Many of you who follow this blog have been sweet and asking after it. For the last couple of months I have gone offline. I've found pages in the space left when I walk away from my computer. I've taken to handwriting my pages, to composing on paper, and there is something about the change that is significant, something tangible and real, and like the writing process of my younger self.
When I first started writing, in preadolescence, I always wrote on paper. I would sprawl on the carpet, on the grass, on the sofa, and I would write. I wrote poetry then. When I moved into the realm of fiction, I found myself typing more than writing, and I think in some ways this might have been a mistake. I'm working to correct it.
For over a year I have been working on a novel, and it hasn't been the smoothest ride. I wrote 150 pages during National Novel Writing Month, but I have scrapped all of those pages now. I am building from the ground up again, and I am finding my yellow lined pads to be a great help in this regard. I am mobile and "wireless" in the best possible ways. I find myself outside, in coffee shops, and out in the world as opposed to locked in my office. I can write anywhere. Which is exactly how it used to be before I "formalized" my process.
Yellow pads feel like play, like rough drafts, like freewrites, like it all doesn't matter so much, that it all isn't so serious, and I need that in my writing. I need a sense of play to keep me going. I love doing this stuff. I love writing, so I need to remember to take it out of work-mode and get it back out in the world where it can play.
I spent two hours this morning writing three new pages, single spaced in small print. It feels great. I've started a folder of these pages. I write them, type them, staple them, and then keep them. The folder is starting to fill a little bit, thickening with each yellow page I pull from the pad. It feels like play, it feels like progress, and I am all the better for it.
