Back 'ta Woik

Last week threw me for a loop, and I didn’t write much. It began with my mother-in-law visiting (a good thing), stress at work (a bad thing), and then went into my birthday (good), and on my birthday I found out my wife is pregnant with twins (doubly good!). I’ll try to adhere to Elmore Leonard’s dictum that exclamation points should be avoided, but that last bit is an unavoidable target for a slash and a dot.

I don’t write for a living (yet… someday…) but I try to write everyday. I’m an adherent to the idea driven by Stephen King and others that writing and reading should be regular daily occurrences. I try, but last week I just didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have it in me. A pathetic excuse, but a reason as well. Last night, however, I got down to business, and had an explosion of productivity that I’m hoping to match tonight. I’m taking a small breather from the novel, just until I finish a short story that I started as a writing exercise and have since continued on towards an exciting finish line I didn’t anticipate when I first got down in front of the typewriter.

One thing I changed in my habit was where I write, which I have found to be very helpful. Before, I had been writing in the mud room of our house, not wanting to disturb the wife and kiddo, but it was a rather depressing place to write, full of junk we have yet to sort, right next to the washer and dryer, with the powerful odor of Tide and Bounce coating the insides of my nostrils. Biting insects are able to get in there somehow, possibly through the small space between the door to the garage and the floor, and I’d finish my night’s writing with several red pea-sized lumps on my hands and neck from the buggers I missed killing.

I wrote last night in the living room on our green striped couch that the cats are slowly destroying the corner of, and I finished at midnight with three solid pages from the typewriter. When typed out and formatted properly (one inch margins, 12 point Courier font) the three typewritten pages come out to roughly nine manuscript pages. I’m always tempted to obsess over what is the right or wrong way to format a manuscript, but it’s a distraction, a type of procrastination that feels like you’re doing something, but you’re not. I just followed instructions and watch my tightly typed pages become manuscript pages of 250 to 300 words each, with lots of extra breathing room.

Tonight I’m going back to the living room, with the typewriter on the coffee table that looks like the crate from Creepshow, and finishing the story. I hope to finish in time to spend a little extra time on the couch, finally finishing John Irving’s Setting Free The Bears.