It is an Tuesday afternoon, inside Panera Bread it is lunchtime, the rush of hungry custmors fill the resturant, line almost out the door. Mothers trying to calm their children, workers anxiously waiting, hoping they get back to work on time. College students sitting around tables with laptops, others eating, enjoying the fireplace. At a table in the back sits, Carolyn Chute "How Can You Create Fiction When Reality Comes to Call" to her right Ray Bradbury "Zen in the Art of Writing" to her left Anne Lamott "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life" and across from her is myself. We are in the middle of a discussion on the writing process writers go through on a daily basis.
Alicia: "What are some methods you found helpful for when you sit down to write?"
Anne: "Well first I try to breathe, because I?m either sitting there panting like a lapdog, or I?m unintentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles!"
Ray: "The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are."
Carolyn: "Usually it takes three days to get into the writer mode. Three days of quiet non-life mode, lots of coffee and no interruptions.
Anne: "Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a Manson jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it into the jar. And so on.
Alicia "That is an interesting approach, I like it!"
Alicia "What are some methods you've learned from others?"
Ray: "E.L. Doctorow once said "writing a novel is like driving a car at.You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
Carolyn: "Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious."
Alicia: "What do you mean by that, Carolyn?"
Carolyn: "To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission."
Alicia: "Yes I'd have to agree its hard to get almost anything done with a racking brain, let alone write a story. I give you all props!
Ray: "I finally figured out that if you are going to step on a live mine, make it your own. Be blown up, as it were, by your own delights and despairs.
Alicia: "What are some methods you found helpful for when you sit down to write?"
Anne: "Well first I try to breathe, because I?m either sitting there panting like a lapdog, or I?m unintentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles!"
Ray: "The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are."
Carolyn: "Usually it takes three days to get into the writer mode. Three days of quiet non-life mode, lots of coffee and no interruptions.
Anne: "Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a Manson jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it into the jar. And so on.
Alicia "That is an interesting approach, I like it!"
Alicia "What are some methods you've learned from others?"
Ray: "E.L. Doctorow once said "writing a novel is like driving a car at.You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
Carolyn: "Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious."
Alicia: "What do you mean by that, Carolyn?"
Carolyn: "To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission."
Alicia: "Yes I'd have to agree its hard to get almost anything done with a racking brain, let alone write a story. I give you all props!
Ray: "I finally figured out that if you are going to step on a live mine, make it your own. Be blown up, as it were, by your own delights and despairs.