A time to write

"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper." -- E.B. White

I switched up my writing schedule this morning. 

Instead of getting out of bed before sunrise and going to my desk to write, I got dressed and went for a walk and gazed at the early morning stars instead. 

It was the first time in more than a year that I’d decided to begin my day with a walk instead of with thirty minutes of free-writing. 

It felt like I was taking a break—a mini-vacation, of sorts—not writing immediately after waking.

Both choices—writing after getting up and writing later in the day—have benefits. 

When you sit down to write immediately after getting out of bed, you don’t ask yourself if you need to write or if you want to write. You just sit down at your desk and start writing to see what comes. 

There’s no, or little, resistance, except for a strong desire on some mornings to go back to sleep.

Waiting to write until later in the morning, after a walk, for instance, or waiting until after you finish breakfast, you can come up with all sorts of (lame) excuses for not writing and for avoiding the moment when you need to sit down at your desk to begin. 

Resistance is stronger. So is the voice in your head saying you can’t do this, or asking why you are doing this, or else you realize you have nothing to say so why bother even picking up a pen and opening your journal?

Plus there are many more distractions later in the morning—outside noises like garbage trucks, lawn mowers, leaf blowers. 

Inside noises, too, like voices in the next room, the ring of the telephone, and unexpected knocks on your office door.

Every writer needs to find the time that’s best for him or her to write during the day (or night). 

Some writers prefer early morning before anyone else is awake. 

Others prefer writing after everyone has gone to sleep at night. 

Still other writers enjoy writing amidst all the noise and commotion of a life—midday distractions and all.

What’s your favorite time to write? Why?

For more on finding the best time of day to write, visit: 

https://gosparkpress.com/morning-vs-night-when-should-we-write/

https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/you-should-probably-do-your-writing-in-the-morning.html

https://www.publicationcoach.com/best-time-to-write/

https://www.writingroutines.com/20-famous-writers-on-when-they-do-their-best-work/

https://davidbenami.com/2014/07/19/the-best-time-to-write/

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Riptides and Tidepools

If you think about writing as a flow—a flow of words, a flow of thoughts and images, a flow of consecutive days that you can sit down and write—you begin to notice differences in the rate of flow, the speed that writing takes place on some days, the slowness on others.

There are moments when it can feel like the flow of your writing is as strong as a riptide, and you find yourself caught by the current, unable to escape, forced to go where the flow is taking you.

These riptide moments are exciting, like unexpected gifts taking you to places you might never have found if you hadn’t let yourself go with the current, let the words take you where you needed to go. 

There’s no time for gazing at the waves curling into shore or watching clouds floating overhead, no time for searching for shells on the beach or for digging sandcastles. 

There’s only the riptide current and the constant effort of trying to keep your head above water as the words rush over your head and past you, and your pen is trying to keep up with the flow, trying to catch the words and thoughts and images as they speed by.

But then there are moments when everything seems to come to a halt, when the words seem to stall and get stuck somewhere, and the flow—that current that was so full of energy and life which took you so quickly into a different world—all but stops.

What do you do then?

Those are what I like to call the tidepool moments. 

Years ago, when we spent part of our summer vacation in Maine, we rented a cabin on the rocky coastline north of Bar Harbor. 

Every morning, after the sea retreated, my wife, daughter, and I would go down to the shore and explore tidepools glistening in the morning light.

Each tidepool was filled with gifts from the sea—starfish and crabs, sea anemones, shells, sand dollars, and more.

In tidepool moments, instead of worrying about where the current is taking you, you can slow down, inspect the water, play with words as if the words themselves are gifts from the sea.

You can walk along the edge of the tidepool, watch the sunlight glistening on the surface of the pools, enjoy the tickle of icy sea water on your toes, and discover what’s been hiding beneath the surface of the sea because it’s now accessible and waiting for you.

In a tidepool moment, the flow of writing is calmer, more introspective, more self-aware, and more conscious of everything around you, unlike writing in a riptide moment, which can be frantic and filled with fear of the unknown. 

Each moment, whether a tidepool moment or a riptide moment, offers us another way of writing, of experiencing the flow of writing, of exploring the world. 

We can’t predict which kind of moment we’ll find waiting for us when we sit down at our desks each morning. 

Riptide or tidepool? 

Let’s head down to the shore to find out.

For more information on writing fast vs writing slow, visit:

https://thewritepractice.com/fast-and-slow/

https://alifeofproductivity.com/the-joys-of-writing-slow/

https://annejanzer.com/scribe-muse/

https://thejohnfox.com/2018/05/a-manifesto-for-slow-writing/

https://www.darcypattison.com/writing-life/should-you-write-fast-or-slow/

On Swimming With The Flow

In her collection of short stories and essays, Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, Lois McMaster Bujold writes about her writing schedule:

I do not have a typical writing schedule because writing is a rare privilege that I can’t always arrange to have happen. I do not write every day. I wish I could...

And how she finds names for her characters:

Names are such a pain. I work on them. I comb the telephone directories. I stare into my refrigerator at brand names and try to do permutations on them. I wander around the house mumbling, “What should I call these people?

And she offers these insights into writing dialogue:

Dialogue is very much like writing a drama or a screenplay. It’s a very fast form of action and very subtle. Tones of voice and odd things that people say can alter the course of how the action flows. It’s tricky. It’s the trickiest bit to write and the most challenging. I’ll make several passes through it before I get everything in the right order, all the good bits that I’ve come up with will be arranged properly to flow one into another.

And this--perhaps the most intriguing--on the way writing is a non-linear process:

Sometimes the characters will come up with some comment or something that I hadn’t planned at all. It just falls out onto the page and there it is. It works much better that way. I love it when it’s coming straight out of the back brain. Then it’s almost always right. The part of my mind that writes is not linear, although it has to go through this linear process and be put down line by line. It’s something really global and complex and chaotic that pops that stuff out of apparently nowhere, but it’s not really nowhere. I think Marvin Minsky is onto something with his mentation model of different actors that go off and process, generate things and present their results to the mainstream every once in a while. He’s a very bright person. People’s heads do not work in a linear fashion. It’s more complicated and interesting and fun than that.

For more info on Lois McMaster Bujold’s work, visit: http://www.dendarii.com/
For info about Marvin Minsky and mentation, visit: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/