Briefly, How I Got Here
In the First Place
When
I started writing, back in 1987, I used my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine
as a desk. The next year I asked for a typewriter and retired the pencils and
spiral notebooks, affixing the Brother machine atop the Singer machine. I
exclusively read Stephen King when I wasn’t writing. Work continued in
earnest.
Today
I don’t use a desk. I sit in my recliner with the laptop. At my job I do write
at my desk when I find time to write at all. So there’s these two places I
write. Here are recent random days from each.
Repose In a Tattered Recliner
Adorned with Knitted Sweater Vest and Jogging Pants
Saturday
morning. I should be cleaning the living room, doing something with the dishes
before they come alive and trot out of the room into some storybook town where
they are the collective monster in the woods. I should be getting ready for our
Christmas tomorrow, a little early to accommodate schedules. Instead I have my
sweater and jogging pants on, house shoes. Instead I’m in my recliner, the blue
room with holes in the back and part of the armrest torn away. I’m
side-watching a crime documentary on Amazon Prime, stealing a glance here and
there when I get stuck on a particular sentence or thought. My laptop glows
expectant in front of me.
The
house is quiet. Heather is still asleep and a #2 sausage platter with a side of
bacon from Tudor’s Biscuit World is heavy on my mind. But there’s Sister Hall
to consider, the main character in my recent short story. And this morning
General Hall, her dad, is on stage, too. I add to my stories by section. Each
story is nearly always divided into sections and worked on separately in this
way. When I’ve finished one part I hit the Cap Lock and type MORE HERE and then
move to another section. Today I’m moving away from General Hall creating his
oracle on Abner Mountain and revisiting a section less involved. My brain is
slowing down, making way for my stomach.
To
stave off hunger and maybe finish up another part I put on coffee by the cup,
the new Keurig allowing for one cup at a time, which is good or I’d stand in
the kitchen and drink one after another so as to procrastinate, to avoid the
possibility of writing a bad section due to distraction.
It
is at times such as this that the glamour of being a writer is stripped away.
Don’t picture me in the midst of some impassioned moment of muse-infused glory,
Shakespearean in my genius, awash in my perfect syntax and poise, sunlight
beaming through on to my Victorian era writing desk, perhaps the scent of
rotting apples wafting up from my desk drawer to conjure memory into fiction.
Don’t do this; that’s a mistake in logical thinking.
I
scratch the rat’s nest that makes up my right-sided, receding hair line. There
no point putting it off any longer. I change into some more acceptable clothes,
grab my Atlanta Braves cap, and head out.
After
having breakfast, I return home. During that entire time away from the laptop
I’m working on the story, though. It’s time that matters in the process. When I
get back I start in pretty fast. I finish the day’s writing session with some
background noise. The choice for the past few weeks has been a show called How the Universe Works. It’s perfect
when I need those brief breaks to let my mind reset my imagination.
From
this point the session winds down. I stop when it feels natural. I don’t push
it, and I accept incompletion if that’s what’s called for at that moment. A lot
of writing is acceptance and patience.
At the Job In Bursts
Between Drug-Addicted Patients
It’s a bad morning. All
of it, everything is bad. Life, writing, life. All terrible. I decide to do
nothing on my job today. Instead I bring up the show Hannibal on my phone and settle in. From the time I woke this
morning I’ve not thought once about writing.
—8:22
a.m.
I’ve let my guard down
and had a thought of writing, of anything other than the horror that is my life
this morning. Besides, I’m on the series finale of Hannibal and then there’s nothing left to distract me. So I write.
Short stories. Short
stories. That’s where my heart rests. But I do have three or four books going.
Novels, as it were. Projects that collapsed into some form other than a short
story and which I couldn’t give up on. This is the part where I choose what I’m
going to give my effort to today, since it assuredly will not be my job as a
substance abuse counselor.
Still no idea what I’m
writing on today, but I have floated around and researched a little on the
Delphi Oracle for this current story. Research for me, for my writing, is
ongoing. Truly, I research every waking minute. I never know what might come up
in my filter while writing that would fit or make a story spin into a strange
direction I hadn’t thought of or even anticipated. In a very real way, it’s the
reverse of “garbage in, garbage out” for dreaming. It’s more “random details
and facts in, important and interesting details and facts out.” That’s if I’m
doing it right. To do it right I have to let go of trying. I let my mind wander
where it will. It’s a trust exercise I’ve been fully engaged in for the past 34
years.
Lunch time. Early
because we start earlier than most. The early start is due to having a lot of
coal miners who are addicted to opioids following accidents that left them
disabled and in chronic pain. But early, yes. So the lunch is early, too.
Like a lot of days, I
skip lunch, but use the time reading. Today it’s Glenn Gould. No idea how I got
to his Wikipedia, or the links that followed, but I did. And so I spent a
couple hours on Glenn. I have no particular interest in classical music, but
Gould’s eccentricities lure me his way. Difficult, genius, prodigy, mentally
ill. It’s an interesting draw. Here’s what I know: I won’t write about Gould or
anything to do with him today, but I will absolutely do so later. It could be months
or years, but I will, and I will have researched today in preparation.
—12:46
p.m.
Wrote four or five
pages on a book I’m working on called Evergreen.
It’s structure is very loose and open and so when I’m lagging the option is
always there. I used to call it my dumping novel, the place where I went to
write when I couldn’t write. But it’s taking shape. Still, I feel my short
stories are suffering neglect. Also in the back of my mind is the manuscript I
sent to West Virginia University Press on November 1. Even though Derek
Krissoff, the director there, told me it could be a bit before I received word
back on this draft, I feel incomplete in some ways. I know there will be more
drafting on that book and yet it feels like it was finished forever a month and
a half ago. Sometimes books become ghosts in that way.
The benefit of coming
in early to the job is that you also leave a little earlier than most. It’s
quitting time. My next stop (an hour drive home) will be my recliner and the
laptop again. Though it’s not very exciting, these are samples of my days, the
two different kinds that I make fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in. And I don’t
worry about that; masterpieces were made in the same spirit and circumstance.
Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story
writer and novelist from Kentucky. He is the author of six books, most recently
the novel Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree
Press, 2019) and his third short story collection Absolute Invention (Secret History Books, 2019). He also believes
baseball is our purest form of truth.
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