8/12/10

Staring at the wall IS WRITING

Last night, I was sitting in my office, which my friend consistently accidentally calls a "closet." I was listening to music and pausing it to listen to the songs of the Muppets on youtube. Those Muppets. Brilliant.



I have a friend who had an internship at the Jim Henson workshop and then, one day, whoops!, she walked into a room where they kept the costumes/Muppets and saw a room of detached Muppet heads and she hasn't been the same since. Childhood destroyed.

So, I was sitting at my "desk" (a filing cabinet with a, what do they call those? Wings? A small piece of desk that folds up from the side of the filing cabinet). So I was sitting at my desk, watching muppet videos and I got to chatting with our own Peter on the facebook. And he mentioned something about writing.

And I responded that while he was writing I was drinking beer, watching Muppet videos and looking at my bruises from moving a small shelving unit (by myself). The bruises were slowly mutating and getting darker and some were teasing me like "Oh! Am I here or am I gone? Where did I go? Nope! Still here! And now I'm green!"


So, what's to say I wasn't processing some kind of writerly energy in those hours of chair-time?

I've learned that a huge part of my writing process is just sitting my ass in this here chair and thinking thoughts and whatnot.

I don't know if "they" say it or if I said it first, but 99% of writing is staring at the wall, ya dig?

9 comments:

  1. i love hearing about how/where other writers find their inspiration. how they formulate their process. i wonder if blogs/internet communication has taken away some of the mystique behind writers/writing. i mean, what if hemingway had facebook and he was our "friend" and we all knew he was just sitting around, drinking beer, jotting things down on a napkin while he's watching people argue in a restaurant and we all knew he wrote 4,294 words before dinner. would hemingway still be a superhero?

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  2. Barry, I do think Hemingway (or whatever writer you admire) would still be a superhero. Knowing about a favorite writer's process, for me, doesn't make their writing any less awesome. I don't mind knowing how hotdogs are made.

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  4. i just mean, there is a certain mystique in the unknown. its not "knowing about the process"... hmmm... what is it that i mean exactly... superman can never be as amazing and awe inspiring to us as he is to the people in gotham city (oops sorry, thats batman). i mean sure, he still flies and he's still superman, but we see him differently. he will never be as fantastic to us as he is to the people in his city and i think the reason for that is because we know he's just clark kent who works at the newspaper. sure, it doesnt lessen his accomplishment, but the mystique is gone. no?

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  5. Hmm, I definitely feel both sides to this question. I myself confess everything always so I suppose I am anti-mystique, but perhaps my OBGYN would disagree with me. That's all I gots. Schwartz, out!

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  6. hmmm. maybe like jesus of nazareth, no? "a prophet is not without honor, except in his own city." maybe thats the reason why. they came up with him, so they are like, ohhh, thats just jesus. we built that house together over in judea last month... or something like that i think.

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  7. Barry, I don't know that that the mystique is gone. For me the mystique is not in the process but rather in the product. Still I hear what you're saying.

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