Scribbled

Permission

By Phil Barron ⋅ September 11, 2007 ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ Post a comment

M and I have devised a scheme that is helping me to write (that is, non-bloggy writing) more often: every Monday and Wednesday, I head off to class. That is, I head for the attic, or perhaps the dining room, or anyplace else in the house where I can work undisturbed for about as much time as it would take to go to an evening class, sit through it, and come back home.

Though it’s early in the history of the new arrangement, I feel as though I have permission - which I somehow lacked heretofore - to go hide out and write.

Very weird.

Anyway: apropos of the topic, free range librarian K.G. Schneider:

A few lucky devils get to Be Writers, and have daily schedules neatly arranged into writing, a light lunch, and more writing, followed, I guess, by lovely evenings spent catching up on other writers’ output, whilst the house help brings you champers and oysters to keep the edge off.

But the rest of us squeeze writing into those precious few hours in life that are not assigned to rendering unto Caesar, child-rearing, cooking and cleaning, bill-paying, attending one’s preferred house of worship, untangling Christmas tree lights, or sleeping.

Those of us writing at five miles per hour have our survival methods. I have a writing friend who marches off to a lunch place nearly every day to write for forty or so minutes. I admire her; she cranks out the prose, and dang, it’s good stuff.

But it takes me at least twice that long to corral my yawing, meandering mind into its Writing Place — an exercise that requires rearranging my pencil-pots, flipping through an old, suddenly interesting book, or embarking on adventures in personal grooming (usually involving sewing-scissors and toenails).

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