Refilling the Well – or Falling Down it?

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Edith/Maddie here, with some musings about taking a week off.

A few months ago, my son and his wife invited Hugh and me to join them for part of the week in August at a vacation house they’d rented in New Hampshire. We said we’d love to. We decided to extend the trip by heading over to the Maine coast for a few more days after that. Me, the constant worker, agreed to take a week off. (Go ahead and gasp if you’d like.)

We had a great time, eating and visiting and walking our way through the week. Here are a few pictorial highlights.

Allan, Hugh, and I at Pea Porridge Pond
Alison and Allan at the rented chalet in the woods
Alison and Allan at the top of Foss Mountain
Playing Bird Spotting Opoly one evening in the screen porch where we spent most of our time at the house

We headed over to our Airbnb in Belfast Maine and started out with dinner on a family farm nearby where I know the owners.

At Toddy Pond Farm in Monroe, Maine

Hugh’s sister and brother-in-law drove over from their own NH home and we were joined for an afternoon by their cousin Ruth Lockhart, who lives in Bangor.

Mary, Ruth, and Hugh Lockhart
The Impossible Dream, a fully accessible catamaran sailboat, at dock in Belfast
Splitting seafood bisque and a lobster roll at Marshall Wharf Brewery
Walking at Moose Point State Park

It was a great getaway, and I didn’t work at all except a little blog maintenance and Facebooking every morning. I definitely refilled the creativity well, and when we got back I set to work the next morning tackling hard revisions on a book I’d pretty much decided to give up on before we left.

But I might have mentioned in other posts here that I’ve always had an overactive imagination.

The woods in New Hampshire can be dark and remote. They made me think of how easy it might be to bury a body, or evidence.

Exploring Cathedral Ledge brought to mind someone being pushed off, or sabotage to one of the rock climbers’ ropes.

What? Who would throw things at the rock climbers? Oh, a murderer, maybe. Also, other areas on top weren’t fenced at all…

An early morning solo swimmer at the pond could have come to his demise so easily.

Even this sunny mountaintop had rocks and potential dangers.

Foss Mountain, NH

In Belfast, we walked across the pedestrian bridge over the Passagassawakeag River at low tide.

Hugh, Mary, and Gene on the bridge

We spied an abandoned scooter down below. Stories about its rider, thoughts of footsteps erased by the incoming tide, and other murderous ideas came to mind.

I gazed at the working shipyard with its giant hoists and huge hooks on chains and imagined more mayhem.

What if a weapon had been strapped to the bottom of a yacht? Or those sling straps got loose somehow?

If this all seems too gruesome for vacation, apologies, but I can’t help it. It’s the way my brain works, especially now.

This week of being away was all about falling down into the well of ideas and refilling it with the energy to return to my desk and make magic happen!

Readers: how do you refill the well? Where do you find ideas for new ventures?

Published by Edith Maxwell

Agatha Award -winning author Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries (Beyond the Page) and short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Country Store Mysteries series, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries (all from Kensington Publishing). She lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and cat Martin, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook.

33 Thoughts

  1. Books!!! I get ideas for where I would like to visit for vacation and sights to see. I loved your pictures. I lived in NH for 20+ years and we would often vacation in Maine.

  2. Looks like a great vacation! I’ve walked that bridge in Belfast many times. Ideas for new ventures come at me in different ways, social media/tv, books, word of mouth, posters. I had to chuckle how you find ideas for murders everywhere!

  4. What a fabulous looking and sounding trip you had! You can’t beat relaxation and getting the creative juices flowing if you ask me. We will be looking forward to seeing some of those ideas many appearing in a future book some day.

    For me, it’s photography. Through the lens of the camera, I’ve learned to see the world in a whole new way. As I learned my camera and took to more than point and shoot photos, I begin to see things I’d overlooked before. Even with the camera down, you look at the world in a whole new way. Photography has also opened up the doors to more travel and going to new places. It may be a famous landmark and new critter that we are interested in taking photos of, but it ends up leading us on many other paths as well.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

      1. Kay, FYI, I just found your original comment in Spam. I marked it Not Spam, but then deleted since the one marked as Anonymous already showed up here. Grr, WordPress!

  5. That’s fabulous you had such a great time, Edith! And I totally get the generation of macabre ideas. I do the same thing. lol Have fun now that the well has been refilled!

  7. What great pictures, Edith. Looks like you had a wonderful time.

    But I’m with you. When you write murder and mayhem, you can’t help thinking, “Oh, what a great spot for a body!”

  11. Looks like a lovely vacation, Edith!

    I didn’t even take my laptop to Scotland–first time I’ve traveled without it in decades–between work-work and writing work. It did feel odd.

    1. It was lovely, Barb. And I hear you about the odd feeling! I thought not writing for a week would give me withdrawal symptoms – but it didn’t.

  13. Fabulous pix! In pre-Covid times I made it a habit to take a week off, go someplace interesting and breathe. Creativity flowed fast and furious. Can’t wait to see what you do with your yeast.

  16. I’m admiring your wisdom in creating family and friends time. I used to solve teaching problems on walks or in the shower . . . away from electronic interferences. Idea percolate in disassociated times.

  17. What fabulous pictures. Thank you so much for sharing. I look out our kitchen door to watch the cats, kittens, raccoons and possums. You never know what antics they will get into. God bless you.

  18. Images of my own or posted by others provide great seeds for ideas. Also, when I read something and see a different outcome that the author put in, I make a note of it for future dry spells. Thanks for the great images!

  19. We love Belfast! usually stay at Point Lookout cabins in Northport and spend at least a day poking around the waterfront and farmer’s market. We hadn’t discovered the foot bridge, we’ll have to look for it! One of our all time favorite restaurants is a small italian one on Main St – the sacchetti pasta is to die for! We’ll be up there in November celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary!

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