The image above encapsulates the competing sensations and feelings I experienced on my recent, annual, winter, solo car trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There’s the exquisite peacefulness of staying in a remote, ocean-front cottage where I’m surrounded by sand and water. But there’s also a rift in solidity that exists here at the bottom end of a thin ribbon of barrier island that makes up this part of OBX. A rumbling of not only the pounding waves that crash against the pilings of my deck at high tide, but also an exciting tension in my mind as I start to tackle the concepts and themes of my new novel.
Outer Banks
Beach Bumming a New Book
I needed to get away. Someplace without distractions. Where I could be alone with my thoughts and my notes. A personal retreat to work on the new novel. And reconnect with the ocean and the beach.
So I took off in a rented all-wheel-drive SUV and made the six-hour trip to Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.