Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing. I have no doubt that it’s because I’ve been writing these posts faithfully every week for nearly an entire year. And I have no doubt that it’s also because I’m teaching Creative Writing this semester. Naturally, I spend lots of my time talking with aspiring writers about writing.
In fact, when I met with my students last week, we did two, one-minute reflections.
For the first, we reflected on the joy of writing. Let me share some of their responses:
● Creating my own world.
● Finding words that describe my own feelings.
● Gaining an understanding of my own life.
● Discovering something about my own identity.
● Daydreaming.
● Letting my thoughts spew out.
● Getting it done–the rhythm, the music, the wish, the dream, and the fear.
For the second reflection, we tackled the challenges of writing. Again, let me share:
● Getting started.
● Finding an interesting topic.
● Putting myself into my writing.
● Encouraging my paragraphs to talk to one another.
● Choosing which idea to explore.
● Connecting the beginning, the middle, and the end.
● Accepting my writing as it is.
I had planned a third reflection, but we ran out of time. Here’s what it would have been: discoveries about writing.
For this one, I’ll take the lead, sharing my own ideas, based largely on what I’ve discovered about writing as I wrote my weekly blog posts this year.
By and large, what I’ve discovered has been by way of reminders. To start, writing isn’t easy. It isn’t spontaneous. And it isn’t magical.
Here’s something else that I have rediscovered. Writing is work. It’s hard work. It’s lots of hard work.
Work. Hard work. Lots of hard work.That’s my mantra these days when I’m working with other aspiring writers. I front-load the conversation: get ready for rich, robust, and heavy mental lifting.
At the same time, over the last year I’ve reminded myself–and others–that even though the hard art of writing isn’t magical, it is filled with magical moments.
Let me share some of mine.
Magical Moment. Getting hooked on an idea that makes my world fade away.
Magical Moment. Letting an idea explode in my mind as magically as Pop Rocks explode in my mouth.
Magical Moment. Focusing on old-soul insights that have come back to me from far, far away and from long, long ago.
Magical Moment. Fooling around with organizing what I’m writing until I get comfy with one structure that pulls me in close and whispers, “Yes. Let’s do it.”
Don’t get too excited by these moments. They are magical. But let me remind you: they are not magic.
And trust me. The next part–the actual writing–has no magic at all. Sometimes, it might not even have magical moments. The actual writing can be grueling, if not downright defeating, especially since first drafts never hit the mark. Never. Mine don’t, at any rate. Sometimes, even my 13th draft doesn’t seem quite right. How’s this for a confession? Sometimes, I’ve gone as high as 22 drafts. Admittedly, the differences between any two drafts are sometimes majorly minor, and the changes will be unknown forever to all except me. Nonetheless, the work of writing–of revising–goes on and on and on.
And writers keep at it. I keep at it, knowing that what I write will never be perfect, but knowing, too, that at some point it’s as good as it’s going to get.
What I have discovered as well is the simple fact that my scholarly writing is in many ways far easier than writing my personal essays like today’s post. My own scholarly work on The Humourist as well as on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, for example, has singleness of purpose and focus. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.
On the other hand, writing my weekly blog is more challenging, mainly because I don’t focus on the same topic every week. My topics change. As reluctant as I am to admit it, I’ll admit it anyway: I’m never sure from one week to the next exactly what topic will bubble up.
That’s not to say that I don’t have lots of ideas for my posts. I do. I have plenty. In fact, whenever I have an idea for a post, I immediately start a WordPress draft. I give it a working title, and I include as many notes as possible so that when I return, I can glide back into my thinking and writing groove.
Right now, for example, I have 25 drafts in various stages of completion, ranging from “The Power of Showing Up” to “Dating after Twenty-Two” to “Mishaps Make Memories.” I suppose I could also mention “Working Out a Plan” or “A Horrorscopic Week” or “What My Father Saw.” Or I could mention that I might have “My Gardening Attire” finished by next week. I might. But, on the other hand, I might not.
I’m not trying to generate future blog traffic by teasing you with alluring and inviting titles that may or may not morph into posts. Simply put, I have come to the realization that my ideas must germinate in the dark caverns of mindfulness and mindlessness. They must sprout and pop up whenever they are ready for the light of day. No sooner. No later.
All of my tentative topics and all of their accompanying draft notes are simply placeholders. Nothing more.
Yet it occurs to me that maybe they are far more than mere placeholders.
They are talismans. Not to bring me power. Not to bring me luck. But rather to bring me back to the illuminated intensity of the split second when an idea sought refuge within me and pleaded for a some-day home.
What I have discovered, then, is that I need lots and lots of talismans. They are my antidote to the numbness and paralysis that I know fully well will set in if I have no writing options. I don’t write well when my storehouse of options is empty. When that happens, I feel that I have forced myself into the all-too-tight corset of being compelled to write on one topic and one topic only.
On the other hand, when I have many, many topics, one of them might be precisely the one that captures my fancy precisely when my fancy needs to be captured.
It won’t have anything to do with talismanic luck. And it won’t have anything to do with magic.
It will have everything to do with my willingness to let my ideas take their own shape, whatever those shapes might be, without being corseted, without being laced up, and without being forced.
I want my ideas:
● to leave themselves ample space to move around in.
● to do what they want to do.
● to be what they want to be.
It’s really straightforward. My greatest discovery about my own writing is my everlasting need to unlace the corset that constricts my thoughts. It’s my everlasting need to let my ideas breathe and expand freely, whenever and however they wish.
And if you aren’t thinking that you’ve read this post before, you are probably asking yourself, “What’s going on with the Good Professor’s seeming propensity for being in bed?”
Excellent question! I won’t try to pull the sheets over your eyes. It’s simple. “In Bed” makes the title catchy. It certainly makes me lie down and take notice. You’ll take notice, too, when I tell you that, on average, we spend 33 years of our life in bed: 26 years, sleeping; 7 years, trying to doze off.
If the “In Bed” part didn’t grab your attention, “with writers” surely did!
And I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking right now. Come on. Fess up. You’re wondering what they’re doing in bed. And now you’ve got me wondering, too. I’ll be right back.
Thanks for your patience. I had to do a little research. If you were wondering whether they were having…you know...sex, you won’t be impressed by the answer that I just discovered. On average, having…you know…takes up only about one third of a year (117 days) in the course of our entire life. Ironically, people think about having…you know...nearly 19 times a day. I guess we spend far more time thinking about having…you know…than we do enjoying…having you know.
Sadly, I suspect that the 117 days of romance is substantially lower with writers, particularly those who write in bed. I doubt that they would want to be interrupted with their word play. Maybe that’s why William Byrd II (Colonial Virginia aristocrat and man of letters; member of the Governor’s Council; and founder of Richmond, VA) had a fondness for romantic interludes on the billiard table. “He what?” someone gasped in disbelief. Yep. I tease you not. For your own in-bed reading, check out The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover (1709-1712). The content of his diary remained a secret until the 1940s when it was decoded. Now I know that I have whetted your literary appetite. Here, let me tease you more with an excerpt from his diary:
“in the afternoon my wife and I had a little quarrel which I reconciled with a flourish. It is to be observed that the flourish was on the billiard table.”
Now you know why he wrote his diary in code. Check it out, but not now. Or, if you must, please come back and finish this post.
But let’s get our writers back in bed where we found them to begin with.
For what it’s worth, I was in bed already, and I intend to stay there, smackdab in the middle. After all, it’s my bed, and in bed is where I write my blog posts. But I’m the not-so-famous writer mentioned in the title, so enough about me. Let’s snuggle up with some famous writers who wrote in bed, and, for the time being they can join me in mine.
Surprisingly, not many writers actually write in bed. That suits me just fine. Although my bed is big–fit for a queen–I still need to be able to pull up the sheets and get comfy.
Little chance of my doing that any time soon. Long-legged Mark Twain has jumped in already. What a bed hog: writing and smoking at the same time. He’s got some nerve! “Just try it in bed sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees, and I scribble away. Thinking is easy work, and there isn’t much labor in moving your fingers sufficiently to get the words down” (New York Times, “How Mark Twain Writes in Bed,” April 12, 1902).
Joining Twain is Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence. (Well, maybe, innocent, but, after all, she is in bed with Twain even if I am the one who put the two side by side.) Wharton liked to write in bed because it freed her from wearing her corset, thereby liberating her thoughts. Now, at least, we all know where she kept her mind.
And I suppose we have to invite Truman Capote to hop in. He’s often quoted as saying: “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy.”
On the other side of the bed–to my right–let’s put some European writers. For bed-balance, we’ll add three only, arranged in the same gender order as the Americans: Boy. Girl. Boy.
To my right, William Wordsworth. He wrote his poems in bed in complete darkness, and, if he lost a sheet of paper in bed, he started over. It was easier than rummaging around under the sheets. Thank God for small mercies.
On his right is Dame Edith Sitwell who slept in a coffin from time to time. Without a doubt, she’ll enjoy being in bed for a change, especially since she once commented, “All women should have a day a week in bed.” That’s all fine and dandy as long as they’re not in my bed.
To Sitwell’s right is Marcel Proust, right on the edge of the bed. Writing in bed was not a quirk for him. It was a requirement. Age and illness forced him to stay in bed, and it was in bed where he completed Remembrance of Things Past as well as In Search of Lost Time. On the edge of the bed seemed perfect so that he could get in and out with greater ease.
OMG! I just heard a loud thud. Did you? Let me take a look. Sure enough. The not-so-famous American writer who thought up these shenanigans in the first place is at it again. He has pushed the European writers right out of the bed onto the floor.
Oh, no. I just heard another thud, though not quite as loud. Let me lean across the bed and have a look-see. As I live and breathe! Capote, Wharton, and Twain are all piled up on the Oriental rug. Twain is still smoking his pipe. Wharton is suddenly looking for her corset. And Capote is leaning back, still smoking his cigarette. Maybe he and Twain can blow smoke at one another while Wharton laces up her corset.
Well, at least the Americans landed softly. I really meant no harm, but I had no choice other than to kick the three of them out, too. Seven in my bed was six too many.
I don’t know about you, but it’s perfectly clear to me that writers–whether famous or not-so-famous–make strange bedfellows.
We are always yapping about the “Good Old Days” and how we look back and enjoy it, but I tell you there is a lot of hooey to it. There is a whole lot of our past lives that was not so hot.
–Will Rogers (1879-1953; American Vaudeville Performer, Actor, and Social Commentator)
Hey, everyone! Listen up! Make certain that you keep a copy of this post in a safe, virtual folder. Maybe even the Cloud. It is destined for fame. It is destined for greatness. It is destined for glory. It will go down in the annals of history as the most historic and historical blog post ever published.
You will discover why as you continue to read. But let me start with one reason and that one reason alone will earn this post its deserved historical distinction. For the first time in my life, I am at a loss for words. I am. My students would be thrilled beyond thrills because they consider me to be exhaustive and, no doubt, exhausting when I start talking about anything that is near and dear to my heart.
One of my eccentricities that I felt comfortable sharing was the fact that I had drafted the general introduction and the introductions to the five sections of my The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on yellow legal pads, using #2 pencils without erasers. The really quirky part of that eccentricity was that whenever I made a mistake, I ripped out the page and started over.
One of my faithful followers challenged me to write my next post on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil, and to share with you what happened as I wrote. Dear reader, you are so undeserving of the suffering that you will surely suffer as you continue to read. But please do continue to read. Remember: no pain, no gain. (Because I love you so much–whoever you are and wherever you are [including you, Mrs. Callabash, wherever you are]–I have timed the read-time for this post. You are now 6 minutes and 36.3 seconds away from full fatigue and brain drain.)
It was a commendable challenge, so much so that I really should quote it verbatim, and I would, but I can’t. I am lying in bed writing my post on a legal pad, using a #2 pencil, as challenged–I am such a sucker for challenges–so I don’t want to lose my grain of thought by switching over to my Smartphone to look at last week’s post so that I can quote the comment in its entirety the way that it deserves to be quoted.
Therefore, starting with the next paragraph I will use placeholders for anything that I would normally have the good sense to look up instanter on my Smartphone. I will use this placeholder convention throughout this post. My very first one follows.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Insert faithful reader quote from last week. I believe the reader signed herself “J.”
I responded to “J’s” challenge by asking whether yellow legal pads were even manufactured these days. I noted that if they had fallen out of usage, not to worry: I had seen such writing artifacts at the Smithsonian Institution and, perhaps, I could arrange for a Docupost: Modern Applications of Ancient Writing Artifacts.
My reply to “J.” was far more brilliant than it appears here, but, again, I can’t easily switch over to my Smartphone.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Insert my dazzling reply to “J.” Make sure to capture the correct title of the Docupost that I plan to propose to the Smithsonian Institution.
Not long after “J’s” comment, another faithful follower–“soyfig”–informed me that she had some yellow legal pads and #2 pencils that I could have.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: insert “soyfig’s” actual comment, especially since, as I recall, she used some figurative language.
I responded, of course. I respond to everything, seen and unseen, heard and unheard. But, sadly, I do not remember my exact reply, but I am sure that it was a beauty.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Insert my beauty-of-a-reply to “soyfig” who writes so figuratively.
Obviously, I accepted the challenge because, as I noted earlier, here I am writing about what it’s like writing a blog post on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil, while lying in bed.
I should be euphoric, I suppose, because I am certain–and history will confirm my certainty–that what I am developing right here and right now is a new Creative Nonfiction genre. To mirror its counterpart in the world of fiction, I hereby announce–with all the power and authority that is not vested in me–that this new genre will be dubbed CreativeMetaNonfiction.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Check the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to see whether the word and the genre exist already. If not, notify the editors immediately. “by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum,” fame awaits.
I believe that I have said so already, but I will say so again: writing my post on this yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil, is not making me euphoric. I can’t speak for you, but I can speak for me. My bed is a place of immense pleasure. Trust me. This is not pleasurable. I’ve got a stupid yellow legal pad–six times larger than my Smartphone–propped up on my knobby knees and the stupid pencil does not have the same quality graphite that I recall. Yes: I still recall the quality–or lack thereof–of everything going all the way back to the cold and snowy day of my November birth. If that be true–and it is–then fast forward with me and you will know that I speak the truth when I say that recalling something from the 1970s is a piece of graphite for me.
Morever, lean in and listen carefully: the damned yellow legal pad is not backlighted. Why am I whispering? For one good reason. I’m whispering because I don’t want anyone to steal my idea! If an ancient writing artifact like a yellow legal pad is going to continue to plague us, at the very least it should be backlighted so that it will not plague us in the dark.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Check the dictionary. Backlighted? Backlit?
I just heard someone ask, “Why does it matter if your yellow legal pad is not backlighted?” [See above Placeholder.]
Well, that’s a splendid question. it matters a lot. It’s starting to get dark outside. My overhead light makes a glare on the yellow legal pad, so I can’t use it. My nightstand lamp is not bright enough, so I can’t use it either. I must be blunt. I can no longer see what I am writing. And, like my pencil, let me be blunt again. If I can’t see what I’m writing, how do I look into the heart of what I’m thinking?
Thank you very much for your suggestion. I expected it. But, as much as I appreciate it–and I do–I will not run out tomorrow to buy a lamp to attach to my headboard. Simply explained: I won’t be needing it. I will never write another blog post on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil, while lying in bed at night. Never. Never. Never.
However, I will figure out a way to finish this post since I accepted the challenge, sucker that I am.
Already I can think of three possible solutions.
Solution 1. Fill a Mason jar with fireflies. They might illuminate my yellow legal pad sufficiently.
Solution 2. Jerry-rig a flashlight to the headboard of my bed, with the light beaming down on the yellow legal pad propped up against my knobby knees.
Solution 3. Go to bed at 6pm so that I can work on my post for several hours before it gets too dark for me to see.
“Too dark for me to see” reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s first-person account of death, “I Heard a Fly Buzz.” The poem ends, I believe, with: “And then I could not see to see.”
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Find the Dickinson poem and make sure that my quote above is accurate.
I am back to report that my tentative solutions–even though brilliant–were abysmal failures. That’s too kind. They were duds.
Firefly Solution. It was fairly easy to catch a jar full: they are everywhere in my yard. And, oh, my! Such a golden glow as they put out. For a while my bedroom looked almost like a nightclub dance floor with strobe lights. But it didn’t last long. The glow became dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. And, even more quickly, I grew a guilty feeling for having captured all those helpless little fireflies and for having put them to work against their will Contra Naturam. I set them free. Shine bright. Shine far.
Jerry-rigged Flashlight Solution. I thought for sure that this solution would work. However, I couldn’t figure out a way to mount the flashlight to my headboard, especially at the required angle. I considered duct tape which seems to work for everything, but when I recalled what I had paid for my Henkel Harris bed, I froze with tape and flashlight in mid-air. It took me hours to free myself.
Going to Bed at 6pm Solution. Forget it for one reason only. I have worked long and hard to earn the reputation that I now proudly hold as a wild, night-owl party animal. My friends and my colleagues have grown so proud of me as I have, over time, extended my bedtime from 8:00pm to 8:30pm to 9:00pm. And I have now, after years of practice, mastered the 10:00pm hour. When a party’s going down, I want to be found, and I certainly won’t be found if I am in bed at 6pm.
But I have come up with another solution that had not occurred to me initially. I will take the first hour of my morning routine to write my blog post on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil.
Well, I tried it. Let me just say that this is not what anyone might hooey it up to be. Now I am wishing that I had challenged my two faithful followers to this challenge. Thankfully–and luckily for them–I am not that cruel. Absit iniuria.
They wouldn’t like all these disruptions either. Up until now, I have made perfectly good and methodical use of a sensible and calming way of writing my post in bed on my Smartphone. Even though I have willingly taken on a momentary stay against my ever-so sane method, I will remind myself–in mantra manner–that I am blazing new trails into Creative MetaNonfiction. History and literature demand that I continue. History and literature demand that I see this stupid stint through to a stupendous end.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Look up Creative MetaNonfiction to see whether such a genre exists. Oh, no. I remember that I have placed this placeholder in the post already, but since I cannot erase or scratch through, I will build upon the redundancy and puff it up as best I can. Have I actually stumbled upon–simply by stupidly accepting a challenge–a new genre? Oh, joy! Maybe I will enjoy a footnote in the annals of something–anything, please–after all.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Revisit Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” As I recall, the unnamed narrator who goes insane–always be suspicious of unnamed narrators–may have written HER journal on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil. Well, I am fairly certain that she did not, but look it up anyway. Adding that twist to the original story would be masterful for an updated version. The narrator escaped from the yellow wallpaper. But I wonder: would she be able to escape from her yellow legal pad as masterfully as I am about to do, soon and very soon. You’re welcome.
What’s ironic about all of this is that when I accepted this challenge, I did so fully expecting fun, even if nothing more than hearing my pencil graphite its way across the page.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Can graphite be used as a verb? Well. Duh. I just used it as a verb in the preceding paragraph. Therefore, it can be. Therefore, I really do not need to follow through with this placeholder. I will keep it anyway in the interest of not ripping out this yellow page which is otherwise perfect.
But verbs notwithstanding, my pencil is not making those nostalgic sounds that I had longed for, not even when I bend my ear way down close and personal to the page. Instead, it glides along like a waxy crayon. And, in fact, my box of pencils is labeled, on one side of the box, Crayon. Oh, dear. I forgot. Crayon means pencil in some language. An esteemed English professor–a colleague–took great joy in beaming that to me when I showed the box to her. Well, never mind.
I do mind, however, that the only yellow pads that I could find anywhere were 8 1/2 by 11 inches, even though they were marked LegalPad. Well, excuse me. If it’s not 8 1/2 x 14 inches, it’s not legal, and shorties like the ones that I ended up with ought to be illegal.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: (1) What companies still manufacture these so-called legal pads? (2) Do they come in true legal size? (3) Is it true, as I seem to recall, that courts no longer allow 8 1/2 x 14-inch legal pads because they do not fit readily into filing cabinets–not even virtual ones?
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Do a comparable search into #2 pencils. Focus especially on what kind of graphite manufacturers are using for these crayons–I mean pencils–these days.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: I need a pull quote for this post. What’s the one about a sucker is born every minute? How perfect would that be!
Okay. I need to wrap this post up–Maybe in a yellow graphite bow?–but before I do, I simply must achieve a sense of order with this post–the very first example ever of Creative MetaNonfiction. The annals of history await my final word. I do, too.
I know exactly what I will do. I’ll number the pages that I have written on this yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil. And while I’m doing that, I’ll write AMDG just to the right of each page number, just as a Jesuit lawyer friend of mine did on all his labor relations notes, always written on a genuine yellow legal pad, using a genuine #2 graphite pencil.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Look up AMDG to see what that acronym means. Marty had a perverse sense of humor, but, surely, he would not have penciled anything obscene or scandalous, especially since he knew that I would see what he was writing because I almost always leaned over him at the bar. But be sure to look it up anyway before publishing this post.
Wow! I have written 11 pages already about nothing more than what it’s like to write my post on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil, while lying in bed. Maybe this Creative MetaNonfiction thingy is not as bad as I have graphited it up to be. Well, if I can type it up, I can certainly graphite it up. But lo and behold! Here I’ve gone and coined still another word: graphited. Who knows? Maybe a Creative MetaNonfiction Novel looms in your future.
I suppose the only thing that might have been more fun than numbering the pages would have been ripping each one out and then taping them all together. I seem to recall a writer who typed one of his books on a continuous roll of paper, created by carefully taping each page together. This would have been, of course, back in the good old, hooey typewriter days.
Placeholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: Try to find out the writer who did this. I think that it was Jack Kerouac. I am certain. Yes. I recall it as vividly as if I had helped him! (Oh, how I wish.) He sellotaped enough pages to create a 120-foot roll when he wrote his On the Road. Check just to make sure. I would never dare publish anything without verifying all the facts before I spew forth. And also look up hooey. It looks like phooey to me.
As for any rhythm that I might be achieving while writing on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil, forget it. Forget. It. Trust me. This post is not riding along on its own melting like a piece of ice on a hot stove. Frost itself wouldn’t work. And Frost himself wouldn’t be able to make it work either. I am so focused on paper and pencil that any semblance of thought has wisely flown far, far away to someone sensible enough to write a blog post sensibly on a Smartphone.
Worse, perhaps, I feel as if I am straddling an immeasurable and unfathomable chasm between the 1970s (when I enjoyed writing on a yellow legal pad, using a #2 pencil) and day before yesterday (when I lost my sanity and sold my writerly soul to the Devil by selling myself on the idea of accepting this challenge). To be certain, the image of such a straddler is an intriguing one. Conjure it up if you can. I double dare you. You will see for yourself. But let me assure you, post haste, that my legs–metaphorical or otherwise–are not nearly long enough to bridge such a chasm, and even if they were, I would not stand for it. I would object vehemently for all the world to hear, as, hopefully, all the world is hearing now.
Hear me and hear me well. What I am about to say is quotable, so go ahead and quote me: Phooey to all this hooey.
I object to it so much that I will end it all right now, in one final declaration!
This is a nonsensical challenge up with which I will not put.
FINALPlaceholder for When I Return to My Sanity and My Smartphone: As I recall, Winston Churchill came up with the above quip as an objection to an editor who wouldn’t allow sentences to end with prepositions. Churchill’s retort memorialized the folly of editors who foolishly adhere to grammatical rules rather than to common sense and to the sense of sound. Try to find the specifics. Was it in a memorandum? I’m sure that it was, perhaps in 1941?
Halleluiah! I have freed myself at last from this yellow legal pad and from #2 pencils. I have returned to my sanity. (Wisely, however, I will not change one thing–not one hooey-phooey word–that I have written so honestly and so painfully as I soared my way to and through the heights of this challenge. “The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.” (No. I will not put a placeholder for that Shakespearean quote. You may kindly–if you please and if you need–google it yourself to obtain the specifics: play, act, and line.)And, thankfully, I have just returned to my Smartphone where I have just had joy beyond measure restored to every fiber–and even every fibre–of my being by doing nothing more than tap touching this post through to completion–one character at a time, using just one finger. Is that inefficient or what?
But the greatest joy ever is the knowledge that I have just written–and you have just read–the first example ever of Creative MetaNonfiction. May it not last forever in the annals of history and literature. May I be spared such notoriety. May I be remembered in far better ways. But, hey. What the heck. If you insist, I accept: better to be remembered for something, I suppose, than for nothing. Either way, it’s all hooey to me.
“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”
–Robert Frost (1874-1963)
You may take great pleasure in knowing that this may be my shortest blog post ever. The operative word here is may. I won’t know how short this post will be until I reach the end. That, I suppose, is my first writerly eccentricity. My writing–very much like Robert Frost’s–rides along on its own melting, like a piece of ice on a hot stove. It goes where it wants to go, and it moves where it wants to move.
But I suspect this post may be my shortest because I will be sharing my eccentricities. Goodness, no. Not those. How on earth did you know about those, anyway? They’re far too personal to share with the world at large. Besides, a post focusing on them would take years and years to share. Not really. But, on the other hand, maybe.
But since I have slid off course already, let me go ahead and share one–just one–of my personal eccentricities before attempting to get back into the flow of writing about my writing eccentricities.
Here it is. I have a tremendous fascination with numbers. Doesn’t that strike you as odd, especially since I am an English professor? It does me. Maybe it will strike you as less odd when I tell you that my fascination is limited to certain types of numbers. Like palindromes. You know. The ones that read the same, forward and backward. 11, 22, 101, 111, 666, 999. I don’t have anything against palindromes, mind you, especially if I only see one every now and then as I go about my day. But some days it seems they won’t go away, especially when they take up residence in my digital clocks and glare at me. 1:11. 3:13. 3:33. 7:07. (Thankfully, they never take up residence in my Grandfather Clock. Palindromes are as much visual as they are numerical.)
What’s even more fascinating are mirror hours. 10:10. 11:11. 12:12. You see them, right? Well, if you don’t, from this point forward, you will. And when you do, you will sit up and take notice, just as I do.
Depending on the combinations and the frequencies, I tend to believe–as many people do–that palindromic numbers and mirror hours signal the presence of messenger angels. I do my best to be attentive to their messages, too, especially if I see the same number repeatedly in the course of a day. A few days ago, for example, I couldn’t escape 555. It was everywhere. I even saw it on my Fitbit. After doing a timed, 6-minute morning meditation, my Fitbit showed that the session fell 5 seconds short, coming in at 5:55 minutes. But I didn’t mind. 555 is an intriguing Angel number heralding adventure, change, liberation, and intensity. Bring it all on. I’m revved. I’m ready.
But this is neither the time nor the place for me to discuss my personal eccentricities. I would be lying if I told you that I don’t have any more, just as you would be lying if you told me that you weren’t dying to know what they are. Forget it. I’m not telling. (Well, maybe a double Martini–extra dry, up, with a twist of lemon–could encourage me to tell a thing or three. Maybe.)
Let’s see. Let me do my best to slip-and-slide my way back a little closer to the melting ice cube of my original intent: my eccentricities as a writer. It occurs to me that this might be the perfect place to thank one of my faithful followers who, after reading my “Living with a Writer,” commented: “You are a published author that continues to educate and amuse us on a weekly basis. I’m sure we would all love to know what your quirks and eccentricities are when it comes to writing?”
I hope that you love what you have read so far so much that you will continue reading to the end as I continue to put into full public view my writerly quirks.
My second eccentricity as a writer bears close kinship to the first. Unlike Edgar Allan Poe who needed to know the last line of what he was writing before he put his pen to page, I need to know the first line of what I’m writing before I touch the first letter on my smartphone. (Yes. I write my blog posts on my smart phone. See my “Spaces and Habits of Famous–and Not-so-Famous–Writers.”) Once I get that first line, the rest melts along all on its own.
My third eccentricity as a writer relates to the first two. With the first line that I write, I like to get a rhythm going, usually a slow and easy one. It’s the sort of rhythm that gospel singer Rev. F. C. Barnes gets going in his “He Was There Just in Time to Rescue Me.” He opens his rendition by saying, “You know. This song is kinda like me: slow. But ya’ll don’t mind, do you?” Then he continues by working the title line and one or two other lines, over and over and over again, for a soothingly rhythmic song stretching out for 8:18 minutes. It’s much the same thing that the Barrett Sisters do in their “Jesus Loves Me” as they milk the rhythm and richness of just three words for a commanding 5:15 minutes. It’s the same thing that Lucille Clifton does in her “won’t you celebrate with me” as she rocks us in a world that has tried to kill her every day but has failed. Those rhythms–and other similar ones–bounce around and around and around in my head and sometimes carry more meaning than the actual words that I spit out. Frost would call it the sound of sense. In my own writing, I am never quite sure what the rhythm is or whether I am achieving it. Often it is more felt than seen, but it pulls my thoughts forward and piles them, like little pillows one atop another, and I like to think that it has the soft sound of sense.
My next eccentricity as a writer–my fourth–is one that I outgrew a long time ago, but it has such quirky quirks that I will memorialize it here for the record.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s when I was working on my The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, I drafted the general introduction and the introductions to each of the five sections in longhand.
But wait. It gets better.
I wrote them on a note pad. Not just any note pad. It had to be a yellow, legal notepad.
And it gets even better, if such be possible. I had to write using #2, yellow pencils. No erasers. Read on. Discover why.
If I made a mistake on a page, I could not erase. I could not scratch through and move on. I was compelled to rip out the blemished page and start over on a brand-new page, proving my mastery of ideas if not my mastery of time well spent.
I continued that approach to writing for a long, long time.
When PCs came along, however, I shifted with great joy because I discovered that I didn’t need to throw any of my drafts away. I could keep them all, simply by giving each a unique revision number. Keeping all of my drafts, I suppose, is my fifth eccentricity as a writer. I enjoy going back to see how an essay changed over time, from start to finish. More often than not, I will revise anything that I write a dozen or more times. (Let me add here that I love–absolutely love–preparing my posts in WordPress. It automatically tracks and keeps all the changes that I make for each and every post. Right now, for this post, WordPress has captured 22 revisions. I work hard for the money. Thank you very much.)
At this point, I have a huge decision to make. It involves an eccentricity that is personal, but it will have an impact on the writerly eccentricities that I do or do not share with you from this point forward. It, too, has to do with numbers. I do things in odd numbers only. For example, when I’m gardening, plants get planted as single plants or in groupings of 3, 5, 7, 9 and so on. I just don’t do even numbers. Right now, then, I have two choices, and choices are always good. I can stop my post here with five writing eccentricities. Or I can give you a sixth one and then be forced to end with a seventh.
Well, bless you, for shouting out that you want more. I am glad to continue, especially since 7 is one of my favorite numbers. Think about it for a minute. 7 Days. 7 Seas. 7 Brides. 7 Sisters. 7 Dwarfs. 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. And 7 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Without further rhythmic delay, let’s start exploring my sixth eccentricity.
Those who know me, know that I do not like being told what to do (well, that’s generally true) especially when it comes to writing (and that’s always true). But I love telling others what to do, especially when it comes to writing. Here’s the backstory. It all started on a wordy, wordy day when I was a sophomore in high school. My teacher Anna Mae Collins would march into our classroom, always wearing prim and proper dresses that generally looked like a nurse’s uniform regardless of the color or the fabric. But that didn’t matter. Mrs. Collins loved the parts of speech and sentence diagramming, and since I loved both as well, I loved her all the more. For a typical writing assignment–given usually on a Friday–she would provide the topic and the word length for the essay. She had lots of topics–so many that I don’t remember any. But I remember that she loved essays that were 1,200 words long. More, she loved giving us a structural formula that we had to follow. Here’s how it might go. 9 paragraphs. 10 compound sentences. 6 compound-complex sentences. 4 complex sentences. 1 interrogative sentence. 1 exclamatory sentence. And 1 imperative sentence. We had to underline each of those various types of sentences and identify them in the margin.
We would work our proverbial little butts off all weekend. Well, that’s rather presumptuous of me, isn’t it? Let me revise that claim. I would work my proverbial little butt off all weekend. Ms. Collins would march into class on Monday. I’d be sitting right up front, all smiles because I had met all of her requirements, each and every one of them. I was pumped with pride. She would clomp up and down the aisles, collecting our essays one by one, sizing them up as she clomped.
With measured tread, she would advance to the front. “Class, I am fully confident that your essays are excellent. But you can make them better. Take them home tonight and cut out all the huff and puff and fluff. Watch out for those nasty prepositional phrases. Adjectives will work just as well. You must keep the content of your original essay. However, your revised essay can only be 700 words long. Exactly 700 words. Also, you must use the same formula that I gave you on Friday: 9 paragraphs. 10 compound sentences. 6 compound-complex sentences. 4 complex sentences. 1 interrogative sentence. 1 exclamatory sentence. And 1 imperative sentence.”
Folks. Folks. Folks. We’re talking the Dark Ages of the 1960s. We had to handwrite those essays on lined paper. We had to count the words, word by word. And here we were having to go home and do it all over again. The moans and groans were loud enough to be heard in the principal’s office which is precisely where Mrs. Collins would have marched us if we had challenged her assignment. The more often she gave us assignments like that, the more often I fell in love with Anna Mae because through her I fell in love with the power of revision, especially the powerful revision that takes place when writers have to follow precise guidelines, including word counts.
My sixth eccentricity as a writer, then, is my belief that less can be more. (I believe that everywhere, of course, except in my blog posts. For those, I fantasize that I am being paid by the word. For those, I fantasize that I have 1.41 million followers.)
It will come as no surprise, then, when I tell you that one of my favorite writing assignments for my students–in College Composition and in Creative Writing–is to have them write an essay that is exactly 500 words, excluding the title. Not 499. Not 501. Exactly 500. (Oh, my! I just had a wonderful idea. I can combine this quirk with my numbers quirk and change the length to exactly 555 words. It’s a done deal. Please do not tell prospective students who might have signed up for my classes this fall.)
Further, it will come as no surprise when I tell you that students never change. Mine moan and groan as much as my classmates did in 1963. Unlike them, however, my students come to class with their 500-word essays and thank me profusely. They truly do.
I’m not sure what just happened, but my sixth writerly eccentricity was remarkably longer than any of the previous ones.
I promise. My seventh will be shorter. Hopefully.
Anna Mae Collins was not my only English teacher who insisted on eliminating huff and puff and fluff through tight and rigorous revision.
In college, my freshman English professor Barbara Smith required us to analyze everything that we wrote using the Gunning Fog Index. It was developed by publisher Robert Gunning who theorized that people could not read because newspapers and periodicals encouraged writing that was far too complex. I was fascinated by the Fog Index and discovered readily that my 25-word sentences did nothing but hide the soul and spirit of my message. It was then that I started using smaller words and shorter sentences.
The Fog Index is still used, but today our computers can measure the fog level for us automatically. MS Word calls it Readability Statistics. Those metrics provide a word count, a Readability Score, a Grade Level, and more.
Here’s my seventh and final eccentricity as a writer: I run Readability Statistics on everything that I write. What’s that? You want proof? Sure. Here are the stats for this post: Readability Score: 76.4%. (The higher the percentage, the easier the read.) Grade Level: 6.1. (The lower the grade level, the easier the read.) I’m pleased with those stats. Maybe I’m slightly puffed. Maybe I’m slightly full of it. But I simply must tell you that former Presidents Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln’s best prose have comparable Readability Statistics. I cannot think of better company.
Clearly, this post did not end up as one of my shortest. It may end up as one of my longest.
What can I say? Blame it on the ice. Blame it on the hot stove. Blame it on Robert Frost. Better still: thank my faithful reader who asked me to write about my writerly quirks and eccentricities.
“All thought is a feat of association; having what’s in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn’t know you knew.”
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Lots–and I mean lots–can be said about last week’s post “Living with a Writer.” I’m not talking about the number of views. The post enjoyed the usual readership. (I will note, however, that it had more readers than usual from foreign countries, including Bosnia & Herzegovina as well as Ecuador.) I’m not talking about Likes, although I was pleased that it had a few more Likes than usual. (It might interest you to know that “Fit as A Fiddle: The Inefficient Way” has the distinction of being my most Liked post of all.)
What’s really important about last week’s post relates to the mileage that I’ll be getting–this week and continuing for several weeks beyond–from reader feedback! I am listening. I hear you. I thank you. And trust me: I’m going to run with the ideas that you tossed my way. I always do.
Some feedback came as emails; other feedback came as comments published to the post.
Here’s my plan. This week I will focus exclusively on readers’ emails, since my responses to them are rather straightforward. I will reserve responses to last week’s comments until next week’s post. Actually, the comments are so rich that I might even get still another week’s post from their richness. Everything is copy. (See my “Directions to the Magical World of Ideas.”)
In one email, a faithful reader wanted to know what Lesley Francis–granddaughter of Robert and Elinor Frost–wrote in the copy of her The Frost Family’s Adventure in Poetry: Sheer Morning Gladness at the Brim that she gave me on April 9, 2002, when I introduced her as part of a Distinguished Lecture Series co-sponsored by Shenandoah University and Lord Fairfax Community College.
I was thrilled to get that email query because I had wanted to include the inscription in my initial post. Unfortunately, I could not because the book was in my office at the college, and, as you know, I work on these posts at night on my smartphone while lying in bed. If you don’t know that, you might want to read my “Spaces and Habits of Famous (and Not-So-Famous) Writers”.
Since last week’s post, though, I went to the college, I pulled the volume from my shelf, and I nostalgically read the inscription:
“For / Brent Kendrick, who / has let Frost lead him / ‘knowing how way leads on to / way.’ With best wishes from the author and granddaughter / Lesley Lee Francis / 4/9/02 / Lord Fairfax CC”.
The quote within her inscription, of course, is from the third stanza of what, without doubt, is one of Frost’s most popular poems, “The Road Not Taken”:
“And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black. / Oh, I kept the first for another day! / Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.”
The same faithful reader wanted to know whether I had mentioned any specific Frost poems when I introduced his granddaughter. Splendid question. Indeed, I did. Throughout the afternoon on the day of Dr. Francis’ lecture–“Education by Poetry”–showers passed intermittently through our area, and I had been reciting in my mind a Frost poem that appeared in his book of poetry, A Boy’s Will. I recall wishing that the rain were a little heavier, that the winds were a little more fierce, and that the time of year were not quite so much into spring—perhaps a patch of snow here and there–so that the realities of the day would match more closely those of the poem that I had been reciting. Even though the poetic conditions and the natural conditions that day didn’t enjoy a one-to-one correlation, I included Frost’s “To the Thawing Wind” as part of my introduction. The poem welcomes spring rains, the return of birds and flowers, as well as flowing streams. But equally important is the desire for spring to “Burst into my narrow stall; / Swing the picture on the wall; Run the rattling pages o’er; Scatter poems on the floor; Turn the poet out of door.” Quoting the poem seemed perfect for the season and the occasion.
Another reader wanted to know some instances when something happened that made me think of a Robert Frost quote.
Actually, it happened most recently just a few minutes ago while I was writing. When I wrote “I nostalgically read the inscription,” I thought immediately of how Frost likened poetry to homesickness and love sickness:
“Poetry begins with a lump in your throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words” (Frost to Louis Untermeyer, 1916).
Here’s another instance. A few nights ago, when I had my nightly phone chat with my sister Audrey, she mentioned that she was rather taken aback when she went to swat a fly, and it seemed to pause and look at her. As she shared her experience with me, I was reminded of Frost’s “A Considerable Speck.” In the poem, the speaker encounters a speck on his manuscript page–still wet with ink. Just as he was about to “stop it with a period of ink,” he has a profound realization: “Plainly with an intelligence I dealt. / It seemed too tiny to have room for feet, / Yet must have had a set of them complete / To express how much it didn’t want to die. […] I have a mind myself and recognize / Mind when I meet with it in any guise. / No one can know how glad I am to find / On any sheet the least display of mind.”
And for one final example. Just this past Sunday, as I worshipped outdoors while weedwhacking along my mountain road to pretty it up for July 4th, I happened upon a small clump of storybook sweet peas with tenacious tendrils and a subtle, alluring fragrance. I had not planted it. How it had gotten there was a mystery to me. But it was so exquisite all alone–showcased midst briar and bramble and honeysuckle–that I spared it. I had not the heart to level it to the ground from which it sprang. I mowed around it, fully confident that it would bring joy to at least one passerby, perhaps more. And, if none, the seeing and the sparing had brought hefty morning notes of joy to me, equal to cathedral tunes.
As soon as the sweet pea stole my fancy–as soon as I saved it–my mind fragranced off to Frost’s “A Tuft of Flowers.” In the poem, the worker who has come to turn the grass after it has been mown, looks and listens unsuccessfully for the one who had done the mowing: “But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, / And I must be, as he had been,—alone, / ‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart, / ‘Whether they work together or apart.’” At that moment, a butterfly drew attention to a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook: “The mower in the dew had loved them thus, / By leaving them to flourish, not for us, / Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him. / But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.” As the poem continues, the speaker comes to the belief that he has stumbled upon a message from the dawn: “And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech / With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach. / ‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart, / ‘Whether they work together or apart.’”
Frostian moments such as these may be small. They may be fleeting. They may be seemingly insignificant. But one thing is for certain. They stand as extraordinary reminders of why literature matters: it has the magical power to transport us from our ordinary worlds to unforeseen spiritual realms.
A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.
Isabel Allende (Chilean-American writer who calls her writing style “realistic literature, rooted in her remarkable upbringing and the mystical people and events that fueled her imagination.”)
I have always been a staunch practitioner of Robert Frost’s precept that “Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second” (Letter to Sydney Cox, January 3, 1937).
That’s why I rarely share anything that I am writing with others until I am reasonably comfortable that my “draft” is fast approaching my “fair copy.”
But I would explode if I didn’t share teasing tidbits about what I’m writing with a select few along the way.
For example, when I was drafting “Get Behind Me, Satan,” I shared the basic idea with a friend, telling her that my goal was to create a funny, humorous post that would mention not only the way that my siblings and I dashed out the door as my mother rebuked the Devil, broom in hand, but also the way that the Flip Wilson Show in the early 1970s caught my mother’s comedic fancy. Whenever Geraldine did something wrong–and she loved misbehaving–her defense was always “The Devil made me do it.” My mother loved it. She made it clear that she did not want to be bothered when Flip Wilson was on TV.
When I finished the first draft of my post, I texted my friend:
“Well, good grief! I just finished a crummy draft of ‘Get Behind Me Satan,’ and it slid off in a direction that I did not see coming at all! Any deliberate humor is gone. Flip Wilson is gone. And I’m not sure what the post … IS. Well, it’s crummy. But, at least, I have a crummy draft calling me tomorrow night!”
She texted me back instanter:
“Maybe you have 2 posts in this: the one you set out to write and the one that happened. Can they be two with different messages?”
I replied enthusiastically:
“Hmmm…maybe so! I like that idea a lot! I may use it and NOT give you any credit OR maybe you will become my ‘Linden (VA) Correspondent.’ Oh! I’m liking this a lot! ‘Get Behind Me, Satan, REVISITED!’ Yep! This is a winner!“
So now, dear readers, you have the first-hand backstory of the post that you are reading right now.
Obviously, since my Linden Correspondent paved the way for me to explain my initial plan for “Get Behind Me, Satan,” I’ll go right ahead and do so.
I’ve already mentioned that my siblings and I would dash outdoors when my mother started rebuking the Devil.
I’ve already mentioned how my mother fell in love with Flip Wilson and Geraldine.
What I haven’t shared, though, is something that I had intended to include in my initial post if it had not melted away in a different direction. Read on.
Who would have believed that after all these years–and just like my mother–I hold the Devil fully accountable for anything and everything in my life that’s negative.
As you know, especially if you read my post “Baking Up My Past,” I don’t suffer baking failures lightly, and, fortunately, those failures don’t happen often. But I have been known to toss a culinary dream right into the trash can, all the while rebuking the Devil with language not found in the King James Bible and not proper for this post. Nonetheless, the fervor of my rebuke is on par with my mother’s.
Without doubt, it’s when I’m biking that Satan tempts me the most. Just imagine. I’m on my bike doing my best to get into my daily routine, and almost always after about twenty minutes into it, I hear that voice:
“This is tough, no? Never gets easier, does it? Hey, give yourself a break. Why not quit for today? You’ve done enough already. Just stop.”
What a mell-of-a-hess that leaves me in, sitting there on my bike, Gospel music shaking the rafters, with that Devilish little voice doing its best: Stop. Hop. Off. Quit.
But it’s at that moment that my pedaling kicks into overdrive. I speed up from 20mph to 23mph, rebuking the Devil out loud, above the blaring Gospel music:
“Satan, you ole slew foot, you! You’d love for me to stop biking now. But I’ll show you who’s the master of this bike. With God’s help, I’ll bike the full sixty minutes, maybe more. So go. Leave me be!”
And for an extra punch, I pause just long enough to light up my Sage Smudge Stick to give my workout area another layer of cleansing purification.
At that point, my dog, Ruby, gives me her puzzled look, tucks her tail, and dashes off to safety, leaving me to fight my own battles.
My biking rebukes work well until the next day or so when inevitably the Devil returns to have another round with me!
So that’s the direction my initial draft was going, and it was moving along exactly as I had expected. That is, until my sister Audrey sent me my mother’s Dickson Bible, the one that included Through the Bible in Pictures. The Gustave Dore images were marvelous, especially the one of the Devil that was the most frightening thing I had ever seen as a child.
After I had looked at that well-worn Bible showing heart-wrenching evidence of my mother’s travels and travails, my next draft of “Get Behind Me, Satan” started to veer away from my intended humorous course.
Then, when I saw that the image of the Devil had been ripped from the lower quadrant of the page exactly where the Devil always stood with his pitchfork and his long serpent tail, waiting for my return visits as a child, it veered further still.
Needless to say when I realized that I must have been the one who destroyed the image as my guileless way of rebuking Satan once and for all, the draft veered into its own and claimed itself, triumphantly.
It became what it was supposed to be.
It became a reflection that captured the simple truth as I recalled it rather than a jazzed-up post aimed at entertaining readers.
If my mother were here, she would look at me, smile, and remind me of what she taught me all along, “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
I started working on something, and it was really bad. It was crummy. But I was really so happy just to be working on a little crummy thing. I would get home, and I would think, “It’s waiting for me. My crummy thing.”
Louise Glück (American poet and winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature), “The Poet’s View” (2014).
Writers’ lives have always fascinated me. Their writing spaces and their writing habits have fascinated me perhaps even more.
Some writers’ spaces make me feel right at home. I’m thinking of Albert Camus, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Wallace Stegner, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Carl Sandburg. Their writing spaces are filled with stacks of papers and books just like one part of my office. They seem to thrive on chaos as much as I do.
In stark contrast are the well-organized and sparsely furnished writing spaces of E. B. White, Edith Wharton, Edward Albee, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Bernard Shaw, H. L. Mencken, and Hunter S. Thompson. Their writing spaces are aesthetically beautiful, with everything positioned perfectly, but those spaces would be far too still–far too quiet–for me.
Interestingly enough, Maya Angelou doesn’t have her own writing space. She rents a hotel room in the towns where she lives. She goes there to write every day.
Angelou’s method would not work for me either. I couldn’t afford that kind of luxury.
Aside from writing spaces, writers have preferences about how they’re poised when they write.It might surprise you to know that not all writers write while sitting down.
Some stand. Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Philip Roth are a few examples.
Some lie down on their beds, notably Maya Angelou, Truman Capote, and Edith Wharton.
At least one writer dons his gravity boots and hangs from an exercise frame to think things out: Dan Brown.
What time of day do famous writers work?
Some are early birds. Toni Morrison (4am), Benjamin Franklin (5am), and Ernest Hemingway (6am).
Others, night owls: Franz Kafka and Charles Bukowski.
And what about daily writing quotas?
James Joyce prided himself on a well-written sentence. A good writing day for him? Three sentences.
Ernest Hemingway, 500 words. John Steinbeck, 1 page. Stephen King, 6-10 pages.
Ray Bradbury, a lot. One short story a week.
Henry Miller worked on one thing at a time until it was finished.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman worked on three stories at a time, on three different typewriters.
You’ve guessed it already. Famous writers are downright quirky.
But what about writers who are not famous? Are they quirky?
I can only answer for myself. I’m definitely not famous, but I definitely have one or four quirks.
Let me share a few of mine. I am doing so only because I casually shared one of my quirks in an email to a friend. Here’s what she wrote in response:
“I was interested in your note the other night about how you are now writing in bed! I have lots of questions! None of my business! But I’m still interested!
“On a laptop? Cup of tea by your side? Wine? Cocktail? Pencil and paper? Do you rewrite as you go along or wait until the end?
“How do you label your docs?”
Before tossing my reply out into the world for all to read, let me put things into context.
My home is on a mountain top. My office is downstairs where I have sweeping views of the valley below and the mountain range beyond. Nearest the expansive window looking out onto my stone patio and my gardens below is my sparse desk with an HP All-in-One Computer and a lamp. This is where I do my professorial academic work.
To the back of my office is an old Shenandoah Valley farm table (bookcases on the side walls) with an HP EliteBook and a lamp. That’s the research end of my office where I’m currently working on a two-volume book tentatively titled Dolly: Life and Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. That part of my office is cluttered chaos, but I know what’s where.
Obviously, I need one dedicated space for my academics and another one for my research.
What I had not realized, however, until my friend asked about my blog-writing habits, is that I need a third area for working on my blog!
Here’s where and how I work on my blog. It’s what I shared first with my friend and now with you, my readers.
“What I am about to share will shatter your image!
“I am literally in bed, usually around 7:45pm, and I try to write until 9:30pm or so. This new routine–started just before Christmas–seems to give me a better night’s sleep, though I am now sleeping in until 5:30am.
“Yes, I have a cocktail: a Bunnahabhain Scotch, neat, waiting for me on the night table. No laptop. I’m doing the thinking, writing, revising, and editing right on my smartphone, while lying all comfy in bed.
“No docs. I’m doing it all as drafts in WordPress.
“I find that having four or five different posts going at once lets me focus on what my mood requires.
“I’ve never written in this manner before, but I like it a lot. Actually, I love it. It makes me feel very much like a writer must feel. When I write now, I am done with the busyness of the day. It’s quiet, and my mind just settles in peacefully on ideas and fooling around with words!
“So there! You heard it first right here! And what you’re reading here might well find its way into a future post. I just had an idea!”
Indeed, “the idea that I just had” is exactly what you’re reading now: a blog post sharing glimpses of the spaces and habits of famous writers and one not-so-famous writer: me.
What I didn’t share with my friend is this. The multiple posts that I work on–each in various draft stages–start out as little more than ideas, sometimes bad ones. To paraphrase Louise Glück, I say to myself as each day winds down and I get ready for bed: “They’re there. My crummy draft posts are waiting for me.”
Who on earth would have dreamt that writing could become such a comforting, lay-me-down-to-sleep bedfellow?
The Wired Researcher 