HOW TO WRITE IN AN AIRSTREAM

It was a dark and stormy night, and the Captain said to... Ah, no. That's the wrong story. This story is about our lovely Airstream 'Lady Rose.'

Yes, we did the American thing and took to the road in a travel trailer.

Being English, and so not a camper in any shape or form, this was my reaction:

On being told that this outfit was completely out of our reach, I grudgingly accepted a fancy Flying Cloud Airstream instead. Here we are, poodle and all, docked in a forest.

Now I have to admit that once we decorated the inside of Lady Rose I became somewhat enamoured of the back bedroom. We chose twin beds for the extra space and I covered each one with a blanket printed with mushrooms.

This was to match the mushroom wallpaper in the living area at the front of the trailer.

The prospect of being on the road combined with my writing habit discombobulated the crap out of me. For 30 years I have only used a desktop computer. Having two monitors, one for writing with Scrivener, and one for researching my novel is a luxury I have enjoyed. Now what? I couldn't take all that equipment on board a 25 foot trailer.

I bought a laptop.

Now all of you road warriors out there, you must be sucking your teeth in amazement (actually, you probably could care less but you know, it's all about me). All these years without using one of these magic machines and I found it hellaciously difficult to operate the damn thing. I still don't know how to do all the fiddly stuff like scrolling, copy and pasting, using the right click menu etc. I have to have a bluetooth mouse and a red computer pad to get anything done.

After much trial and tribulation I have adapted to my much reduced computer size and can continue on with writing. I sit in the back of Lady Rose on my bed, my laptop on my lap (smart place to put I think), poodle at my feet.

I am a disciplined creature and write for a couple of hours, almost every day (except when we driving for hours to our next destination and honestly, I could probably do it in the front of our truck if I really thought about it).

Incidentally, using the writing software Scrivener combined with Dropbox has been a life saver. My words fly up into the clouds from the Airstream and can be pulled down to earth at our house. Nothing is lost.

It didn't take long to change my mind about camping. But, there again, this isn't really camping. It's glamping. There is nothing more wonderful than lounging in the back of an Airstream with all the curtains open, light streaming in and a view of many, many trees and bushes surrounding the trailer. Sometimes I look out on a river, or a lake, or a mountain. I don't know whether it inspires the flow of creativity but I do know that a great deal of my novel has been written and revised under the influence of America's incredible landscape.

That is how you write in an Airstream.

For fun I have included a picture of our sign outside the Airstream door.

And here is the logo on the back of Lady Rose.

RCR 06/13/26