Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within (11 page)

Don’t be afraid to answer the questions. You will find endless resources inside yourself. Writing is the act of burning through the fog in your mind. Don’t carry the fog out on paper. Even if you are not sure of something, express it as though you know yourself. With this practice you eventually will.

The Action of a Sentence

V
ERBS ARE VERY
important. They are the action and energy of a sentence. Be aware of how you use them. Try this exercise. Fold a sheet of paper in half the long way. On the left side of the page list ten nouns. Any ten.

Now turn the paper over to the right column. Think of an occupation; for example, a carpenter, doctor, flight attendant. List fifteen verbs on the right half of the page that go with that position.

Open the page. You have nouns listed in a row down the left side and verbs listed on the right. Try joining the nouns with the verbs to see what new combinations you can get, and then finish the sentences, casting the verbs in the past tense if you need to.

Dinosaurs marinate in the earth.

The fiddles boiled the air with their music.

The lilacs sliced the sky into purple.

Here are some other examples of the use of verbs:

Her husband’s breath
sawing
her sleep in half . . .

The sunken light of late day
stretches
on their propane tank.
¹⁰

I
exploded
when I saw him . . .
¹¹

Others in pairs in cars to the moon
flashing
river.
¹²

. . . where angels and gladiolas
walk
your skin / to sleep in the earth . . .
¹³

My blood
buzzes
like a hornet’s nest.
¹⁴

This does not mean that while you are writing you should stop and contemplate a new verb for an hour. Only, be aware of your verbs and the power they have and use them in fresh ways. The more you are awake to all aspects of language, the more vibrant your writing will be. You might decide ultimately that
run, see, go
, are for you. That’s fine, but then it is a choice you make rather than some place in your sentence where you are unaware, asleep and snoring.

Writing in Restaurants

I
AM SITTING
in a dining car in San Cristóbal, New Mexico. The town has about sixty-eight people, and the Spanish woman who runs the diner has owned the land since 1948. She just returned from Arizona and has opened it again. The town says she has to dig her own well, so until she does there is no cooking on the premises. Therefore, my choices for this two-hour writing session are cigarettes, Coke, Mountain Dew, Tom’s Red Twists, Super Bubble in plain, grape, or apple, Snickers, Fire Stix, Alka-Seltzer, Tums, Kool-Aid in raspberry or tropical punch flavor, a quart of milk, or a dozen eggs. I must order something and it must be more than a Coke, because I hope to be here awhile.

That is the first rule. When you select a café to write in, you must establish a relationship. Go hungry so you will want to eat. There have been times when I wasn’t hungry and ordered a meal anyway, then pushed it aside and took out my notebook. Occasionally, I picked at the fried onions or the spinach salad during the next hour or so. If I order coffee, I don’t take advantage of the free refills. I want the people in the restaurant to know I appreciate the time and space they are giving me. Also, if you are taking up a table for a few hours, leave more than the ordinary tip. The waitress makes money on table turnover, and you are staying longer than your turn. Do not show up at lunch or dinner when they are the most crowded. Go at the end of rush hour when the waitress will be glad to see you, because she is very tired and knows you won’t order a lot and don’t expect fast service.

I know this sounds like a very expensive way to write, but this is only the first time. After the initial introduction, you begin quite easily to become a routine. “Oh, there’s the writer. How’s it going? Want a coffee refill on the house?”

When I lived in Minneapolis, a friend called and said, “A new restaurant just opened at Calhoun Square. Let’s have dinner and write there.” That’s when I first realized that there is an art to selecting a good writing place. This new restaurant was totally inappropriate; I could tell at first glance. First of all, it was too fancy and was bent on serving good, creative dishes. They wanted people eating. They didn’t want great literature written while we leaned on their violet, pale blue, and white linen tablecloths.

Usually, I pick original places, not chain restaurants like McDonald’s. Besides the fact that chain restaurants are all plastic, the seats are often uncomfortable. You want a place that lends a human atmosphere, not everything efficient, stiff, and bright orange.

But why go to all this bother? Why not just stay home and write? It is a trick I use. It’s good to change the scenery from time to time, and at home there is the telephone, the refrigerator, the dishes to be washed, a shower to be taken, the letter carrier to greet. It’s good to get away. Also, if you made the effort to get to a café, you can’t leave so quickly to do something else the way you can in your own home.

And the mind is a trickster. It seems that when I write, a hundred pleasurable activities come to mind that I would rather do. I remember once being given a cabin in northern Minnesota for a week. The second day I was sitting down in front of the typewriter to work on a short story. There was a view of late June aspens and beet leaves, lettuce, zinnias from the garden. A great blue sky. Suddenly I was in a bathing suit, ankle-deep in the lake, which was a quarter of a mile from the cabin. About to dive headfirst, I became awake: “Natalie, what are you doing here? You just sat down to write the third page of your short story!” Usually I don’t get quite that far before I catch myself.

We can give it different names, but basically it is that part of our mind that is resistant that begins to activate when we do these tricks. What does it want to resist? Work and concentration.

There was a period last fall when every time I began to write, I went into a perfect blank-minded euphoria, where I stared out the window and felt a love for and oneness with everything. I sat in this state, sometimes for the whole time I had planned to write. I thought to myself, “Lo and behold, I am becoming enlightened! This is much more important than writing, and besides this is where all writing leads.” After this had gone on for quite a while, I asked Katagiri Roshi about it. He said, “Oh, it’s just laziness. Get to work.”

I have read about flotation tanks, where sensory input is reduced considerably, since you are in a dark box, immersed in ten inches of warm water. Concentration is increased because of the restriction of sensory stimulation.

Oddly enough, writing in a café can work, too, to improve concentration. But instead of reducing stimulation, the café atmosphere keeps that sensory part of you busy and happy, so that the deeper, quieter part of you that creates and concentrates is free to do so. It is something like occupying a baby with tricks, while slipping the spoon full of applesauce into her mouth. Mozart used to have his wife read stories to him while he was composing for the same reason.

The stimulation in a restaurant can also be used in another way. Turn to face it and get on that carousel and go for a ride. Keeping your hand moving, write with the waves of energy, throwing in details you catch from around you and mixing them with your own thought flashes. The outside excitement can stimulate and awaken feelings inside you. There is a wonderful give and take.

In Paris, I was astounded by how many cafés there were. It is considered impolite to hurry a customer. You can order one coffee at eight A.M. and still be sipping it with no pressure at three P.M. Hemingway in
A Moveable Feast
(it’s a great book!—read it!) tells of writing in cafés in Paris and how James Joyce might be a few tables away. When I arrived there last June, I understood why so many American writers became expatriates: there are probably five cafés to every block in Paris, and they are all beckoning you to write, and writing in them is very acceptable.

In America, people are wary of writing. Except for filling out a form or writing a check, they think it is very exotic, so they leave you alone, though some are secretly fascinated and glance over at you every once in a while. Writing is not a natural part of the American context. Use that attitude to your advantage. You will be left alone when you write in public. Only once, when I was in Nebraska, did a warm, friendly waitress come over and address it directly: “What are you writing about? Can I read it?” If I hadn’t been on the road and in a rush, I would have gladly sat her down with my last forty pages.

Oh, yes, in the Rainbow Café, a 3.2 bar in Hill City, Minnesota, a teenager playing pool one afternoon, as I was writing at a nearby booth, yelled over to me, “Hey, you write faster than I think.” And a little later, “If you keep this up and come back tomorrow, the whole town’ll be out here to watch you.” Always laugh, respond, stay friendly.

Make a list of cafés, restaurants, and bars you’ve been in. Add details, if you want. See where it leads. Be specific.

Terry’s Cafe in South Dakota, where I wrote postcards to my friends in Minnesota. “Dear Phil: I’m in South Dakota. I’m heading for New Mexico. It is late July. Know I love your cabin by the St. Croix. Remember me. Forgive me for leaving. I am eating a salad with canned beans and saltine crackers.”

Costa’s Coffee Shop in Owatonna, Minnesota, across from the Louis Sullivan Bank. The orange booths and the Greek salads with too much oil.

Snyder’s Drugstore, where Jim told me he loved the ham sandwiches. . . .

Also, please note: don’t forget to try writing in laundromats.

The Writing Studio

I
F YOU WANT
a room to write in, just get a room. Don’t make a big production out of it. If it doesn’t leak, has a window, heat in the winter, then put in your desk, bookshelves, a soft chair, and start writing. Too many people decide they have to paint the walls, then buy wall hangings, a special desk, reupholster a chair, hire a carpenter to build walnut bookshelves, shop for a superb rug. “After all, this is my special room.”

It becomes another trick to avoid writing. I have watched friends who made perfect spaces and then couldn’t bear to go into them. They felt more comfortable writing at the kitchen table. It’s hard to sit in an exquisite space and rub against our imperfections which writing brings up. We make these exquisite rooms of silence and then long to write in noisy, chaotic cafés. Many of us make beautiful, orderly gardens in the summer and then wish we were in the woods where there are fallen trees, bugs, and apparent wild disorder. It is natural in our studios to have books lying open, at least one cup half filled with old black tea, papers spread out, piles of unanswered letters, a graham cracker box, shoes kicked under the desk, a watch with a broken second hand lying on the floor.

Zen teachers talk about our rooms as an indication of our state of mind. Some people are afraid of space and so fill every nook and cranny. It is analogous to our mind’s fear of emptiness, so the mind constantly stirs up thoughts and dramas. But I think it is different with a writing space. A little apparent disorder is an indication of the fertility of the mind and someone that is actively creating. A perfect studio has always told me that the person is afraid of his own mind and is reflecting in his outward space an inward need for control. Creativity is just the opposite: it is a loss of control.