Voices
Thanks to summer jobs, I haven’t been able to join my family on many of our recent summer vacations. At first I didn’t really mind—skipping family trips meant having the house to myself for a week to live as slovenly as I desire (which is quite slovenly, if I do say so myself). After the initial euphoria of living alone for a week wears off, though—usually after about 12 hours, when I notice that no one has washed my dirty plates—I always come to the same conclusion. As grating as being in a confined space with my family can be after seven or eight days, most of my best stories actually come from family vacations. It is the sort of thing that I really miss now that I have fewer and fewer opportunities to make new stories.
By
Dan Newman
April 22, 2010