While I was in Paris, I stayed at a hotel that used to be a monastery and it still had monastic amenities. In other words, no television, no radio, no minibar. There wasn’t even a clock in the room, just the ringing of the church bells next door. On top of this, I do not have an international cell phone. So without any of the usual methods by which to measure my self worth: scale, blog stats, emails, phone calls, or any of the usual distractions: LA Law, diet coke, tropical flavored jelly beans, I did the only thing left for me to do: write. I brought two books and a notebook in which I have been writing a book for three years on and off. I read both books and I filled nearly forty pages in my notebook. My hand ached, ink splats appeared on my hands and on my shirt, and the pad from pressing too hard appeared on my middle finger, a badge of something.
It was an amazing week to go without all the usual distractions. I wrote all morning and long into the night. As they say of babies just beginning to nurse, I latched on. I wrote every chance I could get, and the more I wrote, the more ideas came to me, so much so that I even took notes for future scenes and observations to better flesh out. Long before cell phones and computers, etc. I was able to find myriad distractions so I’m not blaming technology. I’m just noticing what a week away proved.
What are your biggest distractions from writing? Besides reading scintillating blogs?
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I have a confession to make: I’ve always been afraid of killing someone by accident while driving. I’m sure you’ve had the experience where a person seems to appear out of nowhere as you’re backing out or making a left turn, no matter how many times you look. I’ve never been able to easily shake those moments, but instead replay them over and over. Do you do this? Is it normal?
I spent a few days thinking of ways to mortify Betsy in this space, but I don’t have a copy of her updated book, and I don’t have the patience to click on every link in her blogroll looking for things to hate. I considered writing about how your publishing ‘team’—your agent and editor and publisher—functions like a family, more specifically a family in which your publisher fucks you under the stairs while your editor pretends not to notice.
Okay: You’re a writer, I’m a writer. It’s five in the morning, your neighborhood is asleep except for the guy whose having an affair with the lady down the block and the kids huffing under the magnolia tree and Old Man Needer who has been walking in his sleep since Leno went off the air and he keeps waiting for the national anthem and those planes flying in the air and flags flying…..before the 24/7 became a plague on humanity. You sit, turn on your computer (if you have a typewriter I admire you; if you are actually writing with a pen or pencil I love you). You write this sentence and you shuffle for another cup of coffee. You’re back. You read and reread your sentence and you continue. . .
How are you supposed to behave when a good friend becomes a famous writer? When she invites you to a reading and you feel the urge to rush out the moment she heads back to her seat, but you can’t figure out how to exit? What are you supposed to do, wave at her across the room as you lope outside for air?
I was on a flight from Amsterdam to Newark the other day when I noticed that every other person was reading a Kindle. Then it hit me. I am almost fifty years old and I might never have a book published. By that I mean a real book that I can hold next to my heart and then put away on a shelf. Even better, on my mother’s shelf. Something I can finish. Something I can dedicate. I have written all my life, but nothing has ever been really truly finished. I enjoy my status as a late bloomer, but now I see I may be too late for a real book.
Hello everybody, this is world famous author Vivian Swift filling in for Betsy today. I know, I know — I look familiar: Haven’t we met? I get that all the time. ALL THE TIME. Just last week, at Betsy’s book event at She Writes in Manhattan, I introduced myself to three or four complete strangers and two of them looked at me funny and asked, “Haven’t we met before?” I hate that. Like I said, I get asked that all the time; I just have one of those all-American cover girl faces. And an identical twin sister, but that never figures into the scenario except for that one time in that airport bar in Rome.
