Writing like Water
My husband asked me last week, “how come you can write anyplace except at your desk?”
Kind of true. I brainstorm at my desk. I doodle. Dash off lines that sound brilliant. Scribble all around the images I’m conjuring up. Then I get good and overwhelmed, absolutely perplexed about what to do next, and I get up for coffee, email, to walk the dog – or – when I know I’m good and stuck, if I’m smart that day, just head on out to the YMCA for a swim.
My characters start to talk and my stories open up about half a mile in when my mind and body both know that I know I’m good and stuck for twenty more minutes of my 40 minute commitment to the water. When there’s not a piece or paper nor pencil in sight, my characters chatter and chant, they banter and battle, they interact, meet each other, and tease me. Last week I almost asked the lifeguard if she had a pen and pencil, alternately I thought to get out, go check in my locker for paper and pencil of my own. But the threshold to get to the pool and stay in is so much higher for me than pen and pencil that I just tried my tricks to recall and recapture the sequence and dialogue running its own movie in my mind.
The first of my magic memory tricks is to harness the idea and link it to a finger, just like I’m counting on my fingers, one trigger for each finger. I can also I just keep swimming, paying attention to what stroke I’m doing – much like enticing back a dream by going back to the body position I was in while dreaming, I find that coaxing a story or scene back needs to be grounded to something – the ceiling, the backstroke, the lifeguard’s blue flip flops . . .
Then I go straight home, grab whatever yellow pad or composition book or photocopy paper (preferably 11×17) is nearby, and get down what I can, trying to not sound so serious that the play will shy away.
Tough to get it all on paper, isn’t it?
Tags: desk doodle on writing swimming
January 29th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
It’s so interesting how swimming makes your ideas flow (sorry about the pun). I’ve found the shower is sometimes a useful tool for that purpose. Curious. Why does water have this magic power?