Just going to show that no time is wasted . . . I’m driving, fretting that I’m not writing instead, and then I hear a story on NPR. The story is a follow-up to an article I read the week before–that one on gray whales–and as I’m listening, something goes ding in my brain. I see how I can use this in my WIP and when I start thinking about it some more, I also realize how this broadens the narrative, makes it “bigger” and multifaceted. I spend the rest of the drive in this contented haze, almost like the writer’s high you can get when the work is going well and you’ve slipped into that alternative universe you’ve created. In Misery, King called it “diving into the hole in the paper,” and that’s pretty close to what it feels like. Really, it’s a kind of daydreaming . . .
So the trip wasn’t wasted; that moment reinvigorated my story; and I learned something besides. A fellow writer says that she’s got a magpipe brain. She gathers bits and pieces of disparate, shiny stuff, never knowing when or if any of it will be useful. In a way, writers write about all those disparate pieces, the glittery stuff they’ve accumulated along the way. Annie Dillard once wrote that a writer writes about four walls. (If you haven’t read An American Childhood, find it, read it. Bring Kleenex.) Well, yes, this is true. But what a lot of shiny stuff we bring into that room.
Currently reading: Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes.
An article worth the time: “More Reasons to Worry about eBooks than I Thought,” by Sam Jordison. I don’t know how I feel about ebooks–and I’ve written several . . .
