Some
writers go off to remote areas. Some wander into the wilderness. They go up
mountains or seek silence amongst the trees or in the desert. All that is fine
and dandy. It sounds amazing, actually. Communing with nature. Having
epiphanies all over the place. Meeting with the sublime. Like Wordsworth and
all those Romantic Poets did. Yeah, terrific, if that’s your thing. And I’ve
had my moments with nature too, over the years.
However,
my preference is to be among people.
Books
– my books, and the books I love – are filled with people and their chatter and
clatter; their emotions and adventures. So, what I like to do is wander the
streets and spend time eavesdropping. I visit different shops and public
buildings. I love galleries and museums (mostly for the echoes. Voices – even
whispers – carry so well in those temples to culture.) I love going into
Charity Shops and perusing the bookstands. Yes, for the bargains, obviously –
but also for the craic. You can hear some startling things when you listen to
the people who volunteer to work in Charity Shops.
Above
all though, I love cafes. It’s all about sitting still and relaxing. It’s about
having a nice cuppa and taking stock. Slowing your breathing. Keeping calm and
still even with the streaming mass of humanity bustling around you. It’s
finding a way to slow down time to a pace that suits you.
Maybe
that’s the guilt thing. And maybe that’s the purest enjoyment in this writing
life.
The
thought – even the illusion that – in those moments of writing we have learned
to master time.
No
longer are we surfing through it – keeping ahead of our deadlines and all the
things we have to do. No longer are we drowning in it and waving feebly as we realize
that we can’t keep up. And no longer do we feel we’re being left in its scummy
wake. For those moments of sitting with our notebooks and writing the good
stuff – we are moving time at our own pace. We are controlling the flow of time
in our own world.
It’s
a powerful and heady feeling. A very addictive feeling.
What
I love to do is start off my writing in these café situations by tuning into
the conversations around me. I take careful notice of who’s around me. I see
what kinds of characters are sitting all around me. I try not to make assumptions
about who they are, what they are like, or what kind of lives they lead.
What
I really want is for them to surprise me somehow.
I
tune myself in like an old fashioned radio. Remember them? With the dial and
the numbers and the Short Wave and Medium Wave bands? And the way the white
noise used to whistle and scream out of the speakers. Voices in all kinds of
languages would whisper tinnily and surge forward and then fall back as the
dial went round. You’d search for the voices and it was like spinning a globe
around. An invisible world of sound would be rolling under your fingertips.
It’s
the same when you start eavesdropping on a crowded room. All these lives and
all this energy can be overwhelming at first, and it’s tricky to pick out
strands of actual conversations. This takes practice. It’s like being a
pickpocket. Remember Fagin and the Artful Dodger teaching Oliver Twist the
various ways in which to lift the goods from unsuspecting victims? This is a
bit like that. Don’t let people realise you’re lollygagging. Don’t stare at
them. Don’t look too conspicuous as you scribble down their every utterance.
And,
for me, it’s not about catching every utterance anyway. I just want a few
snippets. A few leading, intriguing sentences or fragments. That’s all I need.
I’m not trying to rob everyone of their life stories. I just want – in these
journal afternoons – a bit of local colour and flavour. I just want to sketch
in a few crisp details. I want the sense of the language as it is actually
spoken, clogging and colouring the air.
*
Do
this. Go out this afternoon. Or if you can’t, at your earliest opportunity.
Don’t
set yourself targets. Don’t put any pressure on yourself with goals or
pre-conceived ideas about what you might write. Life is full enough of those
kinds of deadlines.
Just
award yourself an afternoon out – with your notebook.
Wander
and wander. Absorb all the details you can. Look at the tops of buildings, not
just ground level. Have a look at the faces of people as they talk to each
other. Have a look at what people are buying, and the way they stand and walk.
Look at the statues and the public art. Look at the wording of signs. Pay
attention to colour. Tease out the smells that surge around you as you move
through the city. Could you draw a map of your walk and tell direction just by
the aromas you encounter?
After
a bit, find a perch. Find a corner in a café or a bar. Get your notebook out
straight away, and your pens. Have them ready right from the start, so you won’t
feel self-conscious later on. Also, you’re not sitting here waiting for
inspiration to strike.
God,
I loathe that phrase. ‘Waiting for inspiration to strike’ sounds like the worst
kind of writing. People who’ve never written creatively assume that’s how
writing works. How all art works. We drift around waiting for lightning. For
god or a muse or some such rubbish. Nope. We just get on with it. We start
making marks on a page without even thinking about it too much. If we’ve got
any sense, that's what we do.
Just
write anything. Any overheard fragment. Or anything that’s floating up from
your own mind. Just don’t sit there with a blank page. Don’t save yourself up
to write stuff that you deem is great. If you wait for the quality stuff to
just drift along you run the risk of writing nothing at all. Of sitting there
crossly and impatient, waiting to be a genius.
Hmf.
Much better just getting on with it.
Have
a listen. Tune in. Ravel up a few thoughts, a few lines of dialogue. Something
that draws your attention.
Learn
to follow your interest. Learn to trust your attention.
And
see where it leads. Free associate. What do these opening remarks lead to? What
do they suggest? Perhaps, if someone’s talking about their upcoming holiday and
their dread of flying – this could trigger a memory of your own. Write it down.
Where does it lead? To an old friend you’ve not thought about for years? Who were
they? What were they like? What became of them in the end? Where were you
living then?
What
you’re trying to do is to follow the dance of your own mind as it moves from
subject to subject. You’re trying to follow it with your pen. You can’t help it
moving like this. It will do this dance, whether you’re actually listening or
not.
The
point of this exercise is, in many ways, getting you to tune into other people.
But you’ll find that, in the end, you’re really tuning into your own mind.
And
the point is also to gather up some great material. And to surprise yourself
with what it consists of.
I
promise that, if you give yourself up to this practice and do it as often as
you can manage, you will AMAZE yourself with some of the stuff you will write.
WHERE
DID THAT COME FROM? You’ll ask. And, when you read back through your
journals – which will be chockablock with scribble and coffee stains by then –
you’ll be able to see exactly where the material came from.
So.
Off you go.
Have
a LOVELY afternoon.
And
I think I’ll do the same.
