrush (“Using an airbrush isn’t like running a nuclear power plant. You push a button, and paint comes out.”), a barrier that forever restricts casual recreationalists to paint brushes and rattle cans. But I immediately thought of my career as a writer.

My comfort zone was writing short fiction. Novel-writing was my airbrush. I had to break out of that zone to write a novel. It was indeed a roadblock, and that roadblock stood fast for a long time. Mindheim described it more succinctly that I could.

One thing writers don’t have to worry about but modelers do is using too heavy a touch when painting or weathering your work. One coat too dark and you are screwed. But in writing, we can counteract too heavy a touch with two handy inventions: the backspace key and your editor.

“Have fun!” Mindheim concludes. It is fun. It’s too good to miss.

Word count: 73,548.

I’m done.

I began writing this book in the window of Common Grounds Coffeehouse in Portland, Oregon, and finished writing it on a late-summer afternoon, under the enormous Oriental plane tree outside the FireHouse Arts & Events Center in Bellingham, Washington.

Between “Once upon a time” and “The End,” I wrote in the basement of our Portland home and on the top floor of our Bellingham home. I wrote in many more coffee shops, where I mostly enjoyed the music. I wrote at the Clark County Public Library in Vancouver, Washington, with its glass face, astounding sunsets from the fifth-floor terrace, and its pleasant and good-looking librarians. I wrote in the lobby of our car dealer while our car was being looked after, and in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists, where the music can only be endured.

Now all I have to do is read this damn thing.

The kind we grow here.