I’ve decided that today will be the day I start working on my new novel. The idea’s been there for quite a while, and I’ve been letting the characters percolate in my head for the past few weeks. They’re nearly ready to come out, I suppose, but I’ve been working so long on The Scent of Rain that I don’t quite remember how to begin to extricate them.
I think it normally involves a pot of coffee and a pen. Onward.
I enjoy writing longhand. If I get stuck in my prose and everything seems stale, I can often revitalize myself by taking out my 40-cent spiral notebook and letting the words flow randomly through my cheap ballpoint until they start to make sense. Often, they make a much more beautiful, poetic sense than when I’m tap-tapping at the keyboard.
Writing and the more material arts have a lot in common to me. When I’m designing a dress, I first imagine the drape of it over my body, the cut of the neck, how it will flare just so at the hips. I sketch it out. Then (often after an enormous time searching) I find the perfect fabric. The fabric often changes and reforms the design based on its own unique qualities (which I never could have imagined when I was just thinking up a dress pattern).
Really, the whole process is more physical than intellectual–I hold the fabric up to my body, cut it, pin it, and hold it again. (Incidentally, I really need a dress form. All this holding dress pieces up to myself and trying to pin them on while I’m standing in front of a mirror is frankly ridiculous. Any sponsors?)
What does this have to do with writing? Well, at this point, my novel exists only in my mind, and in the innards of this old Macbook (and of course in several backed-up electronic forms). I’ve created the material, and tomorrow morning I’m going to use a small forest of paper to print it out so that I can begin to shape and form it into the novel it will eventually be.
In my excitement to begin the editing process I’ve already gotten all my colored pens, sticky notes, highlighters, scissors and tape ready. Tomorrow morning, in Rob’s grandma’s old orange recliner, I will create.