Hello, friends.
You'll notice Unbound have revamped their website since the last time I posted here, and I think you'll agree it looks fantastic. There's no more Author's Shed: liberating for the claustrophic writer, and something of a relief as I was fast running out of shed-themed puns to throw at you.
I thought I'd share with you a little of my writing method as I continue to work on the American section of my memoir.
I've never given much thought to how or where I write. It's always been a simple equation of time + flat surface = writing. But I was prompted to reflect on it by my friend, the Philadelphia-based writer Robert York, whose excellent book, Notes for a Mythology, is serialized at the Dreadful POINT.
Rob recently read a tiny story I wrote about trees, and wondered how one might set about writing a forest. I realised my writing is embarrassingly performative. I recalled moving around the room, trying to find accurate ways to describe two old trees as both companions and rivals. I imagined them to be the sylvan version of Statler and Waldorf, the cantankerous Muppets in the theatre balcony. I acted out their greeting each other, their familiarity and their animosity, their stance, their hands, arms, limbs, branches -- rooted firm, yet moving freely.
Naturally, my thoughts turned to this project. I've moved from room to room in our current house trying to find a comfortable position in which to write. The ex-hotel furniture supplied by the British Embassy is functional but uncomfortable. I think Jon's getting bored of me exclaiming, "the veneer's peeling off!" every few days. ("No need to labour the metaphor, darling," is his usual response.) No matter what combination of chair and table I try, or how many cushions I add or remove to adjust my height, or raise the laptop on books, I am uneasy.
So, you find me now standing at the ironing board. It's the most comfortable place in the house to write. The angle of laptop keyboard to elbow bend is just right. The irony (pun intended) is, of course, that this is the ultimate symbol of domesticity. Of all household chores, ironing irks me most. My personal conflict with the traditional, domestic role of a military wife is deeply ingrained in this work; and here I am, quite by accident, subverting the intended function of the ironing board for my own needs. I feel rebellious (in a very small way).
My performative writing at the ironing board goes something like this: thinking, typing, grinning, grimacing, [stepping away to make tea], chuckling, sobbing, sighing, smirking, crying. I don't know whether it's common to cry while writing. Writing this requires digging deep into my emotional reserves, and I go through waves of feeling able to work on this manuscript, and days when I want to just be with the children. But when I'm not writing (or reading), I sometimes feel like I'm only partially living, and that both scares and fascinates me. As the manuscript nears completion I'm finding it harder to turn my thoughts away from it, and the sentences and paragraphs continue to write themselves out in my mind, even when I step away from the ironing board. I keep having to stop whatever I'm doing to scribble it all down; I have notebooks all over the house (including the bathroom) so I've always got something at hand to write in. There are pages of notes on my phone, which I use to record the great chunks of text that fall out of my head when I'm driving (I pull into random car parks to do this) or walking on the beach or in the woods.
In Moments of Being, a collection of autobiographical writings, Virginia Woolf talks about a "problem, that I call in my private shorthand -- 'non-being'." Every day includes much more non-being than being, and she says that even on good days, the goodness is "embedded in a kind of nondescript cotton wool."
"This is always so. A great part of every day is not lived consciously. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner, ordering, washing, cooking, dinner, bookbinding [...] When it is a bad day the proportion of non-being is much larger."
(Virginia Woolf)
Among the hours of non-being she experiences "moments of being", which appear to consist exclusively of writing, reading, and closely observing the landscape around her as she walks. The moments of heightened awareness and pleasure she experiences so deeply when observing, reading, and creating feel resoundingly familiar. I would hesistate to call everything else "non-being", though. It's precisely these other moments -- the ordinary, day-to-day detail -- that I'm writing about. I find essence in the detail; metaphysics comes tumbling out of the minutiae.
Now, back to the ironing board.