December 27, 2004Monday
I tried to get back to fiction work today. Yesterday I gathered all my fiction materials and took inventory. I have a plastic crate full of hanging files loaded with folders containing notes, random ideas, copies of other people’s published stories that I’ve outlined, underlined, and annotated to study structure, to answer the questions, How did she do that? How can I do that? I have a separate three-ring binder containing all the work I’ve done on my 19th-century novel (the research for it has its own crate), and one for the contemporary novel I’ve been coming back to off and on for three years. Part of my problem is the difficulty I have in picking one project and focusing on it.
So today I made something of a schedule. I fell back on the language of the school year that was my working lexicon for three decades. My Winter Term will have two parts, the Feast of Stephen to Ash Wednesday (February 9), and then the seven weeks of Lent (February 9 to March 27). Then I’m taking a break before going into the eight weeks of my Spring Term.
The Winter Term divides nicely because on February 7 I’m joining a six-week workshop for experienced writers that will focus exclusively on revision. (Most workshops around here are geared to beginners, to people who aren’t quite sure yet what writing fiction is all about. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just not in that place.) So I need to have a complete first draft in place for the first meeting.
I’ve chosen another project that’s been languishing for almost three years, a short story about a woman who has a compulsion to attend the funerals of strangers. I haven’t done much with Selena since that first burst of about 1500 words, but she keeps hanging around.
I did all this reviewing and planning at a public library just across the river in Camp Hill. I sometimes find that I can be more productive if I take the materials I want to focus on and go to a place where I won’t have the distractions of home, where surfing the net is harder (because you have to sign on to a public computer for only fifteen minutes at a time) and napping is impossible. I chose a carrel that was in a sunny alcove with a comfortable chair beside it.
I was there for three hours, during which time I worked on my materials, browsed the fiction shelves, browsed the travel shelves, looked at the Russian nesting dolls display in the lobby, read the cartoons in the latest issue The New Yorker, and like Goldilocks, tried out all the other available work tables and alcoves to make sure I had the one that was just right.
The whole time I was there a woman sitting in the carrel attached to mine worked at a laptop. She had a notebook and a printed book spread out in her space. About five minutes before I left she got up to use the bathroom, the only time I saw her stop working. I gathered up my things and put on my coat, and by the time I was finished she was back at her place, typing away again.
I hope I can develop that kind of focus.
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