Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for August 9th, 2008

The Devil is in the Details

I have to confess that I’m one of those writers who loves to do research. Whether it’s for an essay or a short story or even a blog post, I will do an exhaustive amount of research on even the tiniest details. Even if I don’t end up using 99.9% of the research material I collect. I have files and files of material on all kinds of things. Some days, I can blow an entire day looking up information on the Internet. For example, I have these two stories in the pipeline that both involve the use of spotlights. The first story is a short novel — a neo noir. The second is a dark comedy about this guy who plays an increasingly nasty series of pranks on his neighbor. The hook is that the guy used to be married to the neighbor’s wife. The story is told from the perspective of the local hardware store owner who sell the guy the equipment for his pranks. One of those pranks involves a spotlight and a loud speed metal band.

It occurred to me that, while I know a fair amount about heavy metal music, I’ve never actually used a spotlight. And I’m not really talking about some crappy, glorified flashlight you’d buy at K-mart, either. I’m talking about an industrial-strength Golight like something they might use on a construction site or at a military checkpoint in Iraq. So, I do what I usually do and I looked it up in Google. I clicked on the first website and it was an online store that specializes in selling the very item I had in mind. Lots of products with lots of images. The specifications for each product was satifactory and the testimonials (if they are to be believed) substantiated my supposition that these are the kind of thing one might find in the military or by police or in construction. I printed out several pages of information and stuck them in a folder. I now had a new resource that I could refer to not only for the two projects I was working on, but for others in the future that I’d yet to think of.

It may seem like a silly matter to invest so much time in a tiny detail, but it’s the tiny details which ultimately create a sense of reality in a story. Screwing up even one detail in a story can hinder a reader from accepting the fictional reality and call unwanted attention to every other flaw in a story.

A Well-Lighted, Not So Clean, Place and Something to Write With

“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration . . . .”
— Ernest Hemingway, from Death in the Afternoon

“…I’m a huge disbeliever in linking your creative process to a single place or environment. Life changes and, more than that, it gets in the way. If you can only write when you have a large chunk of uninterrupted time then there will be many days when no writing gets done at all. If you need silence to work what happens if you want to get a puppy or have a baby? The show still has to go on.”
— Chandler Craig

Probably ever since I first started writing I’ve been fascinated by the workspaces of other writers — not so much in a Life magazine kind of way as in a Psychology Today kind of way. And I’m not the only one with this fascination. Over the last few years there have been a number of posts around the blogosphere on this very subject. A couple of years ago, in fact, there was a whole slew of writers posting pictures of their workspaces and talking about them. Just the other day, I was reading aspiring writer, Chandler Craig’s rather thoughtful offering. The Guardian has a whole series about it.

So when I say I’m fascinated by a writer’s workspace in a Psychology Today kind of way, I’m really saying that I’m fascinated more by the writer’s personality than the physical appearance of the writer’s office. The workspace is a window into how a writer works — not the creative process in and of itself, which is an ongoing, 24/7 happening both at a conscious and unconscious level with the workspace being but one station of that particular cross.

While there are some who’d like us to embrace Feng Shui and believe in a neat, tidy well-organized workspace, others seem to work just fine in clutter and chaos. As I’ve admitted before, my workspace leans more towards the latter. No matter how many times I’ve cleaned and straightened and organized my workspace, it always ends-up being a big junkpile of crap. Why? Well . . . I’m a packrat for one thing. I can’t seem to throw things away. I’m always afraid I’ll need it later (and I usually do after I’ve finally thrown something away). Plus, I’m an unapologetic multi-tasker. I’ll usually have about four or five windows open on my PC at one time. I’ll be researching something on this website over here while updating a webpage or writing a blog, and reading submissions at the same time. These two factors require me to have my stuff within arms-reach. So, I have manilla folders and dictionaries and CD-ROMs and Flash drives and web design books and water bottles and lots of other crap all within a few feet of me in any direction. And I have this bad habit with pens as well. I buy pens several boxes at a time. I’ll grab one and jot something on a Post-It note. Later, after I’ve dumped a pile of paper on top of the first pen — and not seeing the first pen, I’ll grab new pen. This keeps happening until I run out of pens. I’ll scratch my head and wonder, “Where are all of my pens?” So, I go buy more pens
. Pretty soon, after I’ve cleared the paper off my desk, I’ll find all these pens that I forgot about.

Now does this somehow make me a more or less efficient writer? I honestly don’t know. I think what it does is make me a more comfortable writer. Personally, I can write anywhere and I often do write in lots of different places. And, necessity being the mother of invention, I will write with any utility that’s handy whether it be a laptop or a number two pencil and a napkin. Truthfully, any real writer should be able to do this. But my main workspace is where I feel most free. It is my sanctuary. It’s a place where I can listen to music to provide the rhythm to make my fingers dance on the keys. It’s a place where I can seperate myself from the rest of the world to better converse with the voices in my own head. It’s my home.