Ways We Write

If you're a writer, you do a lot of writing without typing (or pushing a pencil across paper). At least, you should be. 

I find that, while doing many tasks that don't require full brain power, I am mentally considering my writing. I've been working on a poem for about a week. The first two lines came to me when I went out early one morning to retrieve our newspaper. I heard a flock of geese but could not see them. I stood on the driveway listening and thinking about the message they brought. Bingo! Two lines but no more. I was writing but not typing.

I went into the house and read the paper, did the usual early morning tasks and then sat down at the computer. I wrote the two lines on a notepad but went on to other things. I had a lunch date and then a meeting to go to later in the day so the two lines were left looking lonely. As I drove home later that day, I started thinking about the poem again. What did I want to convey? And how? How long or short did I want the poem to be? I was writing but not typing.

Two days went by, but the image of that early morning encounter kept popping into my head. So, I pushed everything else aside and grabbed that notepad. I read those two lines I'd written earlier and started to write the next line and the next until I had 2 full verses and one partial one. The dryer buzzed so I left the poem and began to fold the warm clothes. Mid-way through pairing sox, the final two lines came to me. I was writing, just not typing. 

Some scientific study could probably come up with the ratio of time spent thinking about writing to time actually writing. I think we'd find the two to be closer than we might have guessed at first. 

A writer can be writing in their head while on a morning commuter train or bus. Or waiting for a concert to begin. Or in the shower. Or while emptying the dishwasher. What is amusing to me is that anyone looking at you during any one of these activities would have no idea that you were writing in your head, just not typing. 

The Ways We Write

One of the most repeated pieces of advice to writers is to write every day.  A worthy goal but not always possible. Life tends to get in our way and we have to answer the call to which situation takes priority any given day.

However, writers write even when not at their keyboards tap-tapping away. Let me list just a few of the places writers are thinking about writing:

• in the shower
• checkout line at the grocery store
• in bed
• filling the dishwasher
• riding the commuter train to work
• filling the gas tank
• changing the baby's diaper
• in church during the sermon ( oh yes, it's done quite often)
• walking for exercise

We have story ideas swirling in our heads long before we sit down to write that first draft. Lines of a poem come to us at strange, and often inopportune, moments. A solution to a problem in the plot of a fiction story pops into our heads when we least expect it. 

We're writing when we do research for a story or interview someone that we will write about later. We're writing when we jot down notes to be used later. 

Even if you don't write something at the keyboard, or with pen and paper, every day, don't fret. I would bet that you're still writing in one of the ways pointed out above. Just don't stay away from the keyboard too many days in a row. Writing every day can become a habit but the reverse is also true.