Once upon a time...
In the Fairy Tale Kingdom of Ideal Writing - a girl sits with her hot cup of coffee and computer laptop at a large table in a quiet room. In case she is visited by the tactile need to write something down, a new legal pad and sharpened pencil lay beside her. The beauty of the serene scenery outside her large windows inspires her begin. Ah, what writing bliss, right?
Ha!
Let's start again…The girl might have coffee, but it is most likely lukewarm. The laptop's screen is covered with the greasy fingerprints of children who can't help but touch everything. The table is completely cluttered with school papers, bills, and empty wrappers. As for quiet - the only semi- quiet room in the house is the bathroom - and by quiet, I mean no one is inside making noise. Let's face it - the basket filled high with laundry and bathroom sink are hardly serene scenery!
So, as a mother of three - how was I supposed to achieve this ideal writing environment without any designated creative space? Bottom line, I wouldn't, quite frankly! One of my previous writing snares was believing that I needed a certain environment to getting into the writing zone - one much more like the fairy tale and a lot less like the reality!
When I wrote my first book, the plot was so solid that I really could break free of the "writing in sequential order" prison that had hindered me before then. (I will ramble more about that in another post.) So, whatever the mood I was in or part I wanted to dig into, I could write that part. Great! However, the when and where often escaped me.
At that time, my life consisted of being a taxi service for at least 3 hours a day. Some of this time included sitting in an idling car, squished into a long line of vehicles, waiting in the carpool lanes. Earlier in that school year, I found myself thinking about two of the characters and a specific scene. I had a pen in my purse, but no paper. Sigh. Looking around, I took a quick car inventory - diaper, wipes, extra pacifiers, some toy trucks…I could be creative and write on a diaper, but that would just invoke Murphy's Law and a stinky butt to stop and clean to avoid the asphyxiating odor on the way home. Nope. My husband often shoved receipts into the little box between the two front seats. Before that day, it had always irritated me that they never ended up in the receipt bin, where they were supposed to be. Instead, they cluttered my way to the gum or loose change that I would be seeking. However, on that day, I was grateful for his negligence! Receipts! I pulled out the crumpled wad, found one without printing on the back, and began to scribble out lines. I found that I could ignore whatever noises the younger two would be making in the back seat of the car and slip into the world of my characters.
Although a writing friend and I have joked about how much of my book was written on the backs of receipts in the carpool lane, there is some truth to that - receipts and scraps of paper. I still have the whole messy pile of them in a drawer, my sentimental mementos. Despite the chaos in the background, that carpool lane became my writing zone! Now, I homeschool the three kids, but waiting for them at extra curricular activities still gives me some of that coveted time to scribble thoughts and scenes onto paper. It seems that I can write about anywhere now - waiting in the dr. office, while the kids are eating their lunch, in between flipping dinner burgers, and…yes, even in the carpool lanes.
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