A retreat can lead to victory

“There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from.” – Snoopy

Nye Beach, Oregon (from the library of the Sylvia Beach hotel)

There is a limit to how many nights I can sleep in a bedroom that’s over 80 degrees, so I fled to the coast.

If you find yourself in Oregon, check out the Sylvia Beach hotel in Newport. Set on a bluff overlooking the ocean, it’s a hotel especially designed for readers and writers. There’s no television, no radio, no wifi, no elevator. But there are lots of books. The library, on the third floor, looks like this:

Most of the books are in the loft above or in the bedrooms. Each room is dedicated to a specific writer, designed to look like the writer’s world and with bookshelves of their works. For example, I stayed in the J.K. Rowling room:

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It was blissfully cool, and I fell asleep to the sound of the waves on the beach.

The next day, I sat down in the library and just wrote. With no wifi, no email, no sound at all except the surf on the beach below, and the occasional cry of a seagull. Finished chapter 2 and got serious work down on some other chapters.

I hated to leave, but alas I did.