I like writing not only because it gives me god-like powers, but because when you put something down on paper, it stays there. Forever. Everything else in life is completely transitory, but writing? Seriously, it’s forever. Just look at the Rosetta Stone or the ancient Sumerian texts. They are thousands of years old, and still have a story to tell.
Paper is patient. I can put characters and plotty things down on paper and leave them, and when I am ready for them, they are there, ready for me.
My writing desk is placed in front of a huge window, from which I can see the Rocky Mountain front range. This isn’t as distracting as you might think, though it is rather pretty. What’s more distracting is the local shuttle bus that goes by every half an hour, and the pedestrian traffic, from fathers taking their toddlers out on tricycles, kids walking home from school, people navigating the gate at the storage facility across the way, and people earnestly trying to get in their 10,000 steps for the day. Not to mention those clouds; they keep rolling and twisting and moving, and catch my eye just about every other paragraph.
Another distraction is my soft green easy chair and ottoman. They exert such a pull on me to just sit and read or sit and think that I have labeled them The Vortex. Once it sucks you in, you do not want to (and are unable) to get out, and eventually you begin to wonder why you ever wanted to leave.
I write on a laptop that’s ten years old and enormous and heavy. I had a thought, at one point, that it might be a good thing to have a laptop with a screen that was 17” on the diagonal. And while it does make for good movie watching if you’re in a hotel or something, getting that sucker through security at an airport is like trying to haul a pillowcase full of bowling balls. So now it gets tasked only for my writing
I did buy a remote keyboard for it, because those laptop keyboards are so hard to type on, especially when you have a lot to say, and it seems to work just fine. I back up everything I write, every time I shut down for the day, on a 500GB passport from Western Digital.
I don’t edit as I go. I write as fast as I can and then print the whole thing out when I’m finished with the first draft. Okay, yes, I do give into temptation and print out sections, when I want confirmation that the piece is sounding as it ought to. Then I let it sit for at least two weeks, a whole month if I can stand it. Then I spend a whole day, sometimes two, at a coffee shop with a notepad and pen, and edit from start to finish. That gives me a huge sense of accomplishment, although, after a session like that, I’m typically too wired on caffeine to sleep for the next few nights.
I’ve been writing steadily since 1999, although I was first inspired to write when I was in the fourth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Harr, wrote “I like your ending,” at the end of one of my creative writing assignments, and I felt so giddy at the prospect of someone liking what I’d created, that there was no stopping me after that.
I try to write every day, because even if it is a crappy day, writing makes it much less crappy.
I write while listening to instrumental music, as I’ve found that anything with words to be too distracting. I tend to write to instrumental music that other people might find somber or soothing enough to fall asleep to, for example anything by George Winston. My secret, go-to CD is Yanni’s “In My Time.” I know, right? But there’s a certain rhythm to it, a rise and fall in dynamics, not only within each song, but between songs, when played in order. Yanni should definitely do more like that because his other works simply don’t do it for me.
It would be much cooler to say that I only write with my Watermen fountain pen (it’s the $25 dollar one, the least expensive fountain pen they make), but I have to admit that I have a pen problem, and a paper problem, come to that. When I grab a pen, the ink has gone dry. When I reach for a pen that I’m sure is not dry, it’s walked off on its inky legs. Packets of pens from the grocery store that I’ve just purchased and carried in to the house are suddenly no where to be found. And though I have piles of writing tablets, when it comes down to scratching out an errant thought, they have all marched off to that paper heaven in the sky.
When I plan a story, I use wide-ruled tablets to lay out the outline; the regular sized tablet, I mean, not the legal ones, and white, not yellow. Typically I start writing a story, and then realize I need to plan in order to get anywhere with it. Then enterth the my search for a pen and tablet, as well as 3 x 5 index cards, which I use to write down questions and plot points and different things to look up.
At one point I bought into the whole scheme of using 4 x 6 cards for major plot points and then different colors of 3 x 5 cards for minor plot points, for example, everything in part 2, say, would be pink, and part 3 would be light green, and so on. But then, not only did I run out of 4 x 6 cards and had to use 3 x 5 for the major plot points, the 4 x 6’s were just too big to handle, let alone stuff in my bag on the way out the door. Plus, I kept forgetting which color went with which part, and in the end, it all became way more complex than it needed to be. Today I use those notepads and white, ruled 3 x 5 cards and whatever pen I can bend to my will. When I feel particularly needful of some organization, I tape the 3 x 5’s to this huge wall I have in my basement, so I can take a look at the overall flow of the story.
As to what I write about, it would have to be historical fiction, for the most part. In elementary school, I developed a passion for anything I considered to be old-fashioned. Laced boots, sunbonnets, milking pails and stools, candles and candlesticks, slates and slate pencils, the list goes on. If it was old-fashioned, I was all over it. It got so intense for me that my school chums would try to shut me up, and would mock me when I would talk about it. Which didn’t stop me, it only sent my passions and obsessions underground for a time.
I think I might have been so taken with the past, and the assembled accoutrements, because my life as a youngster felt so unsettled and unstructured that I longed for those days that seemed to be more organized and under control. Of course, that was just my modern perspective that made the olden days seem so sweet, or maybe it was those durn Little House books, where everyone was always churning and sweeping and sewing and doing their chores in such a steady and methodical way that made my mouth water. I’m looking at you, Mrs. Wilder.
The other thing that has me scrambling for my 3 x 5 cards is orphans. Not real orphans; losing a parent is a hellish thing. No, I mean Victorian orphans, those isolated and abandoned characters who battle insurmountable odds to find their place in the world. Who start off with dirty faces and grimy hands, ragged and patched clothes, hollow tummies, and, if possible, no shoes, because, as you know, the best orphans don’t have shoes. Chimney sweeps! Crossing sweeps! Watercress sellers! Charity boys! Bring ‘em, bring ‘em all!
One of my oldest friends thinks this interest of mine is insipid and surely I’m too old for orphans. Well, I say phooey to that and I tell her to go back and draw her beautiful ponies and leave me to my waifs and ragamuffin children. And really, the word orphan is a kind of metaphor for anyone who is far from home, or who feels abandoned and alone and friendless. Anyone can be isolated, alienated, and separated (for whatever reason) from the main throng of people who pass back in forth along a cobble-stone street. But yes, it did all begin with orphans. And I’m not going to apologize for that.