writing
Sorry, I can’t talk to you right now. I’ve just changed into my writin’ pants.
May 11, 2010
We all have weird things that help us or hinder us when we’re writing. A non-writer might say, “Yeah, okay, so you say you need to have six perfectly-sharpened pencils lined up next to a notepad exactly four inches away from your keyboard, but that’s all in your head, right?”
HAH, I say to that. Of course it’s all in our heads. But we’re writers. Everything we do comes right out of our heads, so why should it be surprising that we get so tangled up inside our headspace? Artists are basically the only people who get to be totally neurotic on account of it being their job to be a wacko.
Josephine March had a hat she wore when writing her manuscripts. I have a pair of pants. I have had since I was fourteen. No, they’re not the same pants (as much as I’d love to pretend I could still fit into the pants I wore when I was that age) but they might as well be. Loose, stretchy waistband, baggy legs, worn in to the point of blankie-soft fabric. I actually have to break them in before I can write in them — I can’t wear new pants while writing, no matter how originally comfy they are. Usually it’ll be a pair of pajama or yoga pants that get worn in to the point of becoming writin’ pants. This process often takes years.
Now, I wouldn’t say I have to be wearing them to write. I don’t think I have to have anything to write. I can sit in an empty room, naked, with no pens or keyboards in sight and still write (although it’d probably be hard for anyone else to read what’s etched into the walls with my fingernails). But my writin’ pants definitely do help. I also love to have a soda (Diet Dr. Pepper by choice) on hand as a reward when I hit a certain word count, and I absolutely love it when it’s raining. I open my window, no matter the temperature, and listen to the rain. There’s a euphoric excitement about that sound and that smell that just makes the words pour out of me.
I always sit a certain way: one leg folded under me, the other with my knee drawn up to my chest. Curled up this way, often wrapped in a blanket or bathrobe with just my hands peeping out to touch the keyboard, is how I spend vast portions of my life.
I can’t have snacks on hand, because I love to watch TV while I eat, and if there’s a snack around I’ll have the urge to stop writing to eat and watch something while I do. I also can’t have music playing. I wish I could. I make playlists that go with certain stories and novels of mine, but I can’t listen while I write or I get distracted by the story in the music. I need silence. I listen to my playlists in the car or in the shower, where I do a lot of my daydreaming and idea-fashioning. I listen to them before writing sessions, to put myself in the mood.
I’m a total weirdo when it comes to writing. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. I love that about myself. Everyone likes to be unique and different, so long as they’re not TOO different; the nice thing about being a writer is that all writers are total weirdos. I might be an oddball but at least I’m in good company.
Do you guys have weird habits to get your creative juices flowing? I know you do. Let’s hear ‘em.
(P.S. Lurkers, this means you. You know who you are. Either you’re a friend and you don’t comment because you can just IM me later, or you’re a stranger who found your way here via the blog of a friend of mine, and you don’t comment because you don’t know me. Well, suck it up. I want to hear from you, and I don’t bite! And hey, if you drop a line, then you won’t be a stranger anymore.)
Apr 26, 2010
I just got back from a trip to New York City, in which I got to hang out with my friend Ellen and crash on her couch, which was, as always, far more awesome than it sounds like it should be. I love staying with her. I beg her every time to go to Alice’s Teacup, a fantastic tea house in the city, and she obliges like the long-suffering, scone-loving good friend she is. I was there to see sjmaas for her bridal shower, and actually managed to surprise her, which was one of the most fun things I’ve done in a LONG time. It was an extremely busy weekend, and also involved some staying out significantly past my bedtime, and I am now way exhausted. I met some fabulous people, though, who I can’t wait to catch up with again in a month.
The thing I’m proud of, however, is that despite all this (and having only a tiny little keyboard with which I was totally unfamiliar) I managed to keep up my daily writing minimum of 500 words.
For the past couple of years I’ve been kind of screwing around, and not producing words at any kind of consistent rate. It took that much time, a lot of self-hatred and doubt, some serious soul- searching, and then a couple great kicks in the pants by sjmaas and Corry to make me realize that I had to get serious if I wanted to make this my job.
I’d always avoided word count goals, and did so in a totally pretentious way that I wasn’t aware of at the time. I considered myself to be beautifully erratic and artistic, unchained by the daily grind, above all that mundane stuff. I didn’t just write, I got Inspired. I had a muse. She graced me with her presence, was a fragile and inconstant thing, and could not be summoned.
That’s just total bullshit, seriously.
Of course I didn’t actually think of it that way, I just told myself that I don’t work like that, and that everyone’s different. That much is true. But I decided to give a daily word count goal a try after said kicks in the pants, and with some help from lilykaufman settled on my current system. She knows me so well that she knew what would work for me before I did.
My daily goal is 1,000 words. If I write at least 1,000 words I can feel really good about myself. But, because my subconscious is totally capable of wriggling out of anything, I have to give myself some wiggle room. Some days I just don’t buy in, I just don’t feel like it. I’m sick, I’m traveling, I had a rough day, a bug flew in my eye, I put my pants on backwards.
So I have a daily minimum, as well. I have to write at least 500 words every day, no excuses. If I ended up in the hospital I’d have to get someone to bring me a notepad. The beauty of it is that anyone can write 500 words. You can do that in ten minutes if you really wanted to. There’s no guarantee it’ll be good words, but you can get them out. If after 500 words I’m still not feeling it, I stop and try again the next day. But the great part is that usually, if I sit down and force myself to start, I get way into it by the time the 500 word mark rolls around, and I’ll hit somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 words in that sitting.
I think most writers are interested in the methods of other writers–I know I am. I tended to think we were all the same when I was a kid, so I love seeing how other writers do things just completely differently from the way I do them. What do you do?