Just Write? Wrong
The art of wordlessness
Arrangements are made. The apartment is booked. There are fully-charged electronics, two notebooks, and a pile of index cards. Time set aside to … be a writer. Yellow Lamy pen, turquoise ink cartridges. The index cards are yellow too. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The apartment is green, with a faintly unsettling ‘jungle’ theme. But the green is calming. So is the ‘Buddha Bar Ibiza Chillout Mix’ playing softly in the background. The first thing to do is to rearrange the furniture. Remove that chair from the dining table to make it feel more like a desk. Think about routine. Should it be ‘up early and a couple of solid hours before breakfast’? Maybe, but that would be for larks and this writer is an owl. Okay, so breakfast first. Get outdoors, find petit-déjeuner. Which boulangerie … it’s an unfamiliar town so the choices are all new. That’s an unexpected pressure when this is all meant to be relaxing, and conducive to creativity. No worries, there’s plenty of time. I’ll walk around the whole town and settle on the bakery on Avenue Charles de Gaulle, the one I checked out half an hour ago. Let’s call it brunch … breakfast is for the early folk, those larks, huh? Pastries and a baguette; they’re familiar. Good, we’re settling into this. I could do with some eggs. Pop into the small supermarket where it makes sense to plan all the meals for my three days in Rochefort. Right, back to the apartment … look, it’s already lunchtime, and the day is just flying by. Lunch first, then writing. Those words must be bursting to get out by now.
Did I mention that Rochefort is 111 kilometres to the west of our home? It is a lovely cycle with most of the hills in the first 35 kilometres; now that I think of it, that means the hills will be in the last 35 kilometres when I pedal home on Sunday. Anyway, I’m tired today … no surprise really after a long ride but perhaps if I read* for a while, there’ll be a burst of energy for writing later in the day.
* I am reading ‘10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World’ by Elif Shafak. I am struck by two things. Firstly, I bet the author had some sort of routine, a way of sitting down and putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Discipline to get the words down because they don’t write themselves. The other thought that comes to mind is that ‘10 minutes and 38 seconds’ is approximately how much time I have spent working on the rewrite of my dystopian manuscript by the end of Day One
Talking of ‘dystopian manuscript’, as we were.
You might remember, I wrote this story 2 years ago during 80 days of ‘two bad pages a day’. I thought, back then, some of that ‘bad pages’ stuff was ironic. You know the sort of thing; “what, these old things” [shrugs diffidently while waiting for compliments]. Well, it turns out they are bad pages. In some cases, VERY bad pages. Oh, and then there is real life becoming a whole lot more dystopian than the imaginings. So there’s that … and just how high you need to turn the dial?
Day Two … clock’s ticking, (supposed-to-be-a) writer fella!
What have you got? A couple of chapters? No? Okay, an outline … the plot roughed out and the main character settled upon? Nope. There’s time, don’t worry. Maybe a stroll out to the marina in the sunshine would help. Sit there, on that bench. Take out your notebook and … what, you forgot your notebook? Great. Call yourself a writer!
Supper then. Literally, I have no idea where day two went. There are some notes. And the two chapters I started have grown … and shrunk … and grown by approximately 350 words. To be fair, they’re pretty good words. Not the finished product but there are several fine sentences. When I read them out loud - quite possibly the first sign of madness - the words seem to flow.
A couple of episodes of Ted Lasso on Apple TV isn’t going to help the word count but a writer has to have some downtime, right?
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Thomas Mann
The third day is really what we should introduce by its real name … we shall call it ‘The Last Day’. For certain, this will be the day the enthusiastic writer gets stuck straight into it. After all, this time has been set aside. It is writing time. Words will flow … surely … please, it is the last day. Now, where are those damn words!
Picture the scene. Writer gets up and sits at desk. Let’s go, he mumbles to no one in particular.
Pencil sharpened. Draft manuscript opened. Existing words re-read. Substantial numbers of words deleted with copious helpings of accompanying mutters. So much scribbling in notebooks that the pencil needed to be resharpened*
* According to his son, John Steinbeck’s ritual was to begin every writing session by sharpening 24 Blackwing pencils and placing them in a pot. He would write with one until it began to dull, then place it in an identical empty pot and take another until he had worked through all 24. Then he would sharpen them all and begin the process over again.
Maybe some fresh air would help. A run (it would be fair to note that I never run so this is a sign of desperate procrastination). I ran 4.28 kilometres, arriving back at the door that opens into the courtyard that leads to the rented apartment. I think I should probably round it up to 5 kilometres … artists need to suffer for their art, don’t they? Go the extra (nowhere-near-a) mile, sweart a lot, drink water, shower, dress, take an hour to make and eat scrambled egg with Charentaise trout, wash down with coffee, read a few articles, pinch a couple of quotes from a piece by
Have another cup of tea.
Started writing this article, which is not the story I was determined to crack on with during my 3-day writing retreat long weekend mini break. [sighs loudly]
I think there was probably something planetary going on this weekend, or some weird electromagnetic activity, or maybe just bad writing juju..... I did a *lot* of procrastipfaffing before sitting down to write my post this week. I'm sure you will reap the rewards of your change of scene in due course - just not necessarily at your convenience!
Writing is harder than it seems, huh? I guess words will come in a downpour in the next few days.
As I like to call it, writing is waiting.