NotWriting, the blog

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-sixth installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

About five months ago, between mid-December of 2004 and February of 2005, I was flat on my back—literally. To eat, get the mail, or use the bathroom, I had to summon all of my strength and bear the pain. And forget about bending over to feed the cat or pick up something I dropped. For those two months, entropy ruled. (Consequently, the apartment was littered with bottlecaps, pennies, paper clips, and socks.)

I was able to do some writing on a old-'n-crappy IBM ThinkPad (which I commandeered from Merrill Lynch when I left after 9/11), but the lack of mobility left me listless and depressed. So, I took to eating box after box of Edy's Whole Fruit Bars (Grape) and reading all of my favorite PI novels in order of publication, including the following three series: Phillip Marlowe, by Raymond Chandler; Spenser, by Robert Parker; and Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Edy's Fruit Bars: Miracle food for writers?

As I tore through novel after novel, story after story, I made a note to myself how much I enjoyed these books. Why then, I asked myself, was I trying to write for a "literary" audience? I didn't understand why I trying to be accepted by a world of small journals that, for the most part, weren't interested in the kinds of things I do well as a writer: clear storytelling, setting, dialogue, and suspense. Too many of those publications aren't interested in the content of the story; they're interested in the artful sentence. While I can appreciate a nicely crafted sentence, for me it's primarily about the story and keeping the reader reading.

So, my epiphany? Simple——

Stop trying to write the stuff that you think will fit into these markets and instead focus on writing the kind of stuff you would want to read.

Not two days later, I stumbled upon a scene in The Catcher in the Rye in which Holden Caulfield is given advice on how to write a book (this is from memory, so it's loosely paraphrased): "Imagine the book you'd most like to read, and then sit down and shamelessly write it."

I think the key word above is shamelessly. Not giving a @#$! what anybody thinks. Letting yourself say everything you've ever wanted to say. Being willing to let go and trust the process.

And that's precisely what I've been doing steadily since March 11——shamelessly writing the book I'd most like to read. I've just reached the six week mark, and I'm less than 100 pages from the end of the first draft. Every morning when I sit down to work, I haven't allowed doubt to enter into the picture. I make myself have faith that the story will advance, that exactly what I need will present itself at exactly the right time. This be what some folks call synchronicity.

By the time I started the novel, my back was better, and I had a vision of the kind of writing I needed to be doing that was as clear as a Maine night in summer. Cliché as it might sound, God does work in mysterious ways.

And to what do I attribute this breakthrough, this epiphany? My aching back and God.

Oh, and the fruit bars. Gotta have the fruit bars.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:19 AM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-fifth installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

Before my darling wife bought me my two new Macs——an eMac for the office and an iBook for the road——I was starting to really hate computers.

Now don't worry, this isn't an ad for Apple. Rather, I want to sing the virtues of that great anti-technology writing device, the lowly pencil.

Case in point, over the years I’ve done a lot of my real writing——fiction, journal, and articles——in pencil. Yes, pencil. For those of you who've forgotten what a pen-cil looks like, here's one:

Writing in pencil suits me so well that I now keep a minimum of two dozen pencils stacked on my desk like cordwood. To ensure ice-pick sharp points, I go through one Staedtler barrel pencil sharpener every four days (68¢ at Office Depot—they come in translucent red, yellow, and blue). As each sharpener goes dull, I put it into a graveyard of sharpeners that have lost their edge. I’m notorious for pressing down extra-hard on my pencils, so a sharpened tip is good for only three lines or so.

After working with at least a dozen brands of pencils, I’ve discovered that the two best are the Mirado Black Warrior (John Steinbeck’s choice because it was round and therefore easier on the fingers during long writing sessions) and the Staedtler ‘Noris ergosoft’ (an ergonomic, triangular-shaped pencil).

I enjoy writing in pencil for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that when I sit down, I don’t get error messages or interruptions from anti-virus software asking me if I want to allow such-and-such file to download to my computer. There’s nothing stopping you with a pencil——no software conflicts, no tweaking the fonts to get the look on the screen Goldilocks (my shorthand for just right——pass it along), and no temptations to check your email.

Yessir, writing in pencil is what I call elemental——there’s you, the pencil, the paper, and a sharpener. Light is also helpful, so you can throw that in there. Bottom line: there’s no fancy-pants technology bullshit clogging everything up. It’s about doing the writing, not about screwing with the technology.

In my opinion, we’ve allowed technology to get away from us. Once upon a time, computers and all of their offspring were tools designed to help us do whatever work needed to be done. In the case of writing, the idea was that we writers could write more material faster using a word processor. Again, the idea was that the tools would help us, but did they? It seems to me that we writers spend a substantial amount of our time playing with or fighting with the tools themselves. To wit:

“Hmm, I wonder what this would look like in Arial?”

“Should I bold that or not?”

“Let’s check the word count again…”

“Damn it, why won’t this indent?”

“I’ve got it, I'll put this chapter in column format so I can see what it will look like when it’s published as a paperback! That way, I’ll know whether it looks right or not…”

“If that f-cking wizard shows his face one more time, I’m going to smash the screen with a hammer!”

You get the idea. Distracting. Sophistimicated.

With the pencil, there’s none of that. Oh, I suppose you could drive yourself nuts in the quest for the sharpest pencil on earth, but that’s about as bad as the distractions get.

Besides reducing distractions, writing with a pencil physically connects the writer with the page. If you’re a decent typist, it’s nearly impossible to hand-write as fast as you would type, so working with a pencil forces you to slow down and frame your thoughts more carefully.

So, given the superiority of the pencil, what should you do? Why, throw out your computer, of course. Pencils are cleaner, happier, and in the hands of non-insane people, a lot safer.

If you want learn more about pencils, here's a nice encyclopedia article on them. Enjoy.

And thanks for making NotWriting your choice for procrastinatey goodness. Have a nice day.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 05:18 AM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-fourth installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

When ESPN came out with their station ESPN Classic a few years ago, I was in heaven. Finally I could see replays of the old Ali-Frazier fights, Joe Namath's "guaranteed" win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, and, of course, Carlton Fisk's famous homerun in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

So, in the spirit of ESPN Classic, I am proud to offer you NotWriting Classic——the 32 pre-blog entries that started it all, including

* The Adventures of HELPERMAN
* What-If: Journeys Deep Within One Writer's Mind
* The Hershey's® Wrapper Scandal
* The Trouble with Yankees Fans
* A Procrastination Timeline: A Full Day of Nothin'

* Harassing Mayor Bloomberg

and much more!

Visit NotWriting Classic today!

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 03:16 AM | Permalink

Hello, and welcome to the thirty-third installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.

Or should I say a weblog or blog on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing?

Whatever. The key is, one of my best friends, Jason Sadofsky, gently helped me to see the writing on the wall——by hurling a brick through my living room window with a note attached to it. In the note, he explained that doing my notwriting entries as a "blog" would (a) drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to produce them and (b) get me read by more people. Oh, he also set it up for FREE, so there's that. Thanks again, Jay. And my five billion readers thank you, too.

NotWriting began two and a half years ago when I asked a seemingly innocent question: "What would happen if a writer, unable to write, got the idea to write about the things he does when he really should be writing?"

Since then, I've put up 32 answers to that question——some serious, some humorous, some plain ridiculous. I've braved the quagmires of writer's block and procrastination and have witnessed the phenomenal lengths a writer's mind (and sometimes his body) will go to just to avoid writing.

Hopefully with this new toy——er, I mean tool——I'll be able to put up even more scintillating commentary more often.

But, like my grandfather used to say when I was reciting my Christmas list: Don't count on it.

Hope to see y'all around.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:14 AM | Permalink