Writing in Hotels Part II

Wendall -- every other Thursday

This time last year, I headed out to one of my favorite writing hotels up the coast to try to finish a draft of Cheap Trills. I wrapped up the book there and at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

My last writing view.

As I think I’ve written before, I usually hide out in a hotel for the beginning, sometime in the middle, and to finish up every book. Being there on my own, getting up early, taking walks to restaurants or bars where I work over a glass of wine or a coffee, and just being able to live in the book for a few days, without doing the dishes or having to be anywhere, really helps in my process.

Sometimes my best ideas come in longhand, over breakfast.

 

This week, as I contemplate the best place to really dig into a new project I’m working on, I wanted to revisit one of my writing “escapes”—this time in Palm Springs—to consider whether it was the best place to begin this new, and for the moment, secret, writing venture. 

 

 

Palm Springs has changed a lot since I arrived in California in 1986.  It’s still stunningly beautiful and I always feel my shoulders descend from my ears the instant I arrive, just from the light and the air. It also seems to have spectacular sunrises and sunsets, which always cheer me up.

 

A few views from my motel balcony

It used to be a somewhat sleepy town, but now, with two weekends of Coachella, a major tennis tournament, a Film Festival, and various other events, it’s busier and more expensive, so I don’t get there quite as often as I did, either on my own, or with my husband, James.

 

The Royal Sun Inn, sadly closed.

 

For years, there were two spots where I would go, depending on the time of year and the room rates. I don’t need a fancy hotel, though I will take one if I can get a bargain. It doesn’t even need to have a restaurant, as long as there are ones I can walk to nearby, that will let me sit for a while.

 

Panoramic view from the back of the hotel

 

My first writing retreat in the desert was the original Royal Sun Inn, more of a motel than a hotel in the old days. At present, it’s closed while new owners renovate it.

 

Writing on the balcony at the Royal Sun

 

If you know Palm Springs, it sits just behind where South Palm Canyon Drive curves to the left, towards the more southern desert cities and is distinguished by its retro, A-line roof, back-facing balconies, proximity to the Moorten Botanical Gardens, and the waffle machine in the breakfast room.

Taking an inspiration break across the street at the Moorten Botanical Gardens.

 

Also by its $60 a night price and the fact that it’s walkable to downtown Palm Springs, but away from the craziness of the party zones. The new, gentrified version is set to open this year, but whether it will be a writing haven or a hipster nightmare, remains to be seen.

My other writing retreat for many years, especially in the 120 degree summers when they seriously dropped their prices, was The Renaissance Palm Springs, which is just set back from downtown and offers two highly air-conditioned restaurants,  a bar, and lots of shaded outdoor seating.  

 

I always asked for a quiet room, non-pool side!

 

My routine there was to go downstairs when the restaurant opened at 6am. The fabulous staff would let me go right to the unopened back of the restaurant to work. They protected me from loud parties for a few hours and were so supportive of what I was doing, one year they left me a “good luck finishing the book” card at the front desk on my departure. signed by all the servers.

I would go back to work in my room until lunchtime, when I would brave the heat for a two block walk to the Spa Resort Casino’s lunch buffet and slot machines, which ALWAYS helped me write.

 

Always a sucker for the nickel slots!

 

Back to the room for more work, then working over a drink at the hotel happy hour, or maybe at the nearby Tonga Hut for a Painkiller or a Mai Tai or the 60s throwback Melvin’s for a champagne cocktail, a chicken pot pie, jazz piano, and a stab at a chapter or two.

 

Entrance to the Tonga Hut

There's always the sense that Frank Sinatra's ghost is going to walk into Melvin's.

 Some days, I would take an hour off for inspiration at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

 

Goofing around with a camera at the Palm Springs Art Museum.

 

Those were the days. I wrote a couple of books there and I miss it.  But it may be time to embrace change and find a new place to inspire a word count.

--- Wendall

Crushed, or Howard Bannister Will Always Live in my Heart

 Wendall - every other Thursday

Ryan O’Neal passed away last week. This hit me particularly hard. Although many fell for him in Love Story, my crush, as an adolescent, came with his comic turns in in What’s Up Doc? and Paper Moon. I loved his character, Howard Bannister, so much, that I had Cyd Redondo name a Tasmanian Tiger after him in Drowned Under.

 

As Howard Bannister in What's Up Doc?

As Moses in Paper Moon

Norman Lear, another comic mastermind, whose sitcoms informed my youth, and who was articulate and hilarious to the end, passed away as well. As I approach a significant birthday during the holiday period, I’ve been thinking about what it means when your teenage crushes and early creative influences age and especially when they leave without you.

 

The groundbreaking Norman Lear

 

Everyone’s “growing up” crushes are different, although I don’t think I was the only one obsessed with Davy Jones in second grade. The Monkees, and their show, were so much a part of my elementary school years and my introduction to pop music, that it’s hard to comprehend that only Mickey Dolenz is still around.

 

Hey Hey We're the Monkees...

 

Other early crushes included Romeo and Juliet’s Leonard Whiting, The Goodbye Girl’s Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Grill of the Grassroots, and of course, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 

My first "Romeo."

Who could resist "Midnight Confessions"?

Sigh.

Especially because I share a hometown with James Taylor, he’s always been an idol and happily, more than 50 years later, like Jackson Browne, he’s still recording and performing.

 

Think I wore through three of these.

 

As we age, part of us wants to keep our early idols frozen in time. Immortal. Exactly the way we remember them. Mainly, perhaps, because it helps us stay in touch with the innocent, giddy part of ourselves that had those crushes so long ago. So, when we see them aging like we are, see them as human, it has a strange, disorienting effect, not to mention giving us a reminder of our own mortality. 

 

JT in 2020.

 

So many of  the writing influences and idols who were bigger than life in my younger years have passed on—Sam Shepherd, John Fowles, Walker Percy, Susan Sontag. They’ve joined Henry James, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, and Dickens in the pantheon. And so they are frozen, in a way, and I still have all their work to revisit and fall in love with all over again.

 

John Fowles portrait by Tomas Watson

 

Of course, famous actors, musicians, and painters will always live on in their music, in their movies, in museums, in the images of them that we can all still find online. That doesn’t keep me from feeling the planet is too empty without Prince. Or Mary Travers. Or Billy Wilder.

 

Still leaving a hole in the world.

 

But I think maybe we should remember the gift it is to see the ones we admired in our youth who are still around, still writing, still singing, still acting, still living, despite physical challenges and everything else that comes with our later years--to see what a whole, long life well-lived can be.

 

So here’s to Joni Mitchell, Helen Mirren, Anne Tyler, David Hockney, Sally Field, Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Redford, Bonnie Raitt, Margaret Atwood, and all the other artists who are still creating and paving our way, letting us know it’s never too late for us to write/paint/dance/sing.

 

Joni Mitchell, performing this year.

 

Tonight, I’m rewatching What’s Up Doc?, delighting in Ryan O’Neal’s crush-worthy performance, admiring the late Buck Henry’s hilarious script, and being thankful that Barbra Streisand still has the stamina to write a 1000 page memoir. . .

 

"You can't fight a tidal wave."

 -- Wendall

Wendall's newest Cyd Redondo mystery, Cheap Trills, is now available here:

 https://amzn.to/3PVPuc1

You can hear her on NPR's "Dog Talk" podcast here on Apple here: https://bit.ly/3GuBT7b and on Spotify here:  https://bit.ly/41as0Fo