Write about Writing

I absolutely love writing.

Ever since I was a child and would sit in my grandfather's lap, writing page upon page of cursive "e"s, I've had a special bond with pen and paper that no mortal can turn asunder.

In third grade, I learned how to write in cursive. Shaving cream on my desktop and slathered up to my elbows, I practiced forming the letters over and over until they adhered in my mind. It was thrilling - all of a sudden, my letters could be formed as a continuous string without pausing to form each letter individually. Instead, my pen could move with fluid ease across the page, guided by my knowledgeable hand and my creatively oozing brain. The world was my oyster, and I was cracking it all to pieces.

In fourth grade, my love of writing bit me in the butt. I was noticed for my "excellence in English," and was asked to undergo a series of tests to gauge my abilities. I was noted as "Talented" on the "Gifted and Talented" scale, and thus was separated even further from my classmates (who already saw me as a scholastic threat with my fantastic spelling and my absolute lack of fashion sense). I attended weekly classes with other students of my caliber in the district, and diagrammed sentences until my brain melted and oozed out of my ears. Creativity fell by the wayside as focus was placed more heavily upon grammar and practical application.

In sixth grade, I was granted access to a classroom computer for more than just the perfunctory good-behavior reward of a once-monthly binge of Oregon Trail.**1 My typing skills began to accelerate, albeit only to a degree - they only really took off once we got a home computer with an internet connection and I was introduced to Online Chatting. It was Yahoo! messenger that really taught me my keyboarding skills and allowed me to begin constructing written thoughts at the speed with which my brain typically functions.

Such has been the decline of pen and paper within my world. I work on a computer for at least 8 hours every day. When I'm not looking at a computer screen, I'm often gazing upon my cell phone with rapt attention. At home, I stare at the television.

Sure, on occasion I'll pick up a book. I'm currently reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, and am loving every moment of that adventure. But I don't make time for it nearly as often as I'd like... in part because of the inundation of electronic devices. When I get home from work, the television is on for Boyfriend of Amazingness's video games. It gets turned off if we leave the house to run errands, but is often turned back on again immediately following our return. It's on while we eat dinner. It's on until it's time to go to bed. And on any given weekend morning, it's often the first sign of life in the living room.

I was considering this fact on my commute to work this morning. Weekday mornings I often feel the most compelled to write. The ideas flow most freely at one particular moment: As I sit in the driver's seat of my newly-parked car in the parking garage before I walk in to the office.

Considering this phenomenon, I tried this morning to decipher why those creative juices might be flowing at that particular moment from day to day throughout the week.

My realization was that the Great Glass Eye is a killer of creativity.

The television is turned off around 10:00 p.m. on weeknights so that the residents of my humble home can go to bed.

It doesn't get turned on for weekday mornings because it would suck up precious work-prep time.

So when I arrive at my parking spot, it's often after a ten-hour technology purge. I might perform a quick status review of my cell phone when I uplug it in the morning before sliding it into my pocket, but I don't get sucked into its technological abyss for any length of time. I don't look at a computer until I get to work and boot it up. It's just me and the thoughts I feel inclined to think, from the moment I lay down my head in the evening to the moment I plant my posterior in my cubicle in the morning.

This can be unfortunate, because I often don't have time to put my thoughts together for my blog until after I've been seated in front of a computer for a number of hours during my workday morning. Lunchtime is typically the first opportunity for my creativity to burst free, and sometimes lunchtime is simply too late. Like the proverbial video killing the radiostar, computer screens kill my cranial-star and the stories just dry up before coming to fruition.

This morning, I was excited to have the opportunity to try putting together my words earlier in the morning. I got to work at 7:30, turned on my computer at 7:45 and started to write at 8:07.**2 Although the sub-par caffeination was a stumbling block at first, I found myself feeling more and more inclined to assemble something pretty fabulous here.

But then I realized this will be a one-off. There's no way I'll be able to sustain morning posting.

Which led me to a revelation.

Perhaps it's time for me to take up the toting of a composition pad again.

When I was a child with absolutely zero focus, an uncle and aunt asked what I would like for my birthday. After tossing aside a couple of mass-produced-toy ideas, they asked what my favorite subject in school was. "Reading," I said. Their next question was about which type of book I liked to read. "Fantasy" was my reply. So, on my birthday, I was gifted with a beautiful purple composition book that said "Sunny's Fantasy Journal" on the front. I was encouraged to write my own stories, and I certainly did. I still have that composition pad, filled to brimming with my thoughts and plots and doodles.

Subsequently, a couple years ago when I decided to undertake NaNoWriMo, I began carrying around a composition book so I could scribble down thoughts whenever I thought them. It did wonders for my writing: Even when I sat down at a computer with nothing immediately jumping to mind as creative fodder, I was able to flip through my previously penned thoughts and pull together some of the best writing I had penned since The Adventures of Bear, The Amazing Dog when I was a second grader with lumpy penmanship and the inclination towards the fantastical.**3 Remembering can be hard for me, so it was helpful for me to be able to jot down thoughts as they occurred to me instead of trying to bring them back to the forefront of my mind once they had skittered out of my immediate focus.

Methinks, my ReaderFriends, that I'm going to initiate that undertaking again.

You all will be the first to reap those delicious, fascinating fruits... I promise.


**1 "You have died of dysentery." Remember that?

**2 Being in Reception can have its perks, you know... one of them being that Nonproductive time is part of the gig. I've answered phone calls, I've stamped parking badges and I've good-humorously greeted incoming guests. I've helped with outgoing faxes and coordinated the filling of coffee pots. And all of that took a grand total of fifteen minutes out of my morning.

**3 I once wrote a story where my Dad fell off the roof and broke his leg, and my Mom and Sister and I went to the hospital to visit him and we ate popsicles. It was so realistic that my teacher pulled my mother aside to ask after my Dad's health, since it seemed so far-fetched that this would be a work of fiction. Her fatal flaw: Doubting the creative depths I dared to plomb.