September 1 - hiking Q&A, window prompt, archives; guest podcast with Arthur Meek
Monthly mash-up post
I love this photograph of writer, Heather Waugh, taking a break on the path. I know this feeling. The exhaustion, the comfort of the pack at one’s back, the momentary respite with trail waiting for you to go on…
Heather wrote to me to share her own hiking insights after I posted my piece about hiking-&-writing. So I asked her to do a Q&A… and here it is! Seems a fitting way to draw to the end of summer. Note that at the close of this I include a link to a wonderful post on her newsletter, Beat the Stream.
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You mentioned your hopes for your own hike in your comments on my piece...
Do you want to say anything about how you made any particular writing plans before leaving?
Well, the first time I went on a five-day adventure backpacking trip was last July. My mind was utterly challenged in just surviving with the little training I had and how I had to face some fears. That hike helped solidify the yearning I had been suppressing for 10 years to return to writing. I started my Substack last fall and began writing a novel idea I had the year before in winter. Before the trip, I had stalled in my work-in-progress at 16K words due to the hectic nature of summer with small children. I re-read my last chapter, brought a notebook with me for the 15 hour car ride (each way), and my notes of where I wanted to go next. I knew I wouldn’t bring the notebook in my backpack because every.ounce.matters but I had my phone in case inspiration struck to do voice-to-text memos. I hoped my mind would open since there is zero cell service.
At what point in the hike did you feel ‘writing’ happening? And did anything in particular bring that about?
I was in a group of seven people, so for the first 5-6 miles of the hike, there was chatting and relaxing. Then everyone started getting tired as we carried 40-50 pounds on our backs to our destination of Squaretop Mountain in Wyoming. When that happens, everyone goes into a space in their minds to gut (Alison’s note here: did you mean “get”? I actually really like “gut”—I’m going to leave as is!) through the discomfort, balance the narrow trails, and regulate breathing up every incline and switchback. My space takes awhile to quiet. Thoughts flit rapidly in and out of my mind as I try to figure out what to grasp onto to help me through the silence and the pain. What I found happening was a specific song or lyric would get stuck in my mind. I started to dissect those lyrics and realized they were connected to my WIP. They were able to go to the next level of emotion and analogy that I have the nagging feeling I was missing. Once that lyric was used up, my mind would flit to a character issue I am having, trying to work out if I needed to go back and change something or alter my plan for upcoming plot.
How did you record words/thoughts?
Since I wasn’t sitting at my computer and couldn’t access my book on Google Drive without signal, I wasn’t in a “writing” mode. But I was able to gnaw on the things that had been bothering me, or quick thoughts I had the past couple of months about what to do with certain characters or how my plot pacing was going. Even though I am only 16K into the novel, this space gave me a birds eye perspective into the total work instead of the minutia of the first draft that I had been working through before summer began.
Did anything happen that you can't imagine having occurred at your desk/table/home?
As the trails became more challenging around mile 9, my mind completely emptied. Finally, it was the reset button I needed. I hadn’t been writing because there was too much going on. Usually when I sit down to write, I need to know I have a couple of hours and spend quite awhile staring off into space with a mood playlist to get to where I need to go. This hike helped me find my dump button so I can hopefully hit it and begin writing in smaller and more frequent chunks. It also gave me an incredible perspective that is so difficult to find when working on something or editing.
And last, is there something you'd like to add?
If any writers are struggling with their work, completely disconnecting for hours will allow your brain to enter this meditative state where you can think critically about the piece. Instead of getting hung up on this one beautiful sentence you wrote that is jamming up the plot or the character motivation, taking a moment in nature to isolate yourself to the work will allow you to work through any issues and get to the big picture. I am very excited to get back to my document and re-read what I have so far, tweaking along the way with my insights and adjusting my outline to incorporate some of my realizations.
And the reward:
Squaretop Mountain, Wyoming, photo by Heather Waugh
Thank you, Heather! I’m grateful you’ve shared your process and insights.
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I was excited and happy to have a conversation with Arthur Meek, of Cursive Discursive.
This is something we’ve been trying to do for many months now. Sometimes, just committing to a date and time works magic! So between Norwich, UK, and Vancouver, Canada, we did it. Circling around my exploration of the Mary and Martha Biblical stories in my memoir of caregiving—how those sisters haunted me—we talk about writing and more.
Prompt - writing from a window
Jane (who shared the photo of the red shoes at the bus stop… remember that one!?) sent along this photo that she stumbled over, and that spoke to her. Check out the building out the window....
What would be on this desk if it was yours? What can you imagine writing in this space? Can you imagine writing in this space? What do you smell and hear, sitting here, windows (beautiful windows!) open? Then imagine a wintry day, windows closed, rain pelting… Snow. A day of frosty sunshine.
Imagine a conversation drifting up from the out-of-doors. Or someone knocks at the door, unexpected. Who? They are going to tell you something. Or ask for something. Or give. Or take away… Who is in the photo on the wall—for the purposes of your story? What are the books? What else is in the room?
Copy/paste your story, poem, or memoir piece into the comments, please!
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Labour Day is so early this year. Which means that the 3 Day Novel Contest, started at midnight on Friday, is right in the middle of its 72 hours. To anyone reading this (for a break?) and in the midst of such work, I wish you the best:
May ideas FLOW, may your coffee-maker NOT have a fit, and may someone leave a meal at your door, and TIPTOE away…
ARCHIVES: from the 3 Day Novel collection—and useful for others:
Re-cap of August posts
Always, our first of the month post, this one with a solid Q&A about creating a picturebook, as well as a link to Walter Rhein’s article about 50 prompts.
Write as You Hike was week one’s post, looking at the value in kinetic thinking.
Followed by a piece about reading (yes!) and understanding your book contract.
And the month was completed with a tough piece on finding a balance between writing time, and hours spent promoting and selling one’s work.
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If there are topics you’d like to see covered, please do let me know. I’m always open to your questions. I do like to know what’s on your mind, and your writing concerns.
Happy September writing —
Alison
This response to the prompt was posted on the lonely prompt thread... where no one has seen it! And no one else has posted. So I'm moving it here. It's by Amy Whitmore, posted a couple days ago.
My apologies: I need to be consistent with either adding a thread or not! I think that it's hard to find. I'll not add a thread again. Please add your own window stories HERE, and your thoughts!
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By Amy Whitmore
I am bad for writing, not letting it sit and then editing, these prompts. Same with this one:
No! I recoil. The desk is too small. My heart deflates. The perfect window. The perfect close-the-door-on-the-babel- of-distractions space. Built in bookshelves filled with novels and memoirs and autobiographies, all so useful. All so dark.
The writing table is too small. I need paper and pen and elbow room. I need space to prop hand-written pages up while I type them. And that photo of Stephen King in his rising youth, looking down on my failures.
The window boxes looked perfect from outside, lush and exuberant. From inside they obstruct the streetview. Who's out there? What are they doing? Can only see pink blooms.
Not like my last window, where I could look down on the guy who dropped to the street, hands on the curb, and did a bunch of push ups. Never to be seen again.
The early morning couple who'd clearly slept by the big green graffitied recycling bin across the parking lot across the street. The plump woman stepped out from the shadows and the rising sun glowed off her pink skin. Slow and calm, an orange bowl with water at her feet, she worked through her morning ablutions. Bird bath salutations. Stretching her arms to the sky, cleansing her arms, her armpits. Her breasts. Her face and neck. Stepping out of her underpants she splashed water on her round buttocks, around her crotch. Then she pulled on new underpants, a grey t-shirt, sweat pants. She and her man bundled up their belongings and wandered off, never to be seen again.
The elderly woman walking her elderly big-furred black and white dog getting into an altercation with my trim slim elderly neighbour about the big starlings' nest in the tree high above the sidewalk.
"That nest needs to go!" stated the elderly dog walker. Her dog, patient, stood beside her, head bowed.
"I love the birds!" my elderly neighbour, glad.
"They attack me!!" insisted the elderly dog walker. Her dog sank to the sidewalk beside her, tongue lolling.
"They don't attack," I hear my elderly say. I agree with her: I've never seen the birds attack nor have I been attacked, walking by every day on my way to work.
"They're a menace and you need to get rid of that nest!" demands the elderly dog walker, pulling her elderly dog to its elderly feet and hobbling off.
Such beautiful etching on the glass, I sigh, thinking how lovely it would be, windows closed to the outside white winter. Such beautiful flower boxes. Such a writerly space.
I run from the too-enclosed room. Stephen King would have written it into a novel as a portal into an alternate, too-perfect universe.
Hey Alison and Heather.... What a fun story. Were you on the hike with Heather or did someone else take that picture of her? Also, has Heather explained to you Alison the culture of writers that come from the University of Missouri? I would not expect all Canadians to know about it, but Heather and the rest of us, running around in old gold and black shirts that say MIZZOU on them can fill you in. There's a good reason why you never have to have a resume your whole life, once you become part of the brotherhood, sisterhood, and writers circles of the middle of nowhere, Columbia, Missouri.