Tag Archives: Writing

The Writing Life

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A friend just suggested that I and some other friends think about our “writing life,” so I’ve been thinking about what my life as a writer has been.

Every writer creates, or tumbles into, a certain “writing life” tailored to him/herself, and the habits of that life are blended, smoothly or roughly, with the daily life of meal preparation, outside jobs, marriage or other love relationships, childcare, social get- togethers, bills, housecleaning, exercise, illness – all the activities/vicissitudes of any life’s needs.

For some years, I persisted in the dream that, eventually, I would be one of those writers who could dovetail my writing with the other aspects of my life –  with fluid skill and perfect organization: up at 4 every morning to put in 3 hours of solid work before my children woke, then a nutritious breakfast for the family, off to my part time job, come home, have a snack for the kids, clean house, help with homework, fix supper….  

But those visions of myself scurrying around like a well-organized little mouse were figments of imagination. If such a writer’s life does exist somewhere, for some writers, it was not to be mine.

My writing life, like the rest of my life, has been chaotic, erratic, and productive in spurts. Some nights I woke at midnight to work, caught an hour or two before 7, then dragged through the day. Some days I sneaked away to the river with a notebook; many days I ignored chores. I didn’t balance my checkbook; I left dishes in the sink; dust gathered on the shelves; the kitchen floor went un-scrubbed. There were long spans of time when my writing was reduced to notes on scraps of paper stuck in a file, or rough first drafts of poems were literally jotted down on napkins at the breakfast table. I finished first drafts of whole novels, written in the burst of an idea, that still, years later, sit on my shelf waiting for a rewrite. There have been fits of submissions when I sent out individual stories / poems / novels, followed by doldrums of inactivity when, for months, I submitted nothing.

In short, I’ve conducted my writing life in a calamitous way. It’s been hard most of all on the people around me, but can I be brazen enough to at least offer it as a vision of persistence?  

Each of us writers has something to say, and walking either upright with steady steps toward our goals or stumbling and lurching through our work, we write. Writing is what makes us writers. Under any circumstance, through any hardship. A person’s writing life is a manifestation of character and is bound to be as varied as the people who live it.

When I think of my own writing life I know I could have…. I should have…. 

But I didn’t.

I was lost in the glorious chaos of life with other people, other needs, and with my own failings. The poems and the stories twirled in an endless, dizzying polka through my head. I was a failure at an orderly life, but blessed with a loving family, friends, and editors that danced along with me, or when I needed, let me dance by myself. My writing life was that I just kept going.

Shut in in Tel Aviv Work

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For a writer, it seems isolation/quarantine should be an ideal situation to write for hours every day, day in day out. Stores, parks, gyms, theaters are all closed; there’s no place to go, and the computer is ready and waiting. 

Then why, as the weeks have passed, do I have such a hard time sitting at the computer?  Why have I begun to feel wooden?  Why do I look at the news about COVID19 several times a day even knowing the confusion of information makes me feel like I’m inside the circus fun house?  I distract myself with Wordscapes; I scrub the kitchen sink when it doesn’t need scrubbing; I organize drawers; I pack my suitcases although I know I’m not leaving for at least a month. 

Quarantine happened. I did what I was supposed to do. In the little island of our apartment, I organized and made a schedule.  I make my bed, I drink coffee, I exercise, I eat breakfast, I try to write, I exercise, I eat an early supper, I go to bed.  I sweep, I scrub, I hang the laundry on our porch, I roast vegetables.  Little effort is required of me to maintain my needs. And the tasks I do, I do with a real, but really fleeting sense of accomplishment.

Why does the sameness of the my very-well-organized days, which allow me more freedom to write than I have ever had, leave me dull and wanting? 

Robinson Crusoe. On the surface, the analogy is ridiculous, I know. His “quarantine” was 1000 X more restrictive than mine, but maybe there is at least one parallel with these dull days. 

Crusoe’s behavior in his first months on the island was, by necessity, mechanistic. He needed to survive, to live. Ingenious in his attempts, he arranges his living space, searches, finds, and prepares food. He creates a dwelling/a life if not luxurious, at least comfortable. And, like the two of us, he lives in an emotionally closed system, his “conversation” culled from the mobius strip of his own emotions. 

Until he sees the footprint in the sand. 

Another person enters, and the phlegmatic world of singular survival and internal monologue changes in an instance. The book, until the footprint, is a fascinating survival guide and diary. After the footprint it becomes a story of human conflicts, racial prejudices, passions, fears, tension, values, and ultimately, friendship. 

This is the point in the book that in its extreme example, illuminates in reverse, writing during quarantine. 

The key is Friday. When Crusoe sees the footprint in the sand, his wooden world shifts. He is not alone! The sameness of the days in which he ingeniously builds, plants and fishes is shattered by his act of courage against the cannibals, by the presence of other humans. The emotions of human interchange enter the previously mechanistic world, where the reader saw only bursts of an emotional life. The challenges of human interactions arise: fear of others, confusion, uncertainty, demand for a courage that tests his compassion, and from then on decisions of interaction: the challenge of having power, of figuring out how to apply that power, the dance of getting to know/trust another human being, and ultimately the development of caring, not just for a built environment, but for another live person. The need to protect, the need to outwit the enemy, the need to spy and plot. 

These are the things of novels, of poems, of stories. They happen in the swirl of friends, enemies, acquaintances, unknown others, and simply put, I miss them, even today in the gentle quarantine of 2020, I have a partner in this quarantine, but after years of marriage we are something of a closed system, if  in fact a delightful closed system. There is nothing beyond us. We walk out disguised by mask and hat and gloves. On the street, the only dance is the quickstep when we skirt round each other as we pass. We do not meet friends, we have no misunderstandings in our half-learned Hebrew to delight or embarrass or surprise;  the flesh of culture / conflicts/ friendships has dissipated — no groups gather, at the store we stand online 2 meters apart each waiting patiently, silently so unlike the crowding bustle of Israelis in pre-COVID times. Walking the few hundred meters we are allowed from the apartment, our conversation dwindles to our own private interests or questions for the pharmacist or to repeat our member number at the grocery store.  

The apartment could be an apartment anywhere, the air blows through, the laundry gets done, dinner is fixed. I attend to my / our needs in the most ingenious way I can imagine, but the challenges that excite my emotions, aggravate my heart, and ignite my imagination are the people, the culture around me – and this is true no matter where I live.  It’s not that I don’t see people; it’s that I’m not involved with them, with their stories. It’s that I can’t touch them, can’t see my children’s expressive faces in person, laugh with my grandchildren, hug my friend’s on greeting. The gestures on the screen are flat; the tears of stories are pretend. This isolation, so much richer than Crusoe’s hardwearing years is deadening. 

So, I’ve decided: I’m just in the wooden days. I’ll keep the basics together and look forward to a tumbled, chaotic, haywire flesh-and-blood reality where, when I want to write, I have to waltz through the luscious flow of life.  

Shut in in Tel Aviv: Make My Bed

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One Writer’s Daily Schedule for Living in Isolation

In the last posting, I wrote about being stranded in Tel Aviv because of COVID19 and my necessity, as a writer, to handle being isolated in the apartment.  My answer was to make a strict daily schedule. This post begins an outline of that schedule.

William H. McRaven, (ret’d) a four-star navy admiral, expert in counterterrorism and strategy who oversaw and executed Operation Neptune Spear said: 

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed, will have turned into many tasks completed.”

His reasoning makes sense to me, and I like the idea of a four-star admiral advising us to make our beds. So, the first item on the daily schedule is to make my bed. 

The days pass.

I get up and make the bed. 

The general was right. Even before I’m out of my pajamas, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. And after making the bed, it seems natural to follow with other small tasks. I pull back the ceiling-to-floor curtains that enclose the porch, and then open every window in the apartment. 

What difference does it make to me, as a writer, to have a schedule, to organize my day, to be orderly? What is the admiral trying to say?

This is what happens:

Cross currents of cool morning air come rushing through the rooms, ushering in the squeaky voices of children and the gruff barks of dogs from the street below. (People with dogs and children or both are allowed outside.) One parent or the other parents other strolls along, coffee in hand, patiently attending to their child’s running commentary about the sticks on the sidewalk.)

A gentle breeze stirs the curtains, glides over chairs and couch, along the television, over the books and wraps itself around my shoulders. Living now in an aura of fear, I take great pleasure in this river of air flowing over me. Here is an invisible gassy mix of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, a little water vapor, and a tiny percent of other gasses rushing in the window refreshing me after a night’s sleep. And here are my lungs, threatened by COVID19, but for the moment, capturing the air, the oxygen, and expelling CO2 for the plants.

In bringing concentration to simple tasks, I discover that I start the day not just with my bed made, but with conscious attention to detail. This apartment and my journeys within it provide me with a much bigger world than I have ever acknowledged.

In the next blog, I get coffee, Yeah!! And I discover that this warm, sweet drink has a mottled history of adventure, seduction, and betrayal.

Shut in in Tel Aviv: Introduction

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How it happened   

COVID19 came on fast. Steve and I were packing for the trip back to the United States for Passover with family and friends when PM Netanyahu announced the first restrictions on movement:  the drivers of busses were cordoned off from riders, stores selling unnecessary goods were to close, and with the exception of health care and other essential workers, all people were to go into mandatory isolation in their homes. 

We thought, “Well, we’re leaving soon so we’ll be confined for a only few days in our apartment on Sokolov Street.”  I continued packing, cleared out drafts of a recent mystery I’d sent off, organized files on the computer and made new files for the small amount of hard copy I had brought with me to Israel months ago. 

We soon realized it wasn’t to be just a few days. Not long after Netanyahu’s announcement, Delta sent us as email to say our flight was canceled.  We tried to call the Delta office; it had abruptly closed. An email from Delta said they would reschedule. 

I continued to think some flight would turn up, the crowding and herding of people in the U.S. airports would be solved, everyone would be careful, and the crisis would disappear. 

Then the dominos began to fall.

The reschedule never came, and one by one alternatives disappeared. Delta stopped flying to Israel, United flights became sketchy, uncertain. Flights to the U.S. from Europe were prohibited by the U.S. so we couldn’t go that route; Turkey shut down.  Doors were closing; our sons in the U.S. urged us to stay in place because the U.S. was not handling the situation well. Each state was making its own restrictions, and the federal government was sluggish in its response to the needs of the states. The U.S. appeared to be a nation confused.

Since we were stuck, I decided I’d use the time to get more writing done. I could pretend I was in a comfortable prison with lax restrictions that allowed me to walk 100 meters from my “cell” and to go to the grocery store or pharmacy when I needed. 

But, there were problems. I could no longer escape the particular distractions of working at our apartment kitchen table by running off early morning to my secluded corner in the café on Arlozorov. 

I needed to make a new schedule that would suit both my husband (also a writer) and I. It turned out to be a good idea, and it turned out we would be following the new schedule for much longer than a week……

In coming postings, I’ll be outlining 

One Writer’s Daily Schedule for Living in Isolation