Procrastination or preparation?

I read somewhere that you should never clean your desk before sitting down to write. Supposedly, cleaning your desk becomes the task, not the writing. It slows you down and distracts you. You may never get to the writing.

I’ve been having a heck of a time writing in my home office of late. And by “of late” I mean, like, for the past couple of years. (Kidding. Sort of.) My office is a room that is supposed to be mine, for writing. It’s filled with old notebooks and journals, books about writing, books that I love, dictionaries, thesauri, literary magazines, etc. etc. Favorite art adorns the walls, and there’s a bulletin board onto which I’ve tacked bits of visual inspiration; art photos, a letter from a lit contest I was a finalist in a couple of years ago. After the tendinitis that left me unable to type for a while in 2007-8, I bought an ergonomic chair, and a tray for a keyboard and mouse that helps my arms stay pain-free. My desk has a nice spot for my laptop, printer, and scanner. In short, my office is a place that should be perfect for writing. I’m lucky, I know, to have it.

Except that recently it’s been a room I want to avoid. In the year-plus since my son was born, the office has become the place to drop unfinished projects, unopened mail, and whatever else we wanted out of the way. Piles of paper began to rise on my desk. Sometimes I had to clear a space just to put my laptop down. While I was pregnant, because I couldn’t seem to write, I diverted my creative impulses toward painting and drawing. Art supplies (and unfinished art projects) covered the table adjacent to my desk.

Ugh. What a mess.

My attempts to sit down and write in my office of late have been failures. I get distracted, I remember projects from around the house that need to be done, I surf the web. My successful writing days have all come as a result of staking out a table in my local coffee shop.

Today, after a morning workout at the gym, I just didn’t feel like walking to the coffee shop. But I couldn’t get anything done. I was tempted to clean up my office. For some reason this seemed like it would help with the writing. But it also seemed like procrastination, so I tried to rally to walk to the coffee shop. I even put my shoes on. And then I decided: who cares if it’s procrastination? If it helps me write more tomorrow, or the next day, maybe a clean office is just what I need.

And so, I did it. I uncovered my desk. I put away the art supplies and the unfinished art projects. I took care of some of the piles of boring administrative tasks. I hung up some of the picture frames that have been laying on the floor under my table for months. Wow. Guess what? I feel better. And I’m writing. Maybe some people need a ritual to go through to prepare for the day’s writing. Baseball players do it when they come up to bat, so why not writers? Maybe cleaning up my desk is just my way of adjusting my gloves and my hat before taking a swing.

writing environment

I’ve been thinking about what I need to work efficiently and productively, and, perhaps more importantly, what I don’t need.

I’m lucky enough to have an office, which because it is primarily mine to use, is set up in a way that makes me comfortable and happy. Which is good, since I spend most of every day in here. It’s recently been repainted a color that I love, and I gave my desk and other furniture — some of which I have had for many years — a makeover with some fresh white paint. The room is now cheery and bright, which is something I need in a home office. …There’s a window, but it’s not too distracting, since you have to stand right next to it and crane your neck to see anything much.

But what do I need to write? At the most basic level: Just my laptop. Ok, and maybe some coffee. But one of the things I like about having an office is that I can keep pictures, books and other things around me that inspire or that I sometimes refer to. So there are reference books in here: Chicago Manual of Style, a 4-year-old Writer’s Handbook, an AP style guide, some writing-related guides, a pile of lit magazines, and a few anthologies that contain writing I admire. I keep writing magazines in here (Poets and Writers and the Writer’s Chronicle), and I keep my notebook full of submission guidelines and deadlines. There’s a folder for rejections on my desk, and folders I use to keep track of administrative things related to freelancing. I’ve put images (art in the form of postcards) I like on my bulletin board, instead of (well, mostly instead of) reminders and practical things.

My desk is almost always a mess. It’s rare to be able to see the surface. I am usually jotting down things in notebooks, and sometimes (like now) I have three going at once. (Yeah, ok, so I have a thing for stationery and notebooks…) The notebooks are all over my desk, as are two calendars (weekly and monthly) a bunch of pens, printed research for a story I’m working on, various assorted dirty dishes (I tend to eat breakfast and lunch at my desk), a tangle of power cords for a ridiculous number of devices …(I recently quarantined these in a bucket, which has helped a lot), some carpet samples, a stuffed Totoro, the dog’s vet paperwork …my desk is kind of my dumping ground. Some people might not be able to work amidst all that clutter, but I don’t mind. I guess I kind of require it.

Other things in my office that are helpful from a writing perspective:
- a USB jump drive …I used to back up my work every day, particularly when I was working on my MFA thesis. I’ve started to get out of the habit a little, which is bad. Don’t do that. I keep mine on my key chain with my house keys, so where ever I go, my writing goes, too.
-speakers. I don’t necessarily need to listen to music when I’m writing, and I can only listen to certain types of music (jazz…and, um, jazz) when I’m sitting down for a serious writing session anyway, but when you work from home, it can get pretty quiet and music sometimes helps with the conversational silence.
-a headset I attach to my cell phone so I can do interviews and type at the same time.
-a good chair. This one is probably the most important. I have horrible posture and having a decent chair that forces me to sit correctly is a must. Otherwise I end up with muscle spasms and knots in my back and all kinds of carpal tunnel fun.

Things that I don’t need in order to write, but think I do:

-The Internet! Wireless is an awesome technology, but it has really increased my Internet addiction by about tenfold. This is my greatest distraction (she says, while blogging) bar none. The writer Stephen Elliott wrote a great piece about his experiment to not use the Internet for a month which I greatly admire and fully admit that I would be unable to do. (via After the MFA)

-Snacks!…chocolate chip cookies, jelly beans, pretzel sticks, dry cereal, and Twizzlers being the ones that have me making regular trips down the stairs to the kitchen recently. It’s a time suck, getting snacks, because inevitably, once I’m down there I’ll get distracted by something else (the mail, the backyard, the dog…). Plus, not healthy, too much sugar, watch that figure, blah, blah, blah. And snacks are not a good way to ease writer’s block, stress over deadlines or other such woes. Except that sometimes they are.

What do you need to be able to write?

What do you need to be able to write?

Some people need absolute silence. Some need mood music. This guy in a workshop I once took needed a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and a free weekend. Another fellow workshop attendee said he got up at 5 am, prepared a travel mug of coffee and took a long walk. Without out that ritual, writing was hopeless. Everyone has their own habits, I guess. I began this post thinking that I required few things to be able to put in a good day’s writing, but the more I think about it, I suspect that’s not so true:

•I write best in the morning.
•I generally require coffee to be productive (though it’s a fine line…too little or too much, and I can’t write anything.).
•I need relative silence, or, if there’s noise, it needs to be fuzzy and in the background. Like the din of a coffee shop.
•The only music I can listen to while writing is jazz. I’ve tried classical and other stuff, but no go.
• I am useless without my MacBook. Writing on other people’s computers generally trips me up.
•From a more practical standpoint, a memory stick is indispensible. I carry mine on my keychain, a habit I started while writing my thesis….The idea being that if my house (and beloved MacBook) caught on fire (or whatever calamity) while I was out, I’d still have all of my writing backed up, right there on my key chain.
• And finally, the point of this post: I work best in my own space. By this I mean 1) that I cannot write with others infringing on my space — for example if someone sits too close to me in the coffee shop, or Billy is in the room with me at home (perhaps this is my only child upbringing coming through), and 2) I work best in a space that is, in some way, mine. Which is why getting an office when we moved into our house this fall was so great. And why I am feeling so discombobulated now.
I decided last week, rather suddenly, to redecorate my office. Though I have been imagining my new, improved office for some time, so I suppose it wasn’t as sudden as it seemed. In any case, I spent the weekend repainting my old crappy furniture, and now the office is a mess of dropcloths and paint supplies and reeks of paint fumes. All of my office stuff — books, papers, art supplies…the things that make the office feel like a writing home — are stowed away in the closet and in the guest room. And now I am typing at the dining room table, which isn’t nearly as comfortable or as fun as being at my big desk in the office. It’s worth it though…I am only half done with my painting plans, and already it’s a completely different, more me kind of room. It’s brighter and will be more colorful when it’s done.
Which can only make for a better writing environment.

Ok. I’m Back.

Though not necessarily on track. We are moved, unboxed (kind of) and settling in. Our new house is just, well, awesome. There’s lots of space and rooms and a sunny deck frequented by cute cats. (The friendliest among them is named Homer, and yesterday he padded on our roof before I let him in the window and carried him to the backyard. He’s all about rubbing and meowing and I’m pretty sure if I fed him, he’d adopt us.) The sun shines here so much compared to our old place in the cold fog. A real estate agent told us once that this part of the city “probably gets 20 more sunny days a year” than the part we just moved from, and I can already say that he was very wrong. We haven’t even been in our house two weeks and it’s clear 20 days is a complete understatement. I can watch the fog in my old neighborhood from our front steps and laugh gleefully when it stops short of our house. Every. day. Ha, ha!

Other awesomeness: The famous flock of San Francisco parrots flies over our house every day. I can hear their unusual squawking from inside our house. I think they must land somewhere nearby, but I haven’t figured out where yet. And, of much greater import, I have an office. Whoo! That’s right, I now have a dedicated space in which to write, create, and think. It’s still in disarray, but the basics are in place – the desk, printer, internet hook-up and so on. I even have a window, a bookshelf, and a plant in here. Luxury.

Somehow, through all of the moving, unpacking, organizing, shopping at Home Depot (ugh!) and attempts at decorating our new home, I have been trying desperately to work on my thesis. The first half is due within a week. I’m a bit agitated about it, but I will admit that it’s mostly done. I just have one scene without a home, and there are two chapters out of the first six that I hate so much I want to rewrite them… the problem is every time I try I can’t seem to make it work, so I go back to the originals. I think I am just going to turn the first half in as is, and deal with those two pesky sucky chapters later. I have to get going on the rest of the book. Because, I now realize looking at the table of contents which hangs over my desk: only three of the second six chapters have been completed. Eek. And they are all due in mid-October. Eek.

Checked out

The thing about working from home is that you work from home. As in, you have to start coming up with reasons to leave your home so you don’t go stir-crazy. In general this isn’t difficult for me. I am all to eager to go shopping, visit cafes, go to the gym, etc., etc. In short, I am happy to leave my house to do things other than work. What gets challenging is leaving the house and still managing to get some work done.

Today I decided to pay a visit to the San Francisco Public Library. Aside from the vast numbers of crazy homeless people that seem to congregate there, it’s a decent place to get work done. As I discovered, there are laptop work stations, complete with power outlets and internet access. They’re well-lit, fairly comfortable, and they were fairly empty on a Tuesday afternoon. I ended up writing for an hour and a half or so before deciding to browse the books.
I am impressed by the building and the resources of the SFPL, but when it comes to checking out books, I’m a lot less so. I brought along my Amazon Wish List of books, in hopes that I could borrow some. (This is my new attempt at buying fewer books, since at the moment there’s no place to keep them in our apartment after I read them.) There are more than 20 books on my wish list, and most of them have been out for a while, but I only found three at the SFPL. All the rest were either checked out, overdue, or lost. That was disappointing. I vaguely remember that this was the reason I quit checking out books from the library in the first place. They never seemed to have anything I was looking for.

Anyway, I got some new books to read and I got some writing done. All in all, it was a productive day, since I had gotten some writing done in the morning, and I was able to set up an interview for a freelance story.

All that and I picked up the dry cleaning. Which was really just another ploy to get out of the house.

Missing Boston

I have mixed feelings about leaving Boston. There are things about being here that I like. Of course, when I’m here I am always missing something about San Francisco. And when I am in San Francisco there are things (fewer things, but things all the same) that I miss about being in Boston.

People are fickle. I am a bundle of contradictions. What can I say?

Most of what I appreciate about Boston is not necessarily particular to the place, but particular to my circumstances; the stops and routines of my life here. I have gotten used to it, and now I must make changes.

-I will miss having 3 coffee shops within a block of my apartment. There are certainly 3 coffee shops in my neighborhood in San Francisco — more than that, actually, but they are not within a block, and there is a hill involved in at least one direction. But that’s not to say I prefer one place over the other; each neighborhood has its perks, and my routine adjusts to each. I will not miss slogging through ankle-deep slush to get to a coffee shop, for example. But I will miss going to Carberry’s, an independent café here in Central Square where I have gotten a tremendous amount of writing done (and consumed a lot of chocolate chocolate-chip cookies, coffee, and mint tea). The place possesses all of the attributes I look for in a writing location: coffee, cookies, a bathroom that doesn’t require a key, sandwiches and juice (for when the writing session runs long), space between tables (I hate being right up next to someone when I am trying to write) and complete indifference to customers who stay for hours on one cup of coffee.

-I will of course miss the friends I have made here. I’ve gotten close to several women whom I meet – often on a whim – for beer, coffee, crepes, sushi, tapas, movies, etc., and it’s nice to live a) close to them and b)be comfortable enough to meet up without having every interaction be a stressful ordeal or planned weeks in advance.

-Eastern time. It’s nice to be able to call friends and family in the evenings without having to worry about whether they are asleep already because of the time difference. (On the other hand, I won’t miss forcing myself to stay awake so that I can talk to Billy on nights when he has gotten home late in CA.)

-The weather. I know it’s ridiculous, but I will miss the changeable moods of Boston’s weather. That’s not to say that I always enjoy those moods, but I can’t say that the climate here isn’t interesting. I never know what is going to happen when I wake up in the morning. Snow, rain, hail, sun, wind… Sometimes all in one day. I will miss seeing the snow, though I won’t miss getting around in it. I’ll also miss the mild temperatures of (some) spring days and the heat of the summer. I love hot weather, and let’s face it, San Francisco is decidedly lacking in that.

-There are other silly things, like the neighborhood bar/restaurant less than a block from my apartment that serves the best fried mozzarella (it’s fresh mozzarella, not that processed tasteless stuff, and it’s served in a creamy tomato basil sauce). Or having a 7-11 just steps from my door. It’s amazing how often I visited the Sev at 11 o’clock at night to pick up some ice cream or bread or half and half or something like that. It’s been nice to have Hollywood Express just downstairs too, for sudden decisions to watch movies, and for an excellent selection of foreign films.

And there are small details, like brick sidewalks, packs of fat squirrels roaming the Common, the swoon-worthy stationer’s shop in Harvard Square, the number of excellent bookstores within 15 minutes (foot or train) of my apartment (at least 10), buying clothes sales-tax free, everyone’s spirited support of the Red Sox, Boston accents, and the fact that sometimes, when I am crossing the Charles on the T, the architecture and the trees and the repetition of bridges over the river make me think that I could be in Europe.

missing girls

I spent the weekend reading and writing, all battened down and hermit-like. I have learned that in order to be productive over long stretches of time when I am alone, I must leave the apartment. So, for the past three days I have done a little work in the morning at home, then headed out to a coffee shop for a few hours of writing. I am much more productive in cafes than I am at home. The difference is the Internet, or lack thereof. The Internet, while a technological advance that I would have a hard time at this point doing without, is also my greatest distraction. I read blogs, headlines, news stories. I check what movies are playing (though I have no plans to see any), I check what’s on TV, I play games, I download music. Luckily for me, my computer is starting to become obsolete at a mere 3.5 years of age, so it does not have wireless capabilities. Someday, when I get a new laptop, Starbucks and its happy wireless offerings will be off limits.

Until then, I visit Starbucks (two different branches!) and another local cafe whose name I always forget (but whose cookies I do not: yum!). And I get a lot of work done. I have –amazingly — been sticking to my daily two page minimum, and the result is I have basically written a chapter in six days. Whoohoo! I am pretty excited about this chapter, too, since it covers a topic that I feel strongly about. The chapter centers around one of my female adult students in Korea, who had a difficult life, mostly because of her gender. Then there is a section about “missing girls” in Korea, the practice of sex-selective abortions that is common, though illegal.  (the sex-selection part, not the abortions. It’s illegal to find out the sex of your unborn child in Korea. Which seems weird, since here in the U.S. it’s pretty hard to get away with not finding out the sex of your baby.) Anyway, this sex-selection was happening so much, particularly in the early 90s, that there’s a society-wide gender imbalance that is resulting in there not being enough women of marriageable age for Korean men. Which, as you can imagine, causes problems for the sustainability of a society. Korea has been a very Confucian country, which means a strong preference for boys. Men are responsible for taking care of their parents in old age, running family ceremonies, and, until recently, providing for their families. Daughters serve few functions, comparatively.
The question that has always plagued me about this is, How, as a woman, can you stomach being complicit in a practice that serves to erase your own kind? How much do you have to hate yourself and your existence to believe that a boy deserves to live more than a girl? This isn’t, by the way, a screed against abortion; I am very pro-choice. But not letting girls be born is something else entirely.

Anyway, enough about that. If you want to know more, you’ll have to read my book. : )

Starbucks II

I’m back at Starbucks. My current attempt to counteract the ever-present Starbucks coffee bitterness is to add two packets of raw sugar and an unhealthy amount of half and half. It works, sort of.

Today the weather in Boston is quite lovely: 70s, sunny, not too much breeze. I haven’t been outside much, though. My day got away from me somehow, between Internet surfing, laundry, and a chat on the phone with my Dad before he heads to Crete. Ok, Ok, so I played about 50 rounds of solitaire on my computer. Maybe more than 50. I won a bunch of times, so odds-wise, it might have been more than 50. I have a cold, that’s my excuse. Also, it’s my birthday. I can do whatever I like, right?

I tried to go somewhere else today for my café writing session. There’s a very cute independent coffee shop in my neighborhood — in fact, just around the corner from my apartment. It’s called 1369 Coffeehouse. I don’t know why it’s called 1369. At first I thought it must be the address: 1369 Massachusetts Ave. But it’s in the 600 block. Whatever, I like their coffee. Many, many students frequent 1369 for studying. It’s almost always completely packed. Today there were some seats. But I didn’t go in. It’s a very narrow store, about half the width of Starbucks. Just about everyone in the café is in there solo, with a laptop. They all face forward, toward the street, so that if you look in the front window, everyone looks back at you. I felt uncool and intimidated by this today. So I chose the anonymity of Starbucks.

I’ve got a travel essay due in 10 days or so, and I have been struggling today over what to write. It’s strange to have someone tell you, “hey, write a travel story,” when you haven’t just traveled somewhere. This means I need to either make a new, better essay out of some older travel material, or go out and experience something in Boston and write about that. I am tempted to do that, but also want to make some of my older writing more marketable, so it’s a tough call.

One idea is to comb the city for the best Boston Cream Pie or something silly like that. That might be fun. Another would be to detail my hike to Half Dome this summer. But I feel like that’s sort of a been there, done that kind of story. And then there’s the wedding we attended in Poland. I’d really like to do something with that before it’s too late. It may be too late already. I don’t know.

Wow, weird blog interlude: As I write this, a tall blonde guy just passed by the Starbucks window I am sitting by. He wore a pink oxford (really), open to the chest, with a pair of blue canvas shorts and a white canvas belt. The whole ensemble was so J. Crew, so preppy, so 1985, that it was rather startling.

So much so, I don’t think I can write anymore. Wow.

Avoiding Alice Munro

I have taken to drinking decaf in whatever coffee shop I can find when trying to desperately to concentrate. (There are, strangely, fewer cafes in my neighborhood in Cambridge than there are in my neighborhood in San Francisco.)

Today, it’s Starbucks. Of course, no matter what neighborhood you are in, there is always Starbucks. Today, Starbucks is playing some godawful music that is jarring, annoying and distracting. That’s a first for me at Starbucks. Despite whatever bad things you may be able to say about the rampant spread of the chain, the bleakness of their coffee (I’ll come back to that) and the people who frequent the place, you can usually say that at least they play semi-decent music, something jazzy that fades to the background as you read the newspaper or your book. You can usually say, too, that Starbucks has a pleasant atmosphere that includes comfy chairs and swirly, if generic, Starbucks art.

Today is not usually. Today Starbucks is playing something between country and Beach Boys and college rock (complete with loping guitar), and I am sitting on a hard chair while the muscles in my back seize up.

What is predictable about today and Starbucks is the coffee. My god! Why is it that no matter how much half and half you pour into a cup of Starbucks coffee, it’s still unbelievably bitter and it remains so hot you burn your tongue? I think Starbucks actually brings its coffee to a boil before serving it. In fact, I think it says it on the cup: “Careful, the beverage that’s about to scald the heck out of your tongue is extremely bitter. It’s been boiling for the past half an hour.”

OK, that’s not actually what it says.

I fled here from the too-quiet of my apartment because I was trying to work on an assignment and found myself searching WebMD for symptoms to medical problems I don’t even have. Luckily, I don’t have wireless* or else escaping to Starbucks wouldn’t have helped my concentration at all. Whether it is indeed helping is up for debate, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is.

*(The black-shirted folks at Apple apparently thought, “Hey, why make people buy a wireless card when we can make them buy a whole new computer?” This is obviously why they have stopped making the wireless card for my edition of the iBook.)

Anyway, I was trying to do this assignment for my lit class. I knew it was going to be a problem all weekend, because I kept thinking about how much I didn’t want to do it. The assignment was to write two scenes; one in the style of Alice Munro and one in the style of Raymond Carver. The Carver is fairly easy (think Hemingway without the pretension), but the Munro is killing me. Isn’t really good writing supposed to be un-imitatable? No doubt a person who uses words like un-imitatable is incapable of copying a great writer anyway. I recognize that Munro is a great short story writer. Her stories are intricate and honest. They carry truth like a burden. The problem is that I while I think they are brilliant, I find them incredibly depressing.

When I was in high school, I read every Anne Tyler novel I could get my hands on. Maybe I was in college, not high school. Anyway, I read all of Anne Tyler. I loved her books. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist, etc. etc. They were dysfunctional and dreary and about Baltimore. (Maybe dysfunctional and dreary because they were about Baltimore?) At the time, I thought the only way for a book to be good was if it was down and dreary. What can I say? I was full of angst and I wore a lot of black.

The mood of an Anne Tyler novel is a lot like the mood of an Alice Munro short story. Which is to say, depressing. At least Munro’s stories are set in Canada instead of Baltimore. (Um, yeah. You can fill in the witty Canada put-down here, if you like.) Sometime after college, I became unable to read Anne Tyler books. I would see her new novels out in hardcover on bookstore tables, and I would walk away defiantly. I would like to do this with Alice Munro, except that we are reading an entire collection of her stories in this class.

And I’ve got to copy her style.