In Answer to a Question

"Tell me how you work," a rediscovered friend wrote me recently. It's an interesting question that I've been pondering how to respond to ever since.

I've gone back to my novel after months of hiatus so I think I should start with why I don't work.

I was, as I've said too often, depressed. I was also obsessing about Christmas, and getting Christmas as packed up as possible because I thought I would be getting revision instructions from my editors in the first week of December, then in the first week of January. In between scouring the recycling for shipping boxes, I could have been working on my novel but what was the point? I would have to drop it in God knew what state in order to turn my attention to rewriting Angry Fat Girls.

That didn't happen. I'm expecting revisions in the middle of this month.

As I've also said too often of late, I feel I don't deserve to write -- even that I can't write -- can't think straight, don't have the energy -- when I'm into the food.

& I was into the food.

If you've been reading my blog, you may note a trend in my life to get over myself, to put aside the shit that blocks me like ideas about food, weight, worthiness, competition, envy -- even deadlines like Christmas or revising AFG. I'm trying not to exclude myself from the world because of these things. So the energy & desire to write has been mounting with my readiness to take part in life.

But then there was the chapter itself that I had to start, one in which schizophrenia plays a major part. I felt, despite much research, humbled by this incredibly horrible disease. How could I bring it to life? I went back & reread one of the bibles on the disease & yet another memoir. There were hints of it in the first chapter & I may have tinkered with them early after I got back from Arizona, seizing them as opportunities to show the early symptoms. I reread the chapters from the Jane Austen novel I'm stealing from. I divided my chapter notes into two separate documents, one about Jane Austen and one about schizophrenia. I tried to reduce each to one page or to at least reduce the redundancies and unnecessary stuff.

One day last week I was either sitting on my bed or in bed & I heard something. I couldn't place the fleeting sound but it my brain conjured the ends of a paper clip being rubbed together, a teeny metallic voice.

That was the moment I knew I could start working on the chapter that had dangled for so many months.

I haven't used that sound/image. It was just a moment in which my gut told me I "got" the illness enough to write about it.

On Saturday, January 31st, I opened the document, re-read the three paragraphs I'd written, twiddled a bit and dove in.

I usually overwrite & always encouraged my clients not to worry about overwriting. It's easier to cut than it is to add, unless you have a very patient and savvy editor. (A blessing on your head, Becky Cole.) I also always coached the "show, don't tell" adage of writing, one that was driven home in revising Passing for Thin. I'm better at it now & I rely on dialogue to a good extent. This is a first person, present tense novel -- the beginner's cheap way out -- so I don't need to worry a lot about what other characters are thinking or even doing. Cheesy but easy.

So how do I actually work?

First there is the matter of the desk, which I like to have reasonably organized & reasonably dedicated to the task at hand. In the photo above, which I can't drag down today, you'll see a notebook in front of my computer screen. It had schizophrenia notes in it & now has more notes about dates. I don't work from many hand-written notes but taking a notebook to bed while I read a reference book is easier than typing them & there is always a need for reference points.

You'll also see that just behind the monitor is a piece of paper on a magnetic bulletin board. It's a run out of all my characters' names, ages, occupations & is no longer completely accurate. Just above the monitor is a small piece of paper with essential names & relationships from the second chapter. I haven't taken it down because it's a nice piece of torture.

On the left hand side of my desk is a a pen holder and a bunch of papers. This is actually a recent innovation that was also an instigation to write. I cleared the top of my small filing cabinet last week & did some organizing. The Bat Cave abhors a vacuum, so I naturally put two filing thingies that I didn't know what to do with there until I could figure them out. One was empty. Saturday brain wave #1: Clean it & chuck all the junk from the other side of the desk into some sort of order in it. That leaves the other side dedicated to essentials.

So that's my desk & it morphed last Saturday morning before I heard the paper clip.

I used to think I had to start writing upon getting up in the morning, but with a dog to walk & a life to organize in advance of other dogs, I learned in AFG to write when I can. I don't smoke outside of my kitchen, and I don't drink much at my computer because I'm too busy, one way or another, to remember to sip.

This is good not only because the main room of my apartment is relatively clean-aired but because when I write a section that is hard or needs a bridge, I have to get up & go out to the kitchen to take a break. One cigarette or putting a book away or, if I'm really cooking & can trust myself, folding laundry, gives me a bit of time to come down or figure out the next simple problem.

I couldn't write without the Internet. I'm constantly looking things up. Yesterday I took ten minutes to find my character's dining room table. I haven't described it yet & probably won't, but it was something I needed a picture of in my head. I made a new bookmark file called "Cranberry Street house" & stuck it there. That led to a new piece of information just for my head. I chose a Mission dining room set, quite simple & light. Ergo, my main character will have baroque china & silver & ceiling moldings. This is only important to me but I know more about her because of it.

I usually pause, I realize in writing this, after I finish a paragraph. Not a break, a pause.

I keep another document going called "Outtakes". I paste longish cuts in it. Sometimes I use them later.

I've been keeping track of my word counts this week because it's easer than pages. But I hated query letters that described a manuscript as being 200,000 words in length. As I move into a chapter, I begin thinking more about pages because I aim for each chapter to be 21 pages.

Sometimes, especially at the beginning of a chapter, I'll write a precis for myself. It's an internal dialogue: "OK, so this chapter is about how mean Cinderella's stepmother is & how impossible she makes it for her to go to the ball. There will be a fairy godmother in it. A dress the color of winter butter."

That's what's hanging above my monitor, or a parallel thereof.

I try not to leave the computer when I don't know what's coming next. It's only when I'm secure in what is coming that I can quit. It makes opening the document less scary.

On days, such as Monday & Tuesday of this week, when I had extra walks rattling around in my head, it's best if I can make my peace with not writing at all. On weekdays, I need to be mindful about not getting number-obsessed. It's the weekends when I might turn out four or six pages a day. I've written one page today & need to figure out the next third of the chapter. I know what it entails & I know what the Austen parallel is, but I need to strike at the heart of it, not the set-up. I don't think I'll do any more work on it today, but who knows?

I use a thesaurus.

I seem to depend heavily on the following reference books that are above my desk: an old Bantam guide to movies; my German, French & English dictionaries; British English from A to Zed; a dictionary of the saints; Edith Hamilton Greek mythology; an old Blue Guide of New York & an old New York Zagat's.

I work hard to cut, among other words, "always," "when," "just," "even," "so," "however," "only". I KNOW they're evil. I don't have to wait to get rid of them.

I don't begin again by rereading the whole chapter. I tend to start with what I wrote the day before & edit that.

I don't walk around with with a pen & notebook. If something is really worth remembering, I will.

Sometimes I badly need to disconnect from a project for the balance of the day.

Sometimes that's when I write my blog.

Off to walk Boomer.

Be it ever so humble...

<>

2.oo p.m. Sun City, AZ 6/26

Ah, the Bat Cave. There's no place like home, even though I've been up for 27 hours (with catnaps on planes), Henry just chewed the back of one of my favorite flip-flops, I got eaten alive in the dog run by little flies & I'm retaining so much water that the skin on my shins feel as taut as a drum & there are creases in my ankles as though I've been wearing too-tight Mary Janes.

It's warm & humid out today but a shower has solved the worst of it & a diuretic will help drain my drums. Red wine & airplane travel do this to me. I'm sore from sugar & slipping on Henry's stoop a week ago & landing on my butt with the small of my back jammed against the step behind me. But the dogs are exhausted from an hour of fetch in the swelter & I'm sitting in my robe thanking God it's not 120 degrees in shadeless shameless sunshine.

I did not do this trip abstinently or even with much dignity. One night, in fact, I levitated into a dozen cookies & the next day my mother chirped, "Oh! We have some cookies, don't we? I think I'll have a cookie." No, I was forced to say. They're gone. "But we just got them yes- -- oh. OK."

She knows.

I knew only that the package wasn't there with a dim recollection of eating a couple at 3 a.m. But the package was in my room, empty. Scary.

Do I regret this? Of course. It's embarrassing, it's not keeping my pact with God, my sponsor, my program, you.

But I studied my compulsion to really go at it in my parents' house. I'm increasingly imprisoned there -- too hot to get out much, a new car that's confusing to drive, my mother on oxygen with extremely limited energy. The squirming of being expected to...something. Tell them things that are too complicated, or simply to talk when I don't really talk very much. The boredom of the frequent naps they lapse into, Dr. Phil & Wheel of Fortune. The need I have to get away with something, to get something of my own when I'm with them.

I told a friend this morning that I sometimes long to be able to tell my mom the stuff I would have five or ten or fifteen years ago. How I operate out of depression. The little romantic heartbreaks I've had lately. I can't. Her world & her life are slowly but inexorably imploding & her job now is to breathe, sleep, take pills, conserve her small energy to pull through another day, most especially for the sake of my blind father. It's my turn, now, to listen to her frustrations, prognoses, aches & attacks. To lay my deeper feelings on her would be another worry to nag her into living under the cloud of worry that my father's needs already thicken her lungs.

So I talk about the dogs. I tell them the simplest things about my book. I showed her my pictures on flckr. I ask for news of the rest of the family & old friends. I answer her questions & describe what I'd like to do by learning decoupage, how much I like taking photos. I bought her Memoirs of a Geisha because she said she didn't know what was the must-read that she'd like. (Personally I found Middlesex to be pretty boring despite my mother's adoration of Oprah.) I ask about the past.

Mostly I slept, great droughts of sleep that took up hours. I'd wake to read the chubby chick lit I'd taken along -- Little Earthquakes, Eating Heaven, I'm the One that I Want, Size Fourteen Is Not Fat Either. I helped my father get a couple of Marine Corps ribbons he's missing & ordered some extracts to make more syrups after I helped him make fake maple syrup (as a science experiment: it's neither cheaper nor better than Mrs. Butterworth's). I wrote out instructions for using the DVD player & tried to figure out how he could record on his four-track tapes for the blind. I read him his Musical Heritage catalogue & wrote out the order, read every single kitchen gadget at Target to him & described each toaster oven to him. I left them with a cake & peanut butter cookies that I had not eaten most of.

I was pleasant company except when my mother drove (yyyyoooowwww!) & when they bickered because my dad kept changing his mind about dinner. I don't know if I would have been more "present" without food or nicer. I'm grateful it was only six days away from my humble home, two of which were spent travelling. I'm not grateful for the thunder storms that kept us an additional five hours in Houston but it was wonderful to see Daisy this morning, who leapt into my lap & then gave me a long & reasoned lecture on my crimes. I went out for French toast before picking her up & that was nice, too.

Too nice, in fact, to use as a reason to go out & do any more damage.

The humans of the Italian greyhounds I was supposed to stay with cancelled -- a loss of several hundred dollars but a gain on the foothold of sanity for me. I'm very tired now: do I risk a two-hour nap? Am I capable of doing anything else?

It's good to be home with you again -- I missed you.