To write: perchance to edit: ay, there’s the rub; for in editing to death, what epiphanies may come…
Okay, so I’m not the Bard. What I am, is sitting in a hotel room editing the night before I give a workshop on research.
Maybe what I should be doing is reviewing critique roundtable submissions for Gold? Or typing up my notes from the Writer’s Police Academy? Or sleeping, after a whirlwind 10 days driving to Wisconsin and back? What are my priorities?
In the end, edits won. At least until I started this blog. I was going to write about how amazing and informative a conference like the Writer’s Police Academy can be – but Chris Goff beat me to it.
Instead, I decided to share some of my writing practices and pet peeves. Now, I don’t claim these are “best practices”, and probably not even really good ones, but they’re mine.
- I write best under pressure, even if it’s made up pressure because if I have all the time in the world I can find something else to do in a heartbeat
- I like to write when I’m alone, but always turn on a movie I’ve seen at least three times for background noise
- I write in a recliner or on a bed with my laptop, never in a proper chair at a desk
- I can write eight hours in a stretch if I’m in the zone, which generally results in ordering pizza for dinner to prevent divorce
- I can tell when I’m not in the zone because I’ll have started the laundry, done the dishes, and wandered outside to pull weeds
- I like to have junk food handy when writing – Dark Chocolate Kisses being my favs, and a gin and tonic is a close second, but not until at least….um, 5 o’clock?
- When it’s cold I have a pair of plush Tigger slippers I wear when I’m writing, and my granddaughter is convinced I have tigers living under my bed in the summer
- I hate texting because my kids don’t want to read more than 3 words from me and think punctuation is a waste of time
Ok, so some of this doesn’t have anything to do with writing, but it kept me from having to edit for a while (bad Bard, bad, bad!)
What are your writing-related practices? What puts you in your writer’s groove (or takes you out)?
Thanks for the laugh with my coffee, Terri! My fail-safe is to (1) grab my phone, (2) set it for an hour and (3) get off the internet and BICHOK.
That damn butt in chair, hands on keys is a killer. I don’t get on the internet much unless I’m doing research, it’s all the other distractions that get me, especially in the summer (ahh, another excuse for not writing).
Hi Terri! I must have absolute silence when I write, no music and no drummer boy practicing in his garage next door. I need to learn to tolerate background noise better.
That’s the reason I have to have seen the movie several times. It just becomes white noise that cancels out other things going on around me. I have tried working in complete silence, but unless I want to try earphones (which I couldn’t stand) there is no such thing as absolute silence in my world.