writing spaces

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In the Vastness of Memory

February 27, 2013 in feelings, honesty, memory, mushy things, reflections, social media, Twitter, writing spaces | 31 comments

I was finishing up work yesterday evening when I caught sight of the sunset through our balcony. It was breathtaking—a swirl of deep, burning orange fading into a nearly indigo purple. I grabbed my phone and tried to take a picture when an odd thing happened.

Seeing the sky through the tiny lens of my smartphone did it no justice. As the camera struggled to focus, it created an illusion of distance, making the sunset appear shrunken, both in beauty and in scope. I thought, of course. How foolish of me. I put away the phone and watched the sun disappear over the horizon.

I think I’d meant to share it. Maybe post it on Instagram or Facebook. It was, after all, just me and my dogs on the balcony, but shouldn’t that be enough? We’ve gotten so used to sharing the most beautiful moments of our lives (or at least, the most photogenic moments) as if broadcasting them to our social networks somehow validates them. As if it’s proof that we exist, that we live this life, somewhere in this alternate online dimension. Sometimes I wonder who we’re trying so hard to prove it to.

I know it’s an odd thing to express on a blog of all things. It might even seem hypocritical. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with social networking lately. I love the people it’s helped me connect to. I hate the co-dependency that constantly being plugged in has fostered. Please don’t get me wrong: That compulsion, that need to check for updates multiple times a day or else feel like I’m missing out on something…that has nothing to do with you or the many friends I’ve met online. It has everything to do with repeated habits that become behaviors that become hard to break when we’re so constantly and instantly gratified with a timeline of tidbits and pictures and articles that is endlessly being refreshed.

I’m not saying let’s all be done with it. I’m just saying I want the control back. I want to share the occasional moment and be at peace with keeping some for myself, to revel in and enjoy as they happen with the people I love so much in my life.

And I have a feeling a lot of us do, too. If it’s not too late to make a new year’s resolution, or a resolution for all my years to come, here it is:

When I look back at my life I want to know I didn’t spend it trying to capture the sky in something as small as a smartphone but rather in the vastness of memory.

photo by: kevin dooley

Why Every Writer Needs a Dark, Safe Place

April 9, 2012 in writing, writing advice, writing spaces | 33 comments

For the past week or so, this has been my view when I sit down to write:

That image is not an error. I have literally been writing in the dark, with my favorite bandana as a blindfold and my computer on my lap. Thank goodness I learned how to type without looking when I was eight, or my exercise in getting the romance back into my writing would have failed miserably.

But I’m so happy to tell you it’s really worked. It’s liberating, actually, to not have to see the words as they appear on the screen, and to know that I can’t delete more than a few keys because otherwise I’d lose my train of thought. When I’m writing in the dark, there are no distractions—I can’t let my gaze wander away from my computer to my bookshelf or the park outside, or to my dogs playing tug-of-war. I can’t remove my fingers from the keyboard unless I want to struggle to find my place again. By forcing myself to see nothing, the images in my mind become clearer, and I worry less about how they look on the screen and more about just jotting them down. I’ve become kind of addicted to this game of typing for what seems like a short amount of time, only to realize I have several pages’ worth of writing when I remove the blindfold. Of course, then it’s time to edit. That’s a job done with eyes wide open.

Around this time last year, I read a post by Dani Shapiro called On Writing in the Dark. Her darkness was a figurative place, but it resonated with me so much that ever since I’ve always wanted to get back there. In the post she laments not having stayed in the dark longer. Talking about her unpublished writing students, she writes: “In the dark, they are free to grow, blooming like midnight plants. Even though it’s not always comfortable, that darkness is the best possible place a writer can live. There are no expectations, no definitions.”

But stepping “out of the dark” doesn’t just apply to published writers anymore; it applies to aspiring authors wanting to build their online platforms, writers who monitor Twitter and blogs to learn more about craft and the publishing industry. Eventually we realize that all this information needs to be managed properly or else our world gets too noisy. We need to be able to step away sometimes, lower the volume, turn off the lights, and find a quiet place with our thoughts.

For me, for now, I feel like I’ve finally found that place. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so literal.

Have you ever tried writing in the dark? What do you do when you need to clear your mind and focus on the writing?

A Call for More Romance in This Love Affair

March 22, 2012 in feelings, fiction, inspiration, mushy things, poetry, writing, writing spaces | 21 comments

bookheartWhen I was a teenager I had a favorite writing spot. We had (by Miami standards, anyways) a pretty big backyard, with a canal running through it, and before you stepped onto the grass you’d pass under a ceramic-tiled gazebo, where there hung an orange hammock we’d bought years ago on the Mexican border. At night, if I held still long enough for the motion sensitive lights to shut off, I’d be surrounded by darkness. The only light was the one I switched on overhead as I sat on the hammock and wrote.

I loved that spot because of how isolated it felt, as if I’d snuck away to spend time with my thoughts and words. It was unusually quiet—most nights all you’d hear was the rustling of palm tree leaves getting pushed around by the wind. I remember writing about how the wind hugged me with its cool arms (I was a teenager, remember?) and closing my eyes to take it all in.

Looking back, it was all very dramatic and romantic, even slightly cheesy, judging by the poems I wrote. But I miss it. Not just the hammock and the backyard, but the seduction and excitement. If writing is a lifelong love, then this was my infatuation phase, when I couldn’t get enough of words on paper, and I wrote without fear or insecurity because I was too caught up in wanting it.

Is my love affair with writing quite as steamy more than ten years later? Now that I get to write all day every day, for both work and fiction, I don’t doubt that the love is there…but I want the romance back. It’s easy to lose that part when you’re told that writing is all discipline, that it means doing it even when you don’t want to, that it’s revising and rewriting and scrutinizing every last sentence. I don’t want to just make time for fiction in my life; I want to steal small moments with it, sneak off to a dark corner and get a few words in to hold me over for the next time. I want to feel stupid, and silly, and overly-sentimental about it (this post is a good start). I want writing to make me feel young and foolish again.

But romance isn’t just a switch we can flip. So here’s what I plan to do, and I hope you’ll join me if you’re looking to reignite that spark, too.

1. Read more poetry, preferably aloud. It’s more sensual this way; you can feel the words forming on your tongue and then release.

2. Don’t leave your house without either a book or a notepad. Next time you’re standing in line somewhere and want to check your phone for email or Twitter, don’t. Love means making time and making time means prioritizing. Show your love in even the tiniest moments.

3.  Make a date out of it. Go someplace romantic with just you and some pen and paper. Sit alone in a crowded cafe or under a tree on a blanket and spend quality time with your thoughts.

4. Experiment. Rewrite a scene from a new POV. Write on your computer, blindfolded. Indulge all the senses—taste what your characters can smell and listen to what they’re touching.

5. Stay in the moment. Even if it’s just five minutes. Always remember that you’re lucky to be in this relationship.

Did I miss any? Add your own tips in the comments.

xoxo…

Creative Commons License photo credit: wewiorka_wagner

 

The Necessity of Silence

December 7, 2011 in feelings, honesty, journals, writing, writing spaces | 29 comments

writing in the journalToday’s a special day for me reasons I won’t mention here. I thought about blogging about it, then realized I’m still working through it in my mind, figuring how (or if) I feel about it. Most likely I’ll work through it by writing it down.

When I do figure this out, it’s probably something I’ll never share. I say this not to be vague or cryptic, or purposefully mysterious, but just to remind us that there are parts of us it’s okay not to share.

Writing is always described as such a solitary act. But writers dream of being published and having their voices heard. We have blogs and Twitter accounts, which allow every thought to be broadcast for public consumption (or public indifference).

And while there’s something very beautiful in that because it helps us build a community, I can’t imagine sharing every last piece of me. I need something that remains my own, a quiet place I can go to at the end of the day and be completely alone.

I was looking through old journals a few days ago and it occurred to me that I have years and years of writing that no one will ever read. It made me sad not because it’s a waste, but because for the most part I stopped writing in those journals over the last few years. In the last few years, my life and my writing shifted. I started working as a full-time freelance writer, I started my first novel, I started focusing on establishing an online presence. Everything I wrote became something others would read. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s not like my writing’s suffered because it suddenly had an audience.

But I will say that yesterday, as I was driving around and thinking about what today marked, I realized I wanted to write about it in a journal. I realized I needed to write about it not so that someone might read it, but simply because I had to get it out for myself. It was the oddest sensation. It was like remembering I had a safe place I’d totally neglected, and now that I knew it was still there I ached for it.

I wondered how many of us forget this the deeper we delve into our online existences. How many of us obsess over what the next blog post will be about, what word count we’re at in our WIP so we can share it with our buddies, but then forget to nurture the part of us that made us writers in the first place, back when we scribbled thoughts (any thought) just for the sake of discovering them.

This isn’t a post about how, to do our best writing, we need to write for ourselves and without an audience in mind. It’s just a post about me realizing that I need to write for myself again, period. Not so that the writing will be better. Not so that one day it’ll be read by others. This isn’t about craft or what a story needs.

It’s simply about what I need. I need to write things that I keep to myself. And I suspect a lot of us need that, too.

Creative Commons License photo credit: redcargurl

Stepping Outside the Comfort Zone for Better Writing

March 30, 2011 in inspiration, routines, writing, writing spaces | No comments

We writers have all different types of comfort zones.

Maybe there are certain themes we tend to stick to when we’re writing, or certain POVs that just feel more natural. We might have routines that keep us writing consistently—early hours, late at night, or in the afternoons before the house gets loud.

But today I’m talking about a more literal comfort zone: where we write. Thanks to Brandi-Ann Uyemura (aka The Inspiring Bee) I found this delicious feature on The Guardian called Writers’ Rooms. They post “portraits of the spaces where authors create;” it’s basically the equivalent of a Crate & Barrel catalogue for word nerds. I could probably spend an entire afternoon browsing the different rooms, daydreaming of the perfect wall-to-wall bookshelf, mountain/beach view, and oak desk for my dream office.

In the meantime, I can’t complain about the space I have now. It’s evolved from a tiny dining table & laptop combo in my very first apartment to a corner desk in my living room to an actual room dedicated to creating. This is my office today:

My writing desk is filled with comfort objects: pictures of loved ones, a tiny koala from my childhood, books that remind me what great writing's all about.

 

On the other side of the room, the one behind the camera, is my husband’s drafting table and computer. We share creative spaces, so on any given day when I’m working on my book, he’s behind me sketching characters for his animations or choosing color palettes for his latest project. It’s more than an office; it’s an art room (occasionally filled with artistic frustrations, but mostly ::cough, cough:: inspiration).

This is where I write 95% of the time. Yesterday was one of those days that fell into the remaining 5%, so I stepped out of my comfort zone and headed to the local library. They have these quiet study rooms with nothing more than a desk, a power outlet, and two chairs. I just needed to clear my head and get a change of scenery, and this tiny room, with its white, white walls, was everything I needed to get over the blankness of the page.

Where do you write? Where do you go when you need to step outside of your comfort zone?

 

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