One morning a few weeks ago, I woke up alone, locked in a motel room near Rutland, Vermont. It sounds more sinister than it was; my imprisonment was self-imposed. I could not leave until I'd finished a draft of a novel I'd been working on for a long time. Once or twice a year, for two or three nights, I lock myself in a motel or hotel room somewhere and . . . write. Most importantly though, I think -- in long uninterrupted streams of consciousness, about the characters and themes and settings and plotlines of the book I'm working on. I buy food ahead of time, request a mini-fridge and a coffeemaker, and off I go, or don't go. Usually, I barely leave the room. I don't sleep much and my food c
My kids and I had fun researching this piece for KidsVT Magazine, about the history of the machine tool industry right here in our backyard here in Vermont.
