Since there is now a place for everything, and everything is in it’s place (as my Grandmother Mattes used to say), there is nothing to do up here in my Lake Arrowhead cabin but write and take long walks around the lake with my dog. There is boating of course and when I get my kayak I’ll write a post about that, (#kayakingwithNelsonLakeArrowhead) but for now there’s just the lake and time to write.

It’s beautiful up here. And it smells good – pine and wind. There are four seasons. It’s only an hour and forty minutes from Santa Monica (non-traffic times). Houses are a fraction of what they cost in L.A. No one who serves you in a restaurant is pitching a screenplay. Nothing is trendy. The dress standards are my kind of dressing down. I have a real neighborhood. My next door neighbor brought me a trout that he had caught in the lake; he had smoked it and it was the best fish I’d ever tasted.

This is my third cabin up here and I spent last summer renovating it in the usual way – walls were painted white, wood floors redone, book shelves built, and in the case of this particular house, I had to have a wall built between the master bedroom and bathroom. (Yes, the bathroom was open to the bedroom, there was no wall.)

I don’t have Internet or television here so life really does slow down. (Truth in advertising: I do have a Hotspot, so at great expense, should I get desperate, I can get on the Internet.) When the house previous to this one was finished and everything was in order, I solved the problem of silence and solitude by buying the house across the street (this current cabin) and plunging into chaos again.

This is the perfect place to write. But I realize I’ve written all my books surrounded by chaos – small children, large animals, teenagers acting out, house renovations, family illness et al. So sometimes when it’s too peaceful and quiet I head to a daughter’s house where there are three dogs, a cat, construction going on, phones going off, many children running around, and I open my computer and write at her kitchen table.