“I used to think I couldn’t write without a scotch and a cigarette and one of the scariest things about quitting one then the other was the idea that I wouldn’t be able to write. Well, I quit and I write. That’s more about addiction than about writing. Then I thought I couldn’t write without my dog nearby, but my dog passed away and I still write. One day this summer I wrote in a room full of people in bathing suits cooking bacon. Not for long, though. How to get out of bed and get my coffee without waking up too much before I start writing is a big deal for me. I don’t like to eat until I’m incredibly hungry when I’m writing. I don’t write with music, but I don’t mind ambient sound. I like to be near a window with not a lot going on outside. My current study has a window that is completely filled with hedge and sometimes birds poke around in it. Perfect. I don’t write every day. I wait until I can’t bear it and then I write, or I write because I can’t wait to write, or I write because there are nuts I want to crack. I was a kid who made ice cream last. I don’t believe in letting writing time be agony. I don’t believe in letting insomnia get me, either. I get up or I take a pill, no thrashing around. The bed needs to be a beautiful place, and the desk does, too. If writing is some kind of agony, I should get over myself and do something nice for the neighborhood. I do ritualize everything, though. I need to because of whatever kind of brain I have. So whatever my writing situation is, I ritualize it, I’m just learning that I can make a ritual out of anything, and it’s not the ritual so much as the ritualizing: making some kind of rhythm in a way that makes something some kind of sacred.” Lucy Corin in American Short Fiction blog. Lucy has a new site.
1 comment:
Yes, I love this.
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