Margaret Maron Writes in a Gazebo to Escape (and Find) Distractions
Margaret Maron is the author of the acclaimed Deborah Knott mystery series, which is set in North Carolina. In the riveting nineteenth book in the series, Designated Daughters, Judge Deborah Knott investigates the murder of her beloved, ailing Aunt Rachel—who was smothered while she was already on her deathbed. The disturbing list of suspects includes everyone from a local minister to a member of Rachel’s own family. It is up to Deborah and her husband, Sheriff’s Deputy Dwight Bryant, to puzzle out why Rachel’s enigmatic final words have cost the woman her life. Designated Daughters is out this week.
Most of my writing is done in my comfortable, air-conditioned home office at a desk that is surrounded by reference books, maps, and note cards. There’s a skylight overhead for natural light, a telephone, intercom, internet…
Ah, yes. The internet—that seductive, time-wasting siren. If it’s not a pop-up mail signal, it’s that one factoid that I need to look up, which leads to an interesting sidebar, which leads to—oh, look! Cute cat videos! Red carpet pictures! Pinterest!
The only way to avoid temptation is to jump into our golf cart and head down to the gazebo. Fully screened against mosquitoes, horseflies and wasps, it has an electrical outlet where I can plug in my laptop and a ceiling fan to keep the hot summer air moving. It does not have wifi or a barista. If a fact needs checking, I simply type “Check on this” in red and keep going.
This is not to say the gazebo has no distractions. We have posted signs to keep out hunters and the four-wheelers that tear up our walking paths, but that doesn’t deter the trespassers who can’t read and who ignore our signs.
Yesterday, I watched a doe munch her way through the lower meadow, followed by a half-grown fawn. Twenty minutes later, two more whitetails bounded across the meadow like two women who’ve just heard there’s a sale on their favorite shoes.
A magnificent red-tail hawk perched atop one of the bluebird boxes to watch for careless voles, much to the discomfort of the wary bluebird parents who have a third clutch of babies inside that box. As soon as the hawk flew off, I watched through binoculars as both adults swooped in with beaks full of bugs.
Later in the morning, I saw a young buck emerge from the tree line. He was so newly antlered that they looked like two question marks between his ears and they were still covered with brown “velvet.” I watched him meander along a line of cedar trees until he disappeared into a thicket of wild plums.
When I put down the binoculars and turned back to my keyboard, I realized that I’d wasted a good twenty minutes watching Bambi.
I worked steadily for another hour till I leaned back in my chair to decide what should come next. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving along a nearby path and I sat motionless as a fox passed by only fifteen feet away. I hoped he wasn’t on the trail of a rabbit I saw there yesterday.
Back to the keyboard for another half-hour until a trio of raucous crows suddenly erupted in the pine tops. They’d just spotted the hawk as he landed in a nearby pine and they had no intention of letting him linger. I watched until they’d driven him out of the area, then my binoculars caught the circling flight of a buzzard. So graceful. He could hang there forever, floating on thermals that eventually took him out of my view. Another twenty minutes gone.
While working on Designated Daughters, the 19th in my Judge Deborah Knott series, I found myself fascinated by the activity around a suet feeder hanging from a nearby limb. I’ve been looking at our native birds for years, but never before had I noticed that catbirds have a patch of cinnamon brown feathers on their rumps just beneath their tail feathers. Somehow a bird book joined the binoculars on the table beside my writing chair and I finally learned to distinguish a downy woodpecker from a hairy.
My husband raised an eyebrow when I told him about all the avian lore I was collecting. “And did you finish that chapter you were working on?” he asked.
Determined not to be distracted today, I have left my bird book and my binoculars at the house. I’ll write a whole chapter before lunch and I’ll—ooh, look! There’s a blue-striped skink running across the gazebo floor! And a praying mantis on the screen door!
Have you read the Deborah Knott mystery series?