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Do you calendar your creativity?

It’s raining today. And, rain makes me pensive.

When I think too much, I generally come up with too  many questions. Lately, my mind keeps cycling through the same topics, and I’m not coming up with any clear answers. So, my fellow writers, I’m putting my questions out to you.

It’s fall. The leaves are changing. The air is crisp. It’s harvest time.

And, in the writing world, the time is ripe for submissions. Several great literary magazines open their windows for unsolicited manuscripts or essays. Writing contests abound. Where do I start? How do I prioritize? How much quality writing time can I squeeze into my schedule?  I formulate my writing plan on Monday. On Tuesday, I change it.

How do you plan? Or, maybe you don’t. Maybe you just write whenever the story strikes, about whatever rises to the surface. Maybe writing contests and calls for submissions never figure in to your plan.

Really, I want to know.

  • Do you open your calendar at the beginning of the week and pencil in an hour or two of writing every day?
  • Do you work up a stack of great stories you’ve written before you ever look at calls for submissions?
  • Or, do you siphon through the list of writing contests and your favorite literary magazines or sites first, and then challenge yourself to write a story that fits?

Better yet, do you waste your precious writing time trying to figure out your perfect plan for writing?

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Keep it light.

On a quiet morning last summer, I ran my fingers along the row of books on a shelf in our living room. I stopped at one heavy-weight: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd edition. I scanned the table of contents. James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Flannery O’Connor. Over fourteen hundred pages of classics written by heavily-studied authors. But, it wasn’t the classics that made me walk to the table and sit down with the book. It was the very first story, right there on page one: Woody Allen’s “A Giant Step for Mankind.”

Bound alongside “The Metamorphosis” and “Hills Like White Elephants” is Woody Allen’s story about three scientists who almost discover the secret behind the Heimlich Maneuver. I laughed out loud the first time I read it, with its high register language describing the research behind “dinner-table choking.” But, beyond the humor, Woody Allen’s writing is a great example of how to show, not tell. My favorite introduction to one of the characters presents a picture so clear I can almost see the smudges on his glasses:

His beard is of a medium length but seems to grow with the irrational abandon of crabgrass. Add to this thick, bushy brows and beady eyes the size of microbes, which dart about suspiciously behind spectacles the thickness of bulletproof glass. And then there are the twitches. The man has accumulated a repertoire of facial tics and blinks that demand nothing less than a complete musical score by Stravinsky.

I love this story. If you haven’t read it, you should — even if you can’t stand Woody Allen.

Sometimes classic literature reads heavy and dark to me. I often wonder if, to be a truly successful writer, you have to be a depressive. Reading Woody Allen’s short fiction counteracts that myth. His story not only drew a hearty belly laugh from me today, it reminded me that I don’t have to take my writer self quite so seriously.

What’s hiding on your bookshelf?

*****************************************************************

  • The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd edition. Copyright 1981 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. [ISBN 0-393-95178-2]
  • Woody Allen, “A Giant Step for Mankind,” copyright 1980. Originally published in Side Effects by Woody Allen (Random House, Inc.). [ISBN 0-345-34335-2]
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The word escapes me.

This Wednesday’s Word idea is challenging today.

pleiad: noun. a group of (usually seven) brilliant persons or things.
(from wordsmith.org, today’s word)
*****

I named this blog Writing Under Pressure for a reason. On a daily basis, I steal time away from things I should and could be doing, just so I can write. My writing often happens in short, concentrated stints of time. But, once in a while, I come upon a chunk of unscheduled quiet. In a flurry, I open my laptop, log on and wiggle my fingers. Then, I sit.

And, stare.

Type a sentence. Backspace. Cut and paste. Reformat. Save. Forget it.

In all that time, no real writing gets done. No wonder I struggle against that mean old mantra: I’m wasting my time. What I need is a pleiad of writer-friendly perks:

  1. Coffee. Good and strong. I like Hazelnut, sometimes with a dash of cinnamon.
  2. An antique writing desk.
  3. Unlimited credit at Broadway paper, so I can buy all the pretty little papers I want, a smorgasbord of creativity.
  4. Mail from one of those literary magazines where I’ve submitted stories, with a letter inside that starts out “we’ve been looking for you all of our literary lives” (over the top, I know, but this is my pleiad).
  5. ESP, so I can see into the future and know if that novel is really worth a rewrite.
  6. A writer’s retreat, in a cabin in the woods.
  7. Readers.

What’s your perfect pleiad?