Where Do You Write?

Where do you find you are most creative? What is your writing environment? Is it tidy? Organized? Exotic? Surrounded by books? Laptop? PC? Netbook? When were you the most productive and why? What motivates you the most to write? And anything else you'd like to share about your writing process.

I write in my head 24/7. It's not tidy, nor organized. My stories always start with a question...why? what if?

Remember the first question you asked as a kid..."Why is the sky blue?" Somehow my brain locked onto the need to ask questions.

Naked in West Upton started when I had to drive 150 miles to work, and back six days a week. One section of the drive was through a marsh area...a Sanctuary for birds. Before the Sanctuary I had to pass through a small town, home to the homeless. One day passing through the Sanctuary my brain asked the question, "Why do they build Sanctuaries for birds, and not humans? (homeless.)

The story started with a character working in an office overlooking the Sanctuary. My character, un-happy with life, decides to strip, and live in the Sanctuary.

After a year of giving my pea brain a free run, the story moved from the marsh to West Upton Ma, three thousand miles away. West Upton is where I was born, and raised. The people I knew as a boy became my characters.

All my stories start with a question. All my characters are real people. I always spend 12-18 months thinking about a story before I write...I do make notes...many knots. If I don't use a note, I save it for other stories. When I’m writing I focus on everything. I watch how people walk. How they put food in their mouth as their eating. If I’m kissing a women, I take note how she moves her lips…I may even ask her, “Do that thing again with your mouth.” I’m very serious about writing. I want to give myself the best chance I can at being a good writer.

My head is where I write...it is always with me. I can write where ever I am, at any time...24/7.

Thanks for the very interesting response. I like the question about sanctuaries for animals and not people....

One more time:





Right now, there are pictures of the rock and the hill country scattered around, along with highlighted hard copies of my history research. Yes, the desk area stays organized, but don't ask me about the rest of the house during writing mode, which I am heavily in to at the moment.

Ann

How beautiful, Ann.



It is inspiring.

I had a lovely office. My son came to live with me for almost two years. I made him an apartment on the closed in porch, gutting my office to make him one on the porch. I moved my writing stuff into my wall unit in my bedroom. That includes a wireless keyboard and 22 inch screen. It also includes my television.

I sit in a recliner chair with the keyboard in my lap and my research spread around. when I stop writing, I put the "stuff" back in the wall unit and shut the doors - it disappears as though non-existent.

I have had to force myself to write since making those changes. Sometimes I take my netbook to a bookstore or coffee bar just for something different.

Ann -where's the computer?

DK - I detect some resentment there. lol

I write in my home office. What inspires me most is a contract and a deadline. I can't seem to do much without that.

If I remember correctly, Ann's computer is in the den.

My PC is in my den - which is really a home office. I keep my laptop in the top right-hand drawer of the desk in my bedroom. I still think better in pencil, especially on those green and gold journals you can see in the pictures. they have a high quality ecru paper that the pencil slips over effortlessly, and is easy on my eyes.

But I transfer to the laptop frequently because it is much easier to revise and organize there; I upload the laptop files to Google docs, and download them to the PC. The work of writing goes on at the PC, which is in the office.

I feel a sharp distinction between the art of writing and the craft. They are both equally important, I think, but very different processes. It helps me to keep them separate.

(And the nook in my bedroom is at the back of the house, near where I sleep, while the office/den is in the front, where the sun comes up, and where I can focus on the tasks at hand.)

Ann

Change is always a challenge. I find I'm not as adaptable as I was in the past. Even when I choose the change, the transition takes longer. I am stimulated by change however.

I wrote Ghost Orchid on my laptop in the middle of my bedroom floor, sitting on the floor. I was in a yoga frame of mind then. I was also surrounded with everything I needed and often on the phone with my muse who would reflect back the ideas that were missing pieces. I'm still doing some writing on the floor;but I no longer have a laptop. I have the heinous netbook that does not have Microsoft Word.

The rigging sang on a broad reach. The sea and sky on a misty
morning were without edges as the rising sun sprinkled diamonds on the
dew swept bright work and gold on the white caps. Salty rivulets raced
across the teak decks. Speed was an illusion. The wind whistled
through the rigging and the canvas, the rolling white caps left a wake
that unraveled and recreated itself. Seven knots was the top speed; it
felt like the Indie 500 as the sea raced away. I often slipped away
below deck as my shift ended, the salt spray washing the ports as the
sun penetrated the bowels of the ship. Curled up on the captain's bunk
with my funky portable computer, I was lost to all but the wake's
rumbling against the gunnels and the occasional "thump" as a higher than
expected wave disrupted the smooth sail. I was the real disrupter.
With agony, I was forced to turn on the noisy, diesel generator to make
drinking water, charge the batteries, and charge the two-hour battery on
my computer. With relief, I returned to paradise when I returned the
ship to its wind and water and stopped the noisy intruder.
Inspiration was all around me, from the memories that haunted me
to the foreign sights and sounds of every new day of blue water sailing
that was never the same as the day before and gave no promise about the
tomorrows. My senses were at constant attention, even in my womblike
cabin. It felt like that, the bowels of that 70' sailboat, tucked in
the aft cabin with only the lazarette between me and an unforgiving
sea. The teak shelves, with their books locked in place, shouted the
names of great books and revered authors from every nook and cranny of
the cabin, even though they were exchanged in total at the next foreign
ports of call with other ships at sea. I read books and I wrote on my
computer for three grand years of blue water sailing from Fort
Lauderdale to Venezuela to St. Thomas, stopping at every island along
the way in gratitude in comparison to up to 36 hours with no land
sighted, days and nights the same, on open passage crossings.

No other writing environment has ever compared, not the writers'
retreats or the camps or the beach or the swamp or the mountains or any
other wonderful and special place where I expected the creative juice
to flow. I've never captured that agony and ecstasy that only danger
and delight brings at any other location. When all the senses are in
play just to stay alive, the need to create, innovate and think takes
this human, organic covering to the soul to new depths of
introspection. From those depths, comes an author. From terror and
joy, ecstasy and pain, thrills and days of calm, ostentatious plenty and
near-starvation, come the words of an author, the creation of
characters, the heart and soul of a story. The imagination plays tricks
on a sailing vessel. The night sky is black as pitch and ghosts dance
across the deck on a night watch. Phosphorescence dances on the waves
with diamonds jumping from the wake like fish. Ghost ships cross the
bow, close enough to crash and sink us all. Lights flash in the
distance where maps indicate no shipping lanes or markers.

A beacon of light from a mountain shining the way to a lost
harbor that ends a frightening night in a sea of squalls, sheet
lightning and booming thunder so loud it seems to split the hull in half
is the most beautiful light in the world. Fresh water from a rain
storm is the sweetest taste on earth after sludgy water, treated with
bleach and boiled, the last few cupfuls until the sky opened and water
poured sweet into the dodger. All of these experiences were captured in
my thoughts as I sent my fingers racing across the keyboard, pulling
the floppy disks in and out of a computer without a memory. Sometimes
the stories were about the characters met along the way; others about
something as simple as reading a book in the full light of the moon on
deck or scribbling a thought in the margin.

My office which used to be our daughter's room.

My husband has our son's room for his office.

Right now the grandkids are in our offices,

alj wrote:

I feel a sharp distinction between the art of writing and the craft. They are both equally important, I think, but very different processes. It helps me to keep them separate Ann

I've nver heard that before. Why do you want to keep them seperate?

DK: you sure miss sailing, don't you?

lyntx: I make the same distinction Ann does. It's inspiration and perspiration. For me, inspiration happens away from the desk. I typically figure out how I'm going to approach a subject, or how to improve what I've got, while jogging at the gym or taking a walk. Sitting at the desk -perspiration- is where the technical work of getting it on paper happens.

I loved sailing, too, DK, though I didn't get to enjoy it as often or for as long as you did.
lyntx, it's like LC said - inspiration and perspiration are too different animals.

For me, the inspiration comes better when I'm freewriting - letting the pencil do the work. I just let go and let it flow across the page. I am trying to reach the point where I can free-type, but I'm not there yet Old habits die hard, I guess.

I just said that. I mean I just wrote that. Or just typed what I'd been writing. I had reached a stopping point and decided to check in here.

This is what I wrote:

Quote :

The sun
was slowly rising from behind the limestone and oak cabin. Jake Holder sat on
the veranda that ran across the front of the double pen structure, sipping a
cup of coffee. A wide dog-trot opening
ran down the middle of the two pens, so that each served as a separate dwelling
place, even though the cabin had only one roof.
The veranda held several straight-baked chairs and a small, low
table. There was a pot of steaming
coffee on the table, and an extra cup.


Jake and
his friend and business partner, Daniel Redstone, had built the cabin so that
the veranda faced southwest, toward a giant rise of pink granite that sprawled
across the landscape, about five miles southeast of the hill where they had
built the house. Jake leaned his chair against the wall of the cabin and took
in a deep breath, filling his nostrils with the aroma of dried grass and horse
smells mixed with that of the coffee in his cup. He watched as the sun lit up the distant
granite rock, causig it to shimmer and glow against the dawn sky. He smiled a smile of deep satisfaction as he
thought how a man’s life couldn’t get any better than this.


Daniel
had assured him that the mustang herds ran thick through these hills, if one
knew where to look, and it had been so.
The two of them would come upon a herd, cull out a manageable string,
and drive them back to this ranch where they would tame them before selling
them in towns that ranged from San Antonio and New Braunfels to Austin, with
more new towns opening up all the time as new settlers arrived daily,
especially now that Texas was a part of the United States. The horses brought the two men a comfortable
enough income that Jake would soon have a large enough stake to buy his own
section of land, hopefully just west of Daniel’s property, so that they could
expand and maybe start running some cattle as well as these horses.


Daniel
stepped through the door of his half of the cabin, still pulling a loose
gingham shirt over his leggings, and, sleepy-eyed, ran his hands through his long
brown hair. “I smell coffee.”


“On the
table.”


Daniel
stumbled over to the table and groggily poured a cup.


“For a
Comanche, you sure wake up slow.”





“Before
I knew about my father and his people, I grew up in a townhouse in the Vieux
Carre, in New Orleans,”
he reminded his friend. “And where did
you grow up, before you came to Texas
and became a Ranger?”


“Did we
grow up?”


Daniel
chortled.


“You
know where: a farm in Kentucky.”


“Yeah,
well,” Daniel’s voice seemed clearer after a couple of sips of Jake’s strong
brew, “some habits die hard.”

Ann

Well yeah, LC,I plan my stories away from the desk or kitchen table. I htink abut them when I'm feeding the baby or rocking her to sleep or in the stories I tell when tucking my preschooler in bed. And sure its harder to put them on paper, I'm studying grammer books and trying to get better all the time. So I guess I do the same, just never thought of it that way.

I miss the sailing experience that my memory has fashioned as my belief about what the sailing was like. I keep grounded by my favorite quote from myself that sailing was 95% agony and 5% ecstasy - and the 5% ecstasy was worth it.

lyntx wrote:

Well yeah, LC,I plan my stories away from the desk or kitchen table. I htink abut them when I'm feeding the baby or rocking her to sleep or in the stories I tell when tucking my preschooler in bed. And sure its harder to put them on paper, I'm studying grammer books and trying to get better all the time. So I guess I do the same, just never thought of it that way.

You're on the right track, lyntx.

Don't worry about the spelling and grammar while you are first getting your words on paper. They can wait until the creating is done. Telling a good story comes first.

Mechanics and that stuff can be learned, as you are finding out, I'm sure. Storytelling is a gift. You have that gift, or you wouldn't be here. Keep it up.

Ann