Saturday, September 8, 2007

Wrting Naked in the Woods

I was asked where and when I work and how I dressed when I did so. Here's my response to her about my writing environment. What about you?
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Where I work is easy. I work from home in my office with two computers: one hooked up to the Internet and one that has never seen the Internet to save it from possible viruses. It's on the nonInternet computer that I write my novels.

When do I write? The weather controls a lot of when I write. No. Seriously. I have a large vegetable garden, and my wife likes to pretend she's a flower gardener. What she actually likes to do is pick the flowers and blooming shrubs. I do all the heavy lifting. That means I rise before the sun and get the watering, weeding, planting, bushwhacking, spraying and cooing to difficult plants done before ten a.m. After breakfast, a shower, and indoor chores, I end up writing from 12:30 until whenever. Oh, I'll sneak inside for a few minutes to get on the Internet in the morning, but the heavy writing is done in the afternoon and late at night. I have terrible sleeping habits.

What do I wear? I live in shorts and t-shirts in the summer, sweats in the winter, and write naked in the middle of the night when my characters yank me out of bed with plot twists they've concocted while I was sleeping. I've put on a suit a few times to get in the mindset of a character, but I've not had to put on any of my wife's dresses to get into character. At least, not yet.

Check out Ralph Keyes' "The Courage to Write" for more about what writers wear to their "job".

2 comments:

Jack Getze said...

TFA gave up the whole "method acting" thing for his writing after the desert witch of WHIPSAW took over his life and had him chanting curses and making strange feathered idols.

Rick Bylina said...

The curses and feathered idols must have worked...he got published.

What about you? Trading shares in your speedo? Inquiring minds want to know, but I'm not one of them. ;-)