Notes on Writing from Montana

On being a reluctant writer.

It’s mid week in our first week of September, the kids started school, and here we are, Acre and I, he in the chair next to me on the porch, laptop aloft my lap, a little smoke rolling in from the south of here, sun in my eyes, and for all practical purposes, a beautiful day in Montana. The leaves are still green, but everything is starting to hint at a faded yellow, the tone of the plants, the tone of the sky, the smell of the air. Fall is coming, even if it’s pretending not to be. The creek is getting cold again with cold nights. The sun passes over the ridge in the morning a few steps south of where it did the day before. Evening darkness surprises us a few minutes earlier by the day.

I’m still a little thrown off that it is September. I’d planned for my first novel to be close to self publishing by now, but I’m still editing and then still have to find someone else to edit to. And then still have to format. Figure out the logistics. Bloody hell. Time is going to quickly. I’ve also started a new writing project and with it comes a mentally isolated states that is hard to explain, and often even harder to live with, for others, and for myself. I have certain social obligations and very certain (and wanted) family obligations, but my mind is constantly torn between the external life I live, and this internal dialogue and story, which, to tell properly, I need to be fully immersed in. The story needs movement, and acts a bit like a creek in constant motion, and while I can’t dedicated more than an hour or two / day to get words on page, I can (and can’t seem to not) keep it going in my mind. I start delving into the specifics even when not typing. This trait for that character. That sign in the background. This small thing that will come back later. There is in theory an off switch, but I hesitate to use it, and sometimes even when I flick it, nothing happens, the electricity still flows and I can’t turn it off.

This isn’t a problem per se, but it can lead to humorous (to me) and possibly frustrating or irritating (to others) moments. I turn into a space cadet in a constant state of trying to orient to where I am. Someone might well be talking to me while my mind is somewhere in the North walking among ice cavern walls. I’m pulled out of it, just long enough to give a hazy recognition that they are speaking, but having missed the words, like being literally deaf, I have to ask them to repeat everything they’ve just said even though I was standing directly with them when they said it. This most certainly affects my family the most, but even in external social situations I find it awkward when my mind hears a few words from someone that triggers my brain to jump immediately into note taking mode for the story and all I want is think how that line plays out, to not forget it, to mentally write it down, and produce the image that goes along with it, how it fits in the story, and suddenly this person I’ve been talking to has continued with their thought, which of course they should, like a normal human, but I’ve been left behind and now wandered a mental stairwell that is off to the side. Suddenly I hear the silent pause, the social cue that it is my turn to respond, to interact, to be a nice person who has been engaged and listening, but I haven’t been. I want to have been. But I haven’t.

This is precisely why I force myself from taking pauses between writing projects. It is not for lack of ideas to write. It is not for lack of wanting to write. But rather my brain doesn’t know how to do this half way. It goes all in. It is hard, yes, and it is work, yes, but those two things do not cause me procrastination. What causes me to put off these larger projects is not even the fear that I won’t be able to finish, or fear that it won’t be good. I’m way past worry about those things. I know with each step in writing I get better. And that is my only goal, to finish and get better and tell the whole story I see. But what leads me to pause the most is the fact that I know my brain well enough to know, once I decide to go, and I dive in, I’m going to be there for a while and I won’t necessarily be available outside it to the degree most would expect. It feels rather selfish, and that is not an attribute I strive for. But I also know, this is the commitment it takes for me to finish larger writing projects. This is the largest challenge of the whole thing… the immersion into the writing cave.

So I started a few days ago. I’m trying my best to take weekends off. I’m also trying my best to not think about it when my family is around. But inevitably everything I think about, everything I hear, everything I see, somehow is tied to the story, and at moments, the tie is just too good to not write down, because I know if I let it pass and try to get to it later, the connection will be lost. The creek keeps flowing, washing everything downstream. I have to make notes, first mental, then physical. And sometimes I have to sit down and put some words on page.

It’s a unique process, and for people who do not write, I hope to not paint it with any glamor. It’s one of the loneliest tasks I know, setting out to write long works. It’s wildly satisfying when it works. I’ve only ever shared a handful of stories with a handful of people, but when you hear they’ve had a connection to it, an enjoyment in spending their time following the trail you create through a new land, I certainly find this wildly rewarding. And mostly seeing an idea develop from a single dimensional thought into a full story… There is something about it; I’m unable to stop trying to do more of it.

In writing stories we create a canvas like a book hanging on a wall. The reader steps up, as if looking at a painting. But unlike a normal static work, they open it, and enter into it. They crawl in, following the initial image, and step through the canvas, leaving the room they were in behind. From here they follow the pathway, encounter the characters, encounter the places, and are taken along on a journey that otherwise does not exist without the unfolding of the book cover and then turning the pages. This is the magic of language and written words.

At any moment they might set the book down. Get up. Grab a coffee. Leave the room. If the writer has done their job well though, the reader will now have one more memory in their mind. One more story that helps explain life on earth. The colors of life will be one stroke richer. The lexicon of their world will now contain one more story and view, shared at least with the author if not others. “We read to know we are not alone.”* This is the magic of books.

So I see my window shortening for todays work. I’d planned to keep going with this Substack, but I need to other writing done in this short window I have. The other thoughts for this page will have to wait.

* This quote by William Nicholson, author of Shadowlands, is often attributed C. S. Lewis, because it is given by that character in the story, but was never written or spoken by C. S. Lewis. But I think it is still a terrific quote.