A Day in the Life

At the end of four weeks, after three abbeys, and approximately seventy walked miles I find myself settled into a sort of rhythm. A writer’s rhythm.

For this time and in this place that looks something like sleep, eat, write, walk, read, go on the occasional adventure, and write some more.

It’s the writer’s dream life, and I pray to the cows that walk back and forth across the slopes of the nearby hill in a regimented pattern like a typewriter’s carriage, like restless gods that I’m not taking a minute of it for granted.

Here I am. And what a place in which to find myself. With more focused moments to spend writing and thinking, I am finally developing the two main characters of my novel. They begin to pick up quirks and habits of their own; the constant averaging of numbers, the daily practice of music, the dependence on each other that is their joy and downfall. They begin to speak more forcefully and their silences begin to hold more weight.

As I stare at my computer and then stare out my window at the ever-changing clouds, Amelia and Lindbergh take breath and learn to sing.   

Now, as my days progress, I find excitement in the work. Instead of watching the timer to see how much more of my writing hour I have left, I watch the timer to see how many hours I’ve reached so far for the day. With a competitor’s desire to best a score, I get my daily average up to three hours and then to four. Then to 4.43.  

Yet, it’s still down and up and down again. Some afternoons, the timer clicks the seconds by and the word count doesn’t seem to increase by much at all. And I think, come on, go faster. For I want to finish this draft before the end of June. I glance at my clock, I glance at my computer screen; it’ll never happen at this rate.

Other days, I find that I’ve been so wrapped up in a scene that when I get a phone call I can’t seem to disconnect from the fictional world wholeheartedly enough to have a meaningful conversation. Later, I apologize for the distraction (to my real world friend, not the fictional characters), surprised by what immersion feels like, analyzing my process, my feelings, my progress as if through a microscope.

Ah, this is what creation is. This is what it means to write. This is what a writer looks like at the cellular level. This is what it looks like on the macro level. See that funny twitch of the eye, see that unstretched aching back, see those gnarled, knobby fingers.

Yet other days, I can’t see the words for the paragraphs. I can’t pinpoint the tone of voice, the scene, or the direction of the story as a whole.

Then I turn my gaze to the window and watch the wind move the branches of the wild cherry tree, watch a hedge bird dart out from the hedge, and wonder, what’s the point?

When that question arises, I also arise and get out to clear my head. There’s nothing like a brisk walk with breathtaking sunsets, blinding sunshine, the avoidance of mud puddles, or the startled call of the pheasant to sweep out the accumulated dust in my brain and let in some fresh thoughts.

Look, I say, this is Scotland. You’re in Scotland. Who in this world is as lucky as you?

I swing my arms as I walk my way back to my own room, my Virginia Woolf “room of her own,” back to my computer, back to my work.

Writing, for me, is as fickle as this year’s spring – teasing with sunshine, teasing with budded out trees, teasing with daffodils and lengthening grass. It’s as cold as the northeast wind that blows rain sideways at me halfway through a walk and makes me breathless, wet (is my raincoat really only a windbreaker?), and exhilarated. It’s the brief storms that leave their clouds and the overcast pressure of threatening rain.  

Writing, for me, is as bright as a sunrise serenaded by early-rising birds; too early, too loud, too full of promise. As energizing as the view of far off mountains—I could get there if I walked long enough (I could get to the end if I wrote long enough). As intriguing a menace as a distant tower, as inspiring as a hill successfully climbed. It’s a mass of contradictions, a pushing and a pulling. A give and a take. A plus and a minus.

Here, in Scotland, in this spring of growing content, I find my rhythm. Even if this rhythm has a little bit of a different beat each day. Even if this rhythm means that one evening after adding 988 words (which is a fair showing for a day’s work for me), I delete 19,157.

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King said, “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story… When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

Although, I’m not rewriting yet, I know enough of the telling story to know that those precious 19,157 words (which represent approximately 50 hours of work, more or less) are NOT the story. Keeping them will hinder my progress. Yes, but. Yes, but nothing. So, I bid them goodbye and send them away.

That’s just how it goes.

And yet, seeing my total word count so diminished, I sigh, put on my borrowed Wellies, and go out for a four mile walk. To my right is the sunset, to my left a rainbow. There, four deer run by.

I once heard a story of a painter who studied under some great master. One day, the painter painted a picture so beautiful he fell in love with it. “Look at what I’ve done!” he told the master. “Look at this beautiful thing I’ve created!” The painter, so enamored with his work became listless and dreamy. He couldn’t work for spending so much time gazing upon his magnum opus.  

One day, the painter returned to his studio to find his painting, his beautiful, perfect painting destroyed. “What have you done?” he cried to the master, distraught and heartbroken. “Why have you done this to me?”

“You have learned what it is to make something good,” the master said. “Now make something better.”

As the duchess in Alice in Wonderland said, “The moral of that is….”

And as the narrator in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando said, speaking of what cannot be adequately expressed, and which I use here to finish of the duchess’s sentence, “…[It] cannot be written down. For which reasons we leave a great blank here, which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion" (176).

Morals or not, space or repletion, I want to make something great.

It’s not the word count, the time put in, the page numbers that matter. It’s the story. It’s only the story that matters.

So, the day after the great word cut, I sit down and work. The day after that I work some more. At one point, I stand and go to peer out the window as a flock of nineteen swans fly by. Necks stretched out, white wings gleaming like alabaster in the sun. I count them twice. I didn’t know swans flew as a flock. Maybe they’re only taking a daytrip, like a guided bus tour, over to the little loch. Maybe they’ll part ways at the end of the afternoon, after their tea. Meanwhile, Lindbergh buys a house and Amelia questions the keeping of secrets.

In between the hours recorded by my faithful timer, I evaluate my calendar. Like my character, I average out numbers (daily word count, page numbers, number of days between now and the end of June) to see if my deadline is reasonable. Maybe. I think so. If I don’t cut out another 19,157 words.

But, if I do, I’ll carry on anyway. “I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” as Samuel Beckett said in The Unnamable. My favorite quote for now. Applicable in so many situations. So poetic, so contradictory, so perfect.

In the morning, I write dialogue between Amelia and Lindbergh, doubting that it’s believable for their ages, knowing that believability doesn’t matter in a first draft, wanting something to be perfect the very first time. Ah, but it so seldom is. That’s the glory and the dream. Or do I mean, the dream and the glory? Work, rework. Write, rewrite. Edit, reedit.

In the afternoon, I look up young men’s hairstyles from 2005. I listen to Chopin’s Complete Nocturnes as played by Brigitte Engerer on repeat. I have twenty-three tabs open with internet search results. I introduce a new character, overthinking as I do: What will she do? What impact will she have? Why is she important? Should I just cut her out now?

On this day, I work for four hours. I write 1209 words. I go for a walk. I eat my dinner. I wash up the dishes. The sun casts pink shadows on the undersides of the clouds. The night bird sings from the limbs of the wild cherry tree.

Thank you for reading!

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