Liz Cultivates | L.M. Fern

That’s right, folks. I took a vacation.

Not only did I take a vacation, but I took a vacation in the inarguably most vacation city you can think of: Las Vegas, Nevada. Sin City, etc. My partner attended a conference last week that took place across some of the bigger hotels on the Strip, and I decided to tag along, since a hotel room in a major city is hard to come by these days, and a suite in the Venetian is something I would never have come by otherwise.

As I type this, I have been home for three days, and I still feel like I can’t shake the vibe of Las Vegas. And also like I haven’t slept in years. It was a really good experience – but also, it was enough. And by enough, I mean . . . enough. I think I saw enough of Vegas to last me two lifetimes.

The city itself is intoxicating. Even if you’re not a gambler – and I’m not – there is so much to see and experience that you get lulled into thinking that this is how life is all the time. It’s a normal thing to roll out of bed directly into the path of an oncoming Fat Tuesday, fill up your novelty sippy cup with several shots of tequila, and go on about your business. Totally normal and, in fact, healthy. The High Roller, a huge Ferris wheel with round pods big enough for ten to fifteen people, looks out on the entire city; you can see it from most places on the Strip. Up and down the avenue are the big casinos and hotels: The Venetian, The Palazzo, Treasure Island, Caesar’s Palace, MGM, The Bellagio, The Linq . . . Each have these incredible facades dedicated to their schtick, whether it be ancient Rome or pirate ships.

The other structure that you absolutely cannot miss, no matter where you are in the city, is the Sphere, a giant dome of LCD screens that looms over the Strip. It’s a new . . . “attraction” is the word, I guess, but to me it felt a little bit like a new cool way of shoveling advertisements inside our eyeballs. Inside, you can get tickets to immersive experiences or concerts, and viewing that domed screen from the inside is like actually experiencing the scenes from inside of them. When I saw promotional material for it, the thing that struck me was that the ads touted the beauty of the films being shown in the Sphere – you can go and watch a sunrise from a mountaintop, things like that. My response to things like this is always “and we needed a giant screen for this??” but I know that on the other hand, the nature of the thing makes it possible for people of all abilities and backgrounds to have that experience. (Of course, that’s moot if you can’t pay the expensive entry fee; I also have not looked into the accessibility considerations here, either.)

Isn’t this a “Liz Writes…”?

I had a wild week, full of laughter, love, the aforementioned sippy cup of tequila, and, believe it or not, relaxation.

I also finished NaNoWriMo.

Now, I know it seems a little silly to fly across the country to the city known for party life and, instead of going balls to the wall, hole up in my hotel room and write 2,000 words a day. Don’t worry — I was on a mission. I wrote my words in the morning, then, while my partner was attending conference sessions, I grabbed my sippy cup and walked around the city, taking everything in. It was in this way that I found myself here:

I know — this was a roundabout way to announce that I actually Did The Thing this past month. I’m so surprised at myself! It was difficult, but in my friend Alex’s words:

you got the momentum and you kept it up which means you must have made some excellent and brutal choices about your time

And, you know, he was right. Getting into the habit of coming home and immediately sitting down to write — and not going to bed or playing video games until I achieved the requisite wordcount for the day — was, in fact, brutal. But near the end of the month, and especially during the week in Las Vegas, the habit became just that — a habit. Second nature. If I wanted to do something fun, I needed to get the words out of the way first.

The support from my community has been amazing, and contributed to me not wanting to give up halfway through. The folks around me were amazing cheerleaders. I appreciate every one of them.

I do not think I will be continuing the 2,000-words-per-day habit, but I am working on incorporating more writing time into my life. I love a little treat, apparently, so giving myself a little treat for doing some writing or plotting or thinking seems like a good way to go.

The book I’ve been working on is now close to 120,000 words, and the outline is getting away from me a little bit. I am going to spend some time — the next week or so — re-reading what I have and seeing what else we need to do to wrap this up.

Now . . . I guess I have to go buy that fancy bottle of wine that I told myself I would, if I reached 50,000 words in November. Back when I “knew” I was just going to give up.