Funny story: I went to the beach for a little Thursday-Sunday writing retreat and I got stuck there. I thought I could leave at the time I’d originally planned despite a nor’easter rolling in. Turns out if I wanted to leave at all, I needed to have done it at least a half-day earlier. Around midday Sunday, New Jersey Transit announced they were suspending train service out of Atlantic City for the duration of the storm.
Whoops. I’d overplayed my hand.
Once I accepted my fate, I was fine. I had neighbors nearby, a safe and dry place to hunker down, and the right clothes for the elements. They say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. I thought of this often while riding my bike to the grocery store on the second day of rain, darkness, and raging winds. It’s really true.
Anyway, my on-again, off-again novel-in-progress is set on a barrier island in October. My stranding was not the worst thing. I spent some time writing notes about the sounds (so many sounds), the smells, the colors. Soaking in the setting (and the rain). A storm will have to roll through at some point in the book. It’s October on the coast, after all. I want to capture it just right, how close to the elements you feel on these barrier islands, surrounded by water with nothing to shield you from the wind.
Also, how quickly the landscape changes. One year we saw a storm create eight-foot cliffs along the edge of the dunes. In three days of churning the ocean can take a surprising amount of sand and other stuff and deposit it elsewhere. This time wasn’t that dramatic, but I still returned to a slightly different place than I’d left before the storm. Very few things stay the same for very long at the beach.
Storms aside, October is a great time to get outside at the beach. The temperature is a study in contrasts. Migratory birds make big clouds in the sky. I once stood on the beach as a flock of them took flight, a swirling tornado spinning around me into the sky.
All in all, October feels like a really underrated time at the beach, if also a moody and unpredictable one. I’m excited to bring readers there with me in this next book.
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