Over the
years I have heard and read any number of ways writers go about their business.
Most are relatively straightforward, others a little quirky. There is, for
instance, a writer from Texas who strolls the streets at night with pencil and
paper in hand, writing as he walks. There are people who do not write unless
certain conditions apply: a prescribed number of freshly sharpened pencils all
lined up; a favored selection of music playing in the background; a cowboy hat
perched atop the head.
And so on.
Me, I can
and do and have written things anywhere and everywhere. In airports and on
airplanes, on the bus, alone in my office, at the kitchen table surrounded by
family, in motel rooms, at all times of the day and night, in front of the TV,
with a radio or music or nothing playing…. Well, you get the idea.
I also write
in my sleep. Don’t ask me how it happens. But many (it would not be pushing it
to say most) mornings, I wake up with a string of words stuck in my mind. If I
went to bed with an advertising assignment pending, I would often awaken with
an idea, a headline, and even a draft of the copy ready and waiting.
It happens
with poetry, too. A couplet, a quatrain, a stanza, even the basis for an entire
poem may greet me with the sun. Or dialogue—a whole conversation between
characters—for a novel in progress. A way to say a passage, an opening or
closing line. An idea for a character, a story, a detailed concept for a novel,
the framework for an essay or magazine article.
Sometimes I
even see it happen. In that not-quite-asleep-but-not-yet-awake time in the
morning, ideas and words and phrases ricochet around in what passes for my
brain and I just sort of lay there and snooze and watch as they turn into
something useful.
That’s all
for now. I’m going to bed. Maybe, come the morning, I’ll have more to say.
