Category: The Wandering Writer

Sand, Sun, and Some Writing

I can write pretty much anywhere. What I can’t do is write for long periods of time just anywhere. I get distracted by normal life. So every once in a while I need to get away from my real life to get a stretch of work done, to immerse myself in it completely for hours. Which is why I love residencies. But I can’t always get away for a couple of weeks or a month at a time. So, feeling the need to get a block written, I took my two days off work and headed to a friend’s beach house.

Oh, rough life, you say. The ocean, the sun, the sand, the pool. I admit it – those things are nice. But they don’t stop me from writing. When I know they are out there I just work harder to get something done so I can go out and enjoy them. And that’s what I did. I got there Monday night and as soon as I got my bag in I started to write. And I wrote until 2:00am. Then, I got up and wrote for another few hours before heading for the pool. More work than I had gotten done in weeks at home.

My friend came down on Tuesday afternoon and we hung out. Sure, I knew I could have been writing, but I also knew I had gotten enough work done to avoid the guilt. This morning I knocked out another few pages before hitting the beach and then heading home. Now I have a good start on a section that’s been plaguing me.

Yes, a residency is the best scenario for uninterrupted blocks of time. But if that’s not possible, most people can find a few days strung together and a place to hide away. If it comes with sand and sun, better yet.

Take a Book..Leave a Book

A month ago I went on a carriage ride through Charleston with a friend, and this particular ride took us on a route I rarely travel in the city.  It wasn’t my favorite route – that’s down by the Battery – but it was pretty, and I saw some things I’d never seen before.

The best find really had nothing to do with Charleston and the history here, and everything to do with books.  Tucked down on Logan Street between Queen and Broad, mounted on a post in the front yard of one of the charming homes, was a box with a glass door.  And through the glass you could see books.  From the bottom of the house hung a sign:  “Little Free Library.  Take a book…  Leave a book… Or both.”

Little Free Library on Logan Street

I’d heard about Little Free Libraries, but didn’t know there was one in Charleston.  I really had no idea what an amazing organization it is until I did a little research.  Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that promotes these little “libraries” that house free books for members of local communities.  The idea was conceived by a man as a tribute to his mother, a school teacher and book lover.  He designed a library that looked like a schoolhouse, filled it with books, and mounted it in his front lawn.  Little Free Library was born with that one schoolhouse box. Their website estimates there are now between 5000 and 6000 out there in 36 countries.  They’ve also formed a partnership with Books for Africa to provide Little Free Libraries with containers of books.

You can build your own, or buy one from the organization (though those seem pretty expensive), or even have one custom designed.  Then you register it, and the coordinates are put on a map on the website.  It’s only $35 to register, and you get the sign, a bumper sticker, some bookplates, and occasionally free books from publishers. Best of all, though, you get to share books, and have others share books with you.  Don’t all readers love that?

Check out their website, and see if there is a Little Free Library in your community.  If there is, leave a note to the steward of that library thanking him or her for contributing to the promotion of literature.  Leave some of your favorite books, or if you are a writer, share a few of your own.  And if there’s not a Little Free Library in your community, consider being a steward yourself.  I am.

You Gotta Have Faith

I’m a pretty private person.  Though I blog, I rarely share much of the emotional stuff of my life.  The emotional stuff, well, I dump that on a few lucky friends and in my fiction.  I’ve never understood the need to post every lousy thing that happens on Facebook, to tell every person in the grocery store line my life story.  That’s just not my style.  I’m more of a “put on a smile and get on with things” kind of girl.

So I won’t go into details, but there have been some challenges this past year that, for the first time in my life, made me lose faith.  Faith that there is a point to this writing thing. What do my attempts at storytelling matter when friends die, when a loved one is ill, when life can be so hard?

When you lose faith, when you no longer know why you write, you might as well shut down the laptop and put it in a drawer.  Because when the writing no longer matters to you, then what you write will no longer matter.  For several months I was in that place, spending a little time writing, but spending much more time feeling guilty about not writing.  When I did write I was less than fully engaged.  I had a hard time caring about my characters.  My heart was not really in it.

Then I remembered Carolyn See’s book, Making a Literary Life.  During the writing of that book, her love of twenty-seven years died.  As she put it, “As John got worse, I couldn’t help but think: What’s the point?  The finest mind and soul I’d ever known was going away.  All the writing in the world wasn’t going to change that.”

She made herself write anyway.  And she began to find the joy again.  She likens writing to a marriage, taking it on faith that you are still in love, even when you don’t feel like you are, and working at it every day, even when you’d like to walk away.  So I picked up my laptop, and I locked myself in a room, and I started typing.  Nothing earth-shattering, but the more I typed, the more I remembered how much I am in love with the process, how much I love putting words together.

There will surely be times again when I ask why.  Hopefully, though, when that happens, I’ll remember that I long ago committed myself to my relationship with writing, and I’ll sit down and fall in love all over again.