Nanowrimo - Libraries

A student cancelled her appointment with me today, which freed me up for one hour.  I should have used the time to grade essays, but I'm all about putting those on the back burner this month in favor of dedicated writing time (I will get to it, but I'm going to be selfish about my grabs for writing time).  

I could have stayed in my office, but the risk of getting interrupted or distracted by the duties of my job (of which writing is one, I keep telling myself) was too high.  So, I packed a yellow pad, a pen, my coffee mug, and I set out for the library.  I was pleased to find it almost empty at 10 o'clock in the morning, and I had my choice of tables on the second floor.  I chose one near to a bank of windows but still in the shade.  The sunlight outside radiated that golden quality of fall, and I was able to witness the colors of the season from where I sat.  

I wrote.  

It was great, and it reminded me of how I used to write when I was in grad school.  Escaping my house, I would often drive over to hospitals or libraries so I could concentrate away from the newborn.  The technique still works today.  I began the next scene that advances my revision work from the other day.  See this post.  I started and stopped a few times to let my hand rest, and this is where the library comes into play.

In order to stretch my hand, my mind, and my body, I got up out of my seat and began walking the aisles.  I found myself in "American Literature 1961-Current Shelved by Author's Last Name."  This is my section right here and it felt great to read the spines, to finger the individual volumes, and to read a page here and a snippet there.  I wound up returning to my seat with Charles Bukowski's Factotum in hand.  

I opened it to find tiny bursts of chapters.  Chapters a paragraph long, a chapter dedicated to a setting, a tiny observation, and it inspired me.  I loved the idea that a chapter could be a tiny unit of measurement and not a volume, a catalog of thoughts.  This got me writing again.  

His language, the poetry of his lines, got me inspired and I set back to writing my own manuscript.  It was a mini-lesson in craft in the middle of a writing session.  

A dear friend and fellow writer, Katey Schultz, wrote about "writing through it" on her own blog the other day, and her lesson seemed somewhat appropriate to how I was using the library.  Without the immediate access of writing friends, mentors, or advisers, how does the writer sustain his/her focus/energy/ambition for a project?  Sometimes the answer is another writer's work.  And where do we find other writers' works?  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, in the library.  What a lovely free resource!