Exactly a week ago I was sleeping off the drunken effects of a 24-hour sit in Arts Marathon where together with anywhere from two to eight writers I spent a solid day devoted to the creation of story. Not that the first 18 hours were so different than many days spent here at home where the laptop overheats out of sheer use and never seeing the darkness of a closed lid.
What I feared most in this endeavor was the camaraderie, the physical bodies in the writing room as well as the visual artists dancing by and the entertainment of live and boom-boxed sound. I am a solitary soul, even more so in my writing time. It was amazingly satisfying to see, however, that stories came through regardless of what was going on around me. That sentences could hang while I listened to someone else talking, and then miraculously continue on their way. That the only time I was bothered by the living beings around me or found the necessity and ability to completely shut out the environment was when I was coding into hypertext and making bits and changes that applied to some but not all of the templates. These things were carried in my head and distractions did take a minor toll on efficiency.
But the surprise was there. Looking back now I can reason the changes in my writing style. First, I’ve written so much in the past couple years that I find myself writing while watching television. I can do both without losing either story line. Also, the 100 Days project of last summer, and the slew of new stories I’ve written since December to meet deadlines and challenges have taught me the way to pick up on an idea and run with it. This was nearly impossible back in the days of Creative Writing Class and the five-minute exhortation to produce based on a simple premise. “No!” I used to cry; “Can’t do it! I don’t work that way!” I moaned with self-pity. I felt that the muse must find me, must strike with the opening line and from thence I could grow a story. I also needed complete silence, preferably a room empty of people completely.
It’s nice to have matured in both how I write as well as how I write. It’s a necessary thing to accomplish for the serious writer.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology