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change of scenery
May. 17th, 2012 11:07 amI was in Brookline yesterday for acupuncture in the early afternoon, and then was meeting up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gnomi and mabfan for dinner and conversation in the evening. Even though it was raining, I brought my laptop with me in hopes of getting writing done during the four hours between needles and noshing. Or at least pre-writing: my plan was to go through the emails and things I'd written to my shrink in 1996, in preparation for writing chapter 13 in the memoir. After acupunking, the rain had stopped, and I had food, so I sat outside the Brookline library. I opened the folder with the shrink stuff in it, but then, instead of opening the "1996" folder, I decided to start chapter 14. Well, "decided" isn't really the right word; the memory of the opening scene just kind of enveloped me, with the strength of a flashback, except it was a good memory. Which, since it was a memory of being enveloped by a good memory, worked out really well, with my being wrapped in tulip-bulb layers of atmosphere.
I expected to write that short snippet and then go back to pre-writing, but the scene segued into the next scene without my noticing, and then it was two and a half hours later, and my lower back burned from sitting too long on the bench, and I was at the end of the scene, anyway, and my word count was 879, which is pleasantly abnormally high for me for under 3 hours. I regarded the bench I was sitting on, which I'd never sat on before, and I thought, "Well, I really need to go to new places more often."
I went to the nearby playground, where I rewarded myself with some time on a swing, then sat under a tree to babble via email to a friend about having gotten writing done. I was visited by a just-barely-toddler several times, who wanted to help me type, and whose mother apologized for the interference, which led to "Hey, if I didn't actively want distraction, I wouldn't be here." And the interaction put me in the head of my novel's main character, which was nice. But it was a daydreamy kind of way, not the kind of focused thinking that leads to actual writing. Besides, I'd exhausted my writing energy for the day.
By then, it was late enough to head over to my friends' place for dinner, with their not-quite-three-year-old twins and the swirling chaos that comes from toddlers. I find kids exhausting — not necessarily in a negative way, but they are a novelty for me, like trying to write on a bench I've never sat on, putting me off-kilter and off-balance. The twins, shockingly, did not want to go to bed, then did not want to go to sleep, and I sat on the couch listening to the kids and their parents in the nursery, thinking, "Holy crap, I could never do that night after night, 365 days a year," and thinking amorphously again of my novel's main character. Then after a little bit of adult conversation, I had to catch a train to catch a train to go home.
And a scene started working itself out in my mind on the first train, still daydreamy but somehow focused, too. I'd already had the middle of the scene, and now snippets of dialog started moving into place before that middle, working backward, until I saw where the scene began. I was early for the train home, so I sat at the station, again on an uncomfortable wooden bench, and pecked out the first few sentences before I forgot them. I kept typing; the train came; I sat at a table in the car and kept typing; I got off the train and walked home and typed some more; my eyes stopped focusing and I went to bed; I got up and made coffee and finished the last 125 words of the scene.
I can't remember another time that I've worked on one piece, broken off before I was finished with a section (I ended the scene, but not the section), then moved on to a completely different piece and actually got somewhere. Novelty is apparently really good for my productivity. I should really try a little more of it. Maybe when I've recovered some energy.
gnomi and mabfan for dinner and conversation in the evening. Even though it was raining, I brought my laptop with me in hopes of getting writing done during the four hours between needles and noshing. Or at least pre-writing: my plan was to go through the emails and things I'd written to my shrink in 1996, in preparation for writing chapter 13 in the memoir. After acupunking, the rain had stopped, and I had food, so I sat outside the Brookline library. I opened the folder with the shrink stuff in it, but then, instead of opening the "1996" folder, I decided to start chapter 14. Well, "decided" isn't really the right word; the memory of the opening scene just kind of enveloped me, with the strength of a flashback, except it was a good memory. Which, since it was a memory of being enveloped by a good memory, worked out really well, with my being wrapped in tulip-bulb layers of atmosphere.I expected to write that short snippet and then go back to pre-writing, but the scene segued into the next scene without my noticing, and then it was two and a half hours later, and my lower back burned from sitting too long on the bench, and I was at the end of the scene, anyway, and my word count was 879, which is pleasantly abnormally high for me for under 3 hours. I regarded the bench I was sitting on, which I'd never sat on before, and I thought, "Well, I really need to go to new places more often."
I went to the nearby playground, where I rewarded myself with some time on a swing, then sat under a tree to babble via email to a friend about having gotten writing done. I was visited by a just-barely-toddler several times, who wanted to help me type, and whose mother apologized for the interference, which led to "Hey, if I didn't actively want distraction, I wouldn't be here." And the interaction put me in the head of my novel's main character, which was nice. But it was a daydreamy kind of way, not the kind of focused thinking that leads to actual writing. Besides, I'd exhausted my writing energy for the day.
By then, it was late enough to head over to my friends' place for dinner, with their not-quite-three-year-old twins and the swirling chaos that comes from toddlers. I find kids exhausting — not necessarily in a negative way, but they are a novelty for me, like trying to write on a bench I've never sat on, putting me off-kilter and off-balance. The twins, shockingly, did not want to go to bed, then did not want to go to sleep, and I sat on the couch listening to the kids and their parents in the nursery, thinking, "Holy crap, I could never do that night after night, 365 days a year," and thinking amorphously again of my novel's main character. Then after a little bit of adult conversation, I had to catch a train to catch a train to go home.
And a scene started working itself out in my mind on the first train, still daydreamy but somehow focused, too. I'd already had the middle of the scene, and now snippets of dialog started moving into place before that middle, working backward, until I saw where the scene began. I was early for the train home, so I sat at the station, again on an uncomfortable wooden bench, and pecked out the first few sentences before I forgot them. I kept typing; the train came; I sat at a table in the car and kept typing; I got off the train and walked home and typed some more; my eyes stopped focusing and I went to bed; I got up and made coffee and finished the last 125 words of the scene.
I can't remember another time that I've worked on one piece, broken off before I was finished with a section (I ended the scene, but not the section), then moved on to a completely different piece and actually got somewhere. Novelty is apparently really good for my productivity. I should really try a little more of it. Maybe when I've recovered some energy.
