A quick note to say that because we’re still dealing with the fallout from water damage in our apartment, things are bananas here, so I’m folding my usual In Process update into today’s free edition of Talk Soon. That means a behind-the-curtains peek at what I’m working on is available for everyone this month at the bottom of this newsletter, whether or not you’re a paid subscriber. You can thank the hose that burst by my sink and our hard to get a hold of insurance adjuster. (Hi Matt! If you’re reading this, call me!1 )
I’ll return to the 2 subscriber-only/1 free-for-all schedule next month. If you like what you see, considering joining the paid subscriber club by hitting the upgrade button right here.
Hi Friends.
This week, a tiny portal to my novel has been opening in my bathroom. The way in? Brushing my teeth before bed. Is it the repetitive motion? The absolute lack of interest in anything but reading a few chapters of a book (currently Katya Apekina’s Mother Doll, which is funny and smart and deeply pleasurable) and falling into a sleep full of weird dreams that performs a reverse-psychology move on my brain and turns it on? Is there an actual portal activated by Toms of Maine toothpaste and my dentist in an effort to get me through this draft of my book and improve my dental hygiene?
Whatever the cause, the Toothbrushing Portal™️ is open, my mind what-if-ing and making connections and getting the sort of overexcited everyone knows is bad for falling asleep but which I cannot ignore. So, grumbling, I race through what’s left of my not-a-lot of steps nighttime routine, get into bed, pull out the notebook I keep in my nightstand for the express purpose of scrap paper and get down whatever it is that is knocking on my brain. The next day I’ll take this piece of paper, which I’ve learned to only write on one side of, and tape it down in my writing notebook. And though I am muttering, sometimes aloud, that this is not the time, I am grateful for the rudeness with which each of these notes arrive. Every one is like a key in a lock, in this case not unlocking but securing, answering questions I’ve been asking myself. Reminding me that answers arrive when they want to arrive.
Last week, at a reading for the aforementioned Mother Doll, when Katya Apekina described the act of writing as channeling, the writers in the room murmured or nodded, myself included. Because when I get what I get in the Toothbrushing Portal™️, or at my desk, or while washing dishes (is it running water? looks suspiciously at all my shower thoughts), it can feel a lot like listening, that information is being received and revealed rather than invented. Does that make us all sound a bit nuts? So be it.
I’ve been waiting for such transmissions, not patiently but fearfully, during what has been a particularly bad round of doubting the project of the novel itself and the larger endeavor of my writing career. I’d spent a total of one day on the novel in February, time off from it not exactly a choice, and then the two inches of water through most of our apartment did not help a lick in giving me time or focus to return to it. (Writers, just like the rest of you, prefer to work in stable conditions, despite the persistent myth that struggle makes our work more interesting or better. It doesn’t.) Time away makes any project more daunting as it recedes from living inside your mind, or perhaps, you from inside it.
What brought me back? Writing by hand. Before the Toothbrushing Portal™️ incidents, I had this one really good writing day at my desk, which I’ll talk about more down below, content-wise, but I want now, to talk about the process of it, and how it, too, opened a porous place between me and the novel.
I’ve always done a fair share of writing by hand. Some of this is mere tech: born in 1978, I didn’t have a personal computer till I was out of college in 2000. There’s something primal and right for me in writing something down by hand. And even with access to computers of various sizes, I still always begin my work by handwriting, to the point of superstition. In fact, during the earliest days of the novel I’m currently writing, I only allowed myself to handwrite notes or scenes. I do this whenever a new project is trying to shove out a current project precisely because I can’t get too deep into something by hand; I’ll tire, though this tiring, when I’m actually working by hand, always takes longer than I think it will.
There’s something about working by hand that greatly alters the pace of the work, that in slowing you down—you can only travel so many lines ahead in your mind while trying to literally transcribe those very lines—actually drops you right into the moment of it. The effect is thrilling; my heart tends to pound when I am handwriting, as if I am playing a game of tag against my brain, and I am “it.”
Because I can only go forward, across and down a page, when I’m writing by hand, that’s how I go. One line and then the next, till I’m emptied, till I’ve tagged my brain over and over again (I’m much better at being “it” in the mental landscape than the physical one). If I were to type the same? I’d get lost elsewhere: in a different part of the scene, or the novel itself, or the portal of things on my various computers. It would be too easy to drop any old thing onto the page, which would make me doubt its merit, and get absorbed in the doubt. And though I always, of course, end up typing—I don’t tend to do this till I have a better hold on what I want to say. I’m a pretty good speller, but I can’t tell you how many times I have typed “right” when I mean “write” as if my brain is telling me there is little space between the two, that writing means understanding, but I don’t think that’s true—and can be detrimental, early on—to the process. Handwriting feels kids running around a schoolyard. Typing feels like the pop quiz when they get back to the classroom.
When I finally turned to this novel with my full attention a few years ago, I found that I wanted to keep writing by hand for a while, that I wanted to put space in between what could feel like a receptive mode and a decisive mode, especially as I knew that I’d be in that decisive mode for so so long once I got into it (the first notes happened 2017-ish, for those of you who are counting). I filled multiple notebooks with lengthy detailed scenes before I was ready to type. Was this wise as someone with chronic shoulder pain? No. Was this running around a schoolyard what the novel needed? I think so, then, and now.
Whenever I teach I try to reconnect students to writing by hand (though some never have, and yes, I’m appalled). Half the room will already be enamored of writing by hand. The other half will be horrified at the thought of moving at such a pace, which, if I can manage it, makes me assign them exactly that task. To their surprise (but not mine) a lot of them will end up liking this ancient technology for how different it feels, what it lets them access, and they’ll fold it into their practice. I always say I’ll look up the science on writing by hand but I don’t. I’m fine just believing in its magic.
And now, a brief art interlude
This is a painting called Whippoorwill by the artist and painter Joe Brainard. A dear coaching client who loves June sent it to me via text alongside a check in on how long it would be till she could return to couch lounging. She’s got 3 weeks left in her recovery from surgery, after which she will hopefully be cleared to do exactly that. Though this painted dog is a whippett and June a pit/boxer/beagle/bully thing mix2, the resemblance is striking. Did I comb through years of photos of June couch lays to find one that mimics the above posture most closely? I did.
I’m grateful for her good wishes for June, but I’m also grateful to have been introduced to Brainard’s work, which is tender and inventive and I want to spend more time with. I love this one of blueberries and this devotional one for Kenward Elmsie, his life partner (and the reason we get so many lovely paintings of Whippoorwill, Elmsie’s dog, and Brainard’s work, which he has donated to various museum collections), and this collage. I hope to see some of Brainard’s work in person (I’d kill to study this one up close) though for now I’ll have to settle for the lone one that’s on view at The Met now, which happens to be the June clone one, which I’m not displeased about at all. I also loved this essay on Brainard and collaboration in art and pets by Kit Schluter, all due respect to Agnes Martin, who of course was not a pets person and this short film on Brainard’s decision to “walk out into life” away from artmaking before he died, way too young, at 52, of AIDS-induced pneumonia.
And now, back to our temporarily (ir)regularly scheduled In Process programming…
What I’m working on this week
New opening chapters for the novel. I’ve pushed the book’s start back by a number of months; it opened in July, and now it opens in March. This is the result of conversations with my first readers, and lots of thinking and notetaking and outline making that has happened since December. But I’m finally, hallelujah, thank all the goddesses, back to actually writing.
How it’s going
About that return to actually writing day. Towards the end of this month, I’d finally been able to open up what I had: a newly organized draft, a tentative outline based on that draft. But I could not find my entry. I was thinking and thinking and doing some research, which was mostly watching people make maple syrup in various northern eastern locales, a lot of which are ASMR videos in disguise. An actual note from my process tracking reads: Fucking around, again. I was waiting for one of those calls from another dimension to be received, but nothing was coming in. I did what I often do, which is run through my notes, hoping for a trigger. And there it was, a line from my research that was not about drilling holes into trees or tubing systems but about a childhood memory one of the nice old men offered when he was walking us through his sugarbush. I thought, well, my character might have that sort of memory, too. I could, I thought, take that line and start handwriting on it, because I wasn’t sure if he did, and I didn’t want to worry about whether it would be right, I just wanted to, well, write.
That afternoon, I wrote 11 pages by hand, which my shoulder hated but I loved, not because the pages themselves were genius, but because they felt inside, finally, again, and I was relieved that I still could tap in, that I still cared to. I’d learned things, too: about this character’s relationship with his family, about his mother and his sister (who didn’t even have a name before, who’d previously appeared only as the knitter of a single hat!), about what sort of hope he was hanging onto here in March, which matters greatly to the story.
A few days later, the Toothbrushing Portal™️ brought me thoughts on how to structure a different chapter, character motivations and details, and a pertinent timeline that tied these things together. I’ve been working on this other new opening chapter for a different character for the past few days—typing, layering in, accessing. Happy to be here, in the flow, as long as it lasts and doesn’t flood my apartment.
Thanks for sticking around through all this typing.
Talk Soon,
Danielle
Judging by the response time of my prior communications with Matt, I think it’s safe to say he’s not reading this right now.
Yes, we did the DNA test. Mostly so people on the street would stop insisting she was part Dalmation.
I’m a bit terrified of June post sedatives and 8 weeks of lying there but I’m hoping Archie (the kitten) will take one for the team! 😹
I love handwriting! I love that feeling of terror when looking at the blank page, and then the relief as I start to write new words, new worlds, new new new! I’m sorry to hear about June and hope she’s doing well. I love the Brainard painting and the matching June photo. Who are we without our dogs?! Thanks as always Danielle for your inspiration! 🙏