I started writing Unbound on the train. I didn't have my Macbook back then and it was easier to write in a notebook than on my big, clunky laptop with the crappy battery. I'd pull out my pen and paper and sometimes, if I was lucky, I wouldn't lift my head again until we pulled into the station an hour later. I loved those train rides. Even when I was cold and tired and just wanted to be home, I adored feeling melancholy and listening to music. And writing. Always writing.
Now that commuting is a thing of the past, figuring out how and when to write is a work in progress. Caught between two generations, I'm equally comfortable on my laptop as I am with ink, but something about storytelling compels me to think with a pen in my hand. Perhaps we can never really escape the pathways laid down in our childhood, when we first make associations with words and stories. So I don't fight it, and I continue to write my stories in a collection of notebooks picked up here and there, my hands often covered in splotches of ink, blue smears across the bridge of my nose.
Sometimes, as a treat, I take the day off and ride the train to the city, just so I can remember how great it feels to write in that public, protected space, shutting out the world and the rest of my life in a way that has felt much harder to do in private.
Books are a uniquely portable magic ~ Stephen King
I am someone who would never be able to read his own notes if I wrote pen on paper. So I've spent many hours commuting sat on the floor with said chunky laptop complete with awful battery life writing my first novel. :)
ReplyDeleteThat's determination. If I'd seen you I would have given you a thumbs up (and offered you a seat).
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