Fifteen years ago, a coworker pushed into my softly-lit office one Monday morning and settled herself in one of the two chairs on the opposite side of my desk. I knew she was irritated by her body language and the way she sat on the edge of the chair, as if preparing to leap across and tear out my throat.
I didn’t like overhead lights, so they were off, and the room was lit only by two standing lamps and a green one on my desk.
“It’s too dark in here.” She pursed her lips like the SNL church lady. “This doesn’t look like an office.”
My first thought that I somehow held back was, Your mouth looks like a cat’s ass.
“It does too.” (I wonder if I meant her mouth, or the office.) Here’s a desk. There’s a computer, and I have an electric pencil sharpener. It’s a real workspace.”
“You know what I mean.”
You don’t know what I meant, though. Then I spoke aloud. “I thought I did.”
She got right to the point. “So just what do you do all day?” She hammered that word hard.
My puckered visitor was a director in another department, and apparently didn’t like the fact that I was behind my desk late one morning, pounding on my computer keyboard, instead of sitting in some other inane meeting like the one she’d just left.
I also knew she was miffed because I’d refused to attend her “mandatory” 4:00 PM meeting the previous Friday afternoon. In my opinion, the meeting was only a way to flex her administrative muscles over those who worked under her so they couldn’t go home until 6:00.
I was the Director of Communications and crisis management for the then tenth largest school district in Texas. We had 7,500 employees and 56,000 kids, and someone was messing up every single day.
Considering her question about my work ethic, I leaned back and propped my feet on my desk for emphasis. “What I do all day is exactly what I was doing when you rolled in.”
“And what’s that?”
“Keeping your people out of trouble and dealing with the media. Your people need direction that your coordinators aren’t providing, and since I’ve been in this business for almost thirty-five years, I have a little experience in crisis management to handle these issues so they won’t wind up on the shoulders of your building administrators where they can’t do their job.”
She glared. “You look like you’re just sitting there, twiddling your thumbs every time I go by, and you’re always on the phone. It never looks like you’re doing anything.”
“That’s because I’m good at my job. Looks easy, don’t it?”
“I think you make it appear like you’re working.”
“Okay.” As a visual aid, I reached over and sharpened a pencil. She stomped out and though we’re still “friends,” that day has never come back up in conversation.
Our little exchange came back not too long ago in a writing workshop when a young lady raised her hand when I asked for questions.
“So now that you’re an author, what do you do all day?”
“I sit behind a desk, or sometimes on the couch, or on the bed, or on a table-cum-desk at our cabin and think a lot of the time. Then I pound on the keyboard, making stuff up.”
“So you write all day?”
“Some days. But I don’t always look like I’m working. Sometimes I read, or look out the window. When I lean back and close my eyes, story lines, bits of dialogue, and descriptions roll past. Sometimes I watch TV. Writers are always thinking, so sometimes I have to pause the movie or program to take a note or two. They sometimes trigger a bit of dialogue, or a plot line, or even an idea for my weekly newspaper columns.”
“Isn’t that stealing?”
“Nope, according to academics, there are only seven basic storytelling plots that we all re-work, though a couple of overachievers say there might be as many as thirty. The basics are overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, rebirth, comedy, and tragedy. We all just build those same stories and do it in our voice.”
“Can your wife tell you’re working?”
“Why, have you been talking to her? Did she say something?”
Thankfully the conversation moved on.
I’m always working, though there are times when this author’s mind needs some relief. There are days when words flow from a firehose, but at other times I run into hills and the pace slows as I struggle to the top. Good or bad, my mind wanders. I suffer distractions.
Squirrel!
After 37 years, I still write a weekly newspaper column that allows me to go in an entirely different direction in my writing. Changing lanes freshens my mind, and the little 900-word stories get me onto a different track.
There are other times, though, when I write a scene and need details I haven’t seen or experienced for myself. That leads to the Google and The Rabbit Hole. It isn’t a bad thing. As I research, or surf, I find ideas, stories, and anecdotes that make their way into my plot. But as all writers can tell you, it’s a huge time-suck that can impact your page or word count for that day.
But I’m still working, though I might not look like it.
Sometimes I need to put myself in that place. That’s when I watch a movie set in the period I’m working on, looking for details that might not have occurred to me.
I also feel guilty most of the time. I want to write, but at the same time, I really want to read whatever is in my TBR pile. That’s where books come in. For example, I’m working on my fifth western at this writing and needed some real cowboy lingo. While the Bride and I were in Alpine, Texas, for their annual Art Walk back in November, she found me a copy of We Pointed Them North, by Teddy Blue. That book is an encyclopedia of the cowboy way of life.
Within those pages he once referred to himself as a cow catcher, instead of cowboy. That went into the manuscript. He also explained the origin of cow puncher. When a cattle drive was over and they finally got the herd to the railroad, the stock had to be loaded onto the cars. To get the cattle moving, the boys used long poles to punch them in the rear end, forcing them forward to make room for more.
Who knew?
So just what do authors do all day?
We noodle around on the internet, make things up, daydream, stare out the window–––
Squirrel!
––– find things to do in order not to work, read, think, stare out the window some more, and sometimes attend conferences where we interact with others, thereby finding inspiration to string words together when we get home, hopefully choosing the ones that carry readers along with us on the fictional journey created in our minds. Then we write.
Yeah, lady, I was working then, and now, but sometimes you just can’t tell it.
You stated the truth about us authors. It’s a process and every writer has to find their way through this amazing journey of being an author. There are days I write for 12 hours straight, stopping for a bathroom break and getting a little bite to eat. Then there are other days when I’m looking at a movie, or reading a book, or doing research for my novel, first one I’m currently writing. I can’t really explain to people what I do because many don’t understand. They think I’m not doing anything, like the lady in your story. But when the book comes out, I’m sure they’ll say – “Oh, you were working.” LOL.
Then someone comes up and asks how you do it? My answer sometimes is “I don’t know,” followed up by, “Put your rear in the seat and get after it.”
Then I wish I was reading when I’m writing, and fell guilty I’m not working when I open a book.
It’s a wonderful conundrum.
So true, Rev. Problem solving requires thinking. Thinking doesn’t appear active, like swinging a pick or operating a backhoe. Or attending a pointless meeting that generates meaningless reports that accomplish nothing.
Writing is an invisible activity until it shows up as an article, post, or published book.
Much of my work gets done during daily walks. Yet if I told most people I was working then, they’d give me the side eye. “Ri-i-i-ight.”
Oh well. Then I go back to the computer and kill off characters like your administrator.
Haha. Same!
My Bride thinks when she walks. I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m on deadline for my newspaper column every Wednesday morning. Most of the time there’s no idea at all, so I get in the shower, turn on talk radio, and let my mind wander. More than three-quarters of the time something will come to me.
If that doesn’t work, I sit down at the computer, put my fingers on the keyboard and write a few words. The column comes from my subconscious RIGHT THEN. It’s something I can’t explain, other than I’ve worked on it in my sleep…maybe.
It took a while for the Hubster to understand that not hearing the keyboard clicking didn’t mean I wasn’t working. Once he connected my writing fiction to his writing scientific papers or work memos, we were good.
Research, research, research…think, read, repeat same.
Well said, Rev! I’ve tried to explain a day in the life of a writer, but I’m often met with glazed-over eyes. Next time, I’ll refer them to this post. Thanks!
It’s hard to explain, just like when they ask what are you working on and you try to tell them. It’s simply too much information. Try, “I spend the day at the keyboard, making stuff up.”
Thank for for the words of validation. Sometimes I feel guilty for the piddling number of words that appear on the page on any given day. But I do all the things you mentioned and manage to crank out 90,000 to 100,000 word manuscripts by contract deadlines. (I was a public relations manager for a municipal government department in a city of 1.3 million for 22 years so I have an inkling of what you experienced with people having no clue what you did each day.)
I have a NYT bestselling friend who manages a page a day, and agonizes over each word. I can’t comprehend such an existence. She’s a fine author, though, and I’d never try and give her advice.
Hadn’t given much thought to what it “looks like” when people are observing a writer but I can understand the confusion especially now in our highly ADHD culture. But I suppose it does look a bit weird to be staring off into space, hands poised over your keyboard or looking like you’re just surfing the net when you’re trying to do research.
But who cares what they think? We’re going to keep doing it anyway. LOL!
That’s right. I knew a guy who wanted things done his way, even though an employee might think of something better. I explained we should just let creative people think, but he was such a control freak he couldn’t let go.
Even when we did something together beyond work, he’d try and tell me how to do a job. I explained each time, “I don’t work for you, and if you want it done a certain way, do it yourself.”
You captured the working life of a writer perfectly, Rev. There’s so much more that goes into our writing than pounding the keyboard, though that is central, most of the times. Research, revision, rethinking, recharging our creativity, and still more. It’s all necessary.
There are hundreds of moving components that we don’t even think about. Looking at someone talking to you and thinking, “Your nose is slightly crooked. I think my antagonist would look good with that schnoz.”
Or listening to someone and thinking of creative ways to dispatch them in a book…I guess I shouldn’t have said that.
My dad had a saying, “The problem with free time is someone else wants to use it.” The same goes for writers, particularly women. Very few people understand or respect our work time and hours. That why people pleasers rarely finish a novel.
To avoid minor rabbit hole problems, I will insert something like (what type of sailboat is this) in the manuscript to check later. Major rabbit hole problems that can screw up the plot can’t wait.
An attack of whatchamacallit can stop me dead in my tracks like an attack of writer’s block. Search engines help this now. Back in the day, the name for a part of a ladder could stop me for hours.
I understand completely. I use the Dos Equis idea. Oftentimes when I come to something or some word that evades me, I’ll type XX and go on to come back to it later.
Other times I really need a break, so that rabbit hole is good for momentary escape. Many times I’ll run across some tidbit in that research that comes back and weaves itself into the plot.
Glad to read this, Rev.
It assuages my why-am-I-not-writing guilt a bit…