A Desk-Table and Vertical Writing

While I was at Provincetown, I fell into a nasty little habit of measuring progress in number of pages written.

Now that I'm home and no longer have unlimited hours to spend making pages, I'm trying to find a way to make my narrative deeper and richer. I'm doing what Andre Dubus has famously called Vertical Writing. Vertical Writing involves diving into characters' souls and using whatever might be found there to shape a story. Dubus has said that while practicing Vertical Writing, he would not move on to a new sentence until he understood completely the implications of the last sentence he had written.

When I engage in Vertical Writing, I actually lose pages. The writing becomes compressed.

In the past, I've lost much writing time during the school year and for all kinds of reasons. One reason is that I've gotten used to writing in complete aloneness in my writing room. This is a habit I fell into when the children were still here. But when I was in Provincetown, I developed the habit of using my laptop in any room that pleased me. Tonight, I did Vertical Writing on my laptop in the livingroom.

One thing that's made that easier is that one of my sons recently gave me a coffee table that opens up into a desk. I now have a place in the living room to spread out my manuscript, and a place to store it (along with the laptop) once I've finished. I found that the TV being on didn't disturb me as much as I thought it would.

I got quite a bit done tonight. I think if I hadn't worked on the laptop, I wouldn't have written earlier tonight, because I simply didn't want to leave the room that Allen was in: I didn't want to leave him alone.

It is also chilly tonight. We had a wood fire going. It was nice to be sitting in a warm room to write. My writing room is far away from the heat source. Many times in winter I've chosen not to write because the room is just too cold. Maybe I've found a way around that now.

Sometimes it's good to shed old habits.