Last month I struggled to write a short story. It was longer than any of the short stories I’d ever written and came with a set of parameters that (for some reason) kept throwing me off balance. Too, just when a picture of where I wanted the story to go would begin to come into focus, that image would flicker and fade.
Except when I was in the car.
There I would sit, buckled in tight and cruising along, when my muse would mention – in passing – a secret to pulling the story together and making it work. With both hands on the wheel, my eyes would slice to the right to gauge the proximity of my purse and weigh the hazards in rifling through it for a pen and paper. I’d break out into a cold sweat, knowing that the idea might dissolve or fall apart with one false move – and fast – and I’d spend the next few hours or days chasing down the memory of it, like I do the name of my mother’s favorite perfume when struck with the faint, but familiar scent. It’s there, in my mind, if I could only draw it out.
What to do, what to do? I thought.
At times, I’ve fished out what I needed, though scribbling with two hands while driving with your knee is as dangerous as texting. Other times, I’ve let the ideas fall into that writer’s abyss, thinking, Maybe. With any luck. If it’s meant to be. I’ll remember.
Then, on a particularly long drive to a retreat, when I knew I’d be alone and might be fertile for a visit from my muse, I considered my options: driving while writing, or writing while driving.
There’s a difference. And, it has to do with how you record your thoughts.
I discovered on my iPhone, by chance almost, a picture of a microphone. The voice recorder. The memo-taker. The not-just-for-grocery-lists detail-maker.
Of course!
I plugged in my ear buds, so I could do a test run hands-free.
“So…this is just to see how this whole recorder business works…Test…Boo…I’m so cool.”
Then, I played it back: the words were there, the sound was good.
It was magic, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. All those drives to work and back, this long road trip to a retreat? I didn’t have to worry. I could still write; I’d just keep my thoughts in digital form.
Those early recordings weren’t anything close to pretty. Many of them started off with a stumble of words and ended with things like, “So, there” and “What d’ya think of that.” Sort of like sass-talking with my muse.
Still, it worked. I visited and re-visited several parts of that short story with my tiny digital excerpts, and I jump-started a few blog posts and articles as well. I’m not particularly fond of listening to myself talk, there’s a nasal quality that worries me. But, I’ve found a new route to writing, on those days when I can’t get pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard, when I don’t want an idea to fall away unexplored.
What about you? Do you write while in transit or record your thoughts in digital format? What’s your secret?
*Photo credit: James Cridland on Flickr.com