What Joan Didion taught me about writing

There are moments for every person who works from home. 

I look over my living room and kitchen and think, "Haven't seen ANYTHING ELSE but THIS." I slump a little. And it takes a little longer to pull my chin up.

Chin up... life skill. 

It can be hard to remember the gifts of working from home when all we see are the messes to clean up. For many of us (especially women), it's not the tragedies that destroy us, it's the messes. How many counters have we wiped? How many things have we picked up?

Kitchen sinking.

It can be hard to concentrate. The mind can be a scattered mess. Our bodies are healing from this and that, but how long will it take our brains to get back on track? I've sat down to write this post a dozen times and forgot why I sat down the moment I turned on the computer. Oh yeah, I was going to write about New Year’s resolutions.

I can't even remember my New Year's resolutions. And I'm kind of the poster child for New Year's resolutions working out. Keen observers will notice that all three of my Paris books start in January.

I’ve been reading up on Joan Didion’s writing process.

She said she doesn't write novels or screenplays or articles. She writes sentences. Don't think about the whole thing, just write one sentence, then another, then another.

Photo: Nancy Ellison

As I navigate writing with a typewriter, I'm learning that writers who use typewriters spend their time staring at keyboards while writers of the computer age stare at the screen and all its blinking distractions. Looking just at the keyboard seems to keep one thought stringing along. The only distraction is wondering how to spell things without the help of a computer. Words you wrote five words ago are in the past. You only concentrate on the moment. It's almost like a meditation. Try staring at the keys instead of the screen with your computer keyboard. You’ll write differently.

With a typewriter, you might not TYPE better, but you might WRITE better.

If you would like to incorporate the practice of writing one sentence after another, then another, my course A WRITING YEAR is for you. Every week, a new lesson. After a year, you're bound to write better. This is a gentle course on exploring creativity through the written word.  This is by far my most popular ecourse. A welcome practice on these wintery days.

Speaking of wintery days...

My car has three snowstorms worth of ice layered on it... so there's that. We even lost electricity during one storm, but fear not... manual typewriter steps up to the helm. YES.

Writing sentences. One sentence, then another, then another. Just like Joan.

I've learned that the slower one writes, the faster things get written. Typewriters... hand writing... slow and steady.

PS If you have a writerly New Year's resolution, check out my online writing courses.