August 7, 2012

Hi again friends & writers!

This is the summer of the backhoe: my toddler daughter, never having seen street construction close-up, has made friends with every backhoe driver within several miles of our apartment. She knows all the construction vehicles – crane, big truck, bulldozer – but the elbowed orange backhoe, prehistoric-looking with its eerie mechanical arm, is her favorite.

Chasing backhoes fills my days. Late afternoons I read college student essays, and then evenings I meet with these students, discussing their writing and their concerns about the world …

And these two months have reminded me how much writing is a process that grows from an interrupted life. That I want the interruptions, even though at times I forget. This summer my creative writing has taken place in the short hours between sunrise and my daughter’s waking and calling from her bed, “Back-HOE! Beep-beep-beep.” It has also taken place in quick notes to myself thumbed onto my phone, during class breaks or waiting for the subway. I will gather these notes up and transfer them onto my computer soon, when I have time. But now, they belong in fragments. They have been written in spite of, and because of, the fullness of the days.

PROCESS: NOTE-TAKING

Taking thirty seconds to write a note about something I have seen or thought keeps me in touch with longer writing projects during days and weeks when my time is dedicated elsewhere. A combination system works best: a place to take the spontaneous notes (my phone), and a place to transfer them so they don’t get lost (a file on my computer called “Compost” for my current writing projects).

Try this: Using a phone’s note-taking software or a small paper notepad, make yourself permeable throughout the day to things worth writing about. That strange bird’s song? Great! The sound of a toddler saying, “beep-beep-beep?” Write it down – you can add it into a project later, or use it to start a new one.

FEATURED VENUE: THE ADIRONDACK REVIEW

The Adirondack Review, called a “great online literary magazine” by Esquire, is an independent quarterly open to a wide range of work by both new and established writers.

Submission guidelines here: http://www.theadirondackreview.com/submissions.html

PROMPT

“It was the summer of….” (6min)