Sunday, July 31, 2016
Summertime and the writing is easy
I don’t know what it is about the summer that makes me feel more creative than any other time of the year.
Maybe it’s the long and mostly sunny days, the nice hot weather, or the fact that life in general just seems to slow down during the warmer months. Or maybe it’s a combination of all three. But whatever the reason, it seems that my most productive time of year writing-wise always seems to happen between June and the end of August.
I’ve never been a big fan of the cold and often find the winter months depressing. I think bears have the right idea and if I could get away with it, I’d sleep right though December, January and February with them.
But I can hardly wait for the first 90 degree day of the year when I can get in my pool, whip out my clipboard and trusty mechanical pencil and start writing.
And yes, I know, I’m a tech-guy and writing long hand with pencil and paper is pretty much as analogue as you can get.
But just try taking your laptop, tablet or even phone in the pool with you. One wrong move, and you’ve got yourself a very expensive paperweight.
If I get my paper wet, as often happens, it dries out within 15 minutes on the side of the pool, and it’s good to go. Besides, the paper and pencil stuff is only temporary. It’s really a first draft that gets edited and changed when I eventually get around to typing it into my computer.
I try to leave that that part for the colder months, when I feel the least creative, even though writing on the computer make it easy to change and move things around as you write.
Usually by the time my summer vacation rolls around, I feel so burnt out from work, that the last thing I want to do is spend my free time behind another screen. I’d rather be outside enjoying the nice weather while it lasts.
Being in the pool with pencil and paper in hand, lets me do that and still feel like I’m getting my writing done.
In fact, a day writing by hand in the pool leaves me with a better sense of accomplishment than a day spent behind the keyboard. I’m a slow writer, often agonizing over the perfect word or phrase to translate the movie in my head to the paper, so the reader will see it exactly the way I envisioned it. At the end of a typical writing session on the computer I only wind up with two sometimes three pages (single-spaced, using 12 point, Times New Roman font), while after a day in the pool I end up with three to six pages. Sometimes I even break double digits!
Now when I actually type this in, it still winds up being my usual two or three pages, but I feel like I’ve done more and that helps keeps me motivated to continue writing.
I also like being outside. The sunlight just seems to stimulate my creative juices more than the lamp light I need in my home office in the afternoons. Plus being able to soak up all that sun and fresh air doesn’t make me think I’ve wasted one of my precious days off.
It’s a real shame we only have three months of hot weather here in the Northeast where I live. I’m sure if I had six-month of it (as well as the corresponding vacation time) I could finally finish that “great
American sci-fi novel” I’ve been working on (and off) since high school.
Of course, Mrs. BlueScreamOfJeff wouldn’t be happy with that kind of climate. She’s more of an autumn person, so as I begin my annual two-week August vacation, I just have to be content with spending the next two weeks in the pool (weather permitting), binge-writing in a big push to finally complete my book.
Who knows, stranger things have happened during summer vacations…
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