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In
the Movie Tootsie, Terri Garr plays a struggling actress who
stalks out of a soap opera audition, takes off a pair of red-rimmed
glasses, and tells Dustin Hoffman's character that she keeps
buying stuff, yet she gets nowhere in her acting career. In
my opinion, she has the wrong stuff.
Do
you have stuff? More than King Tut's tomb or the shoe closet
of Imelda Marcos? Does the guilt-monkey ride your back when
you are not writing, but buying stuff? Tell that chimp to
take one long monkey hike. I believe that stuff, and the act
of getting stuff is good for a writer, this one anyway.
Think
about it while I tell you about my stuff. Is there a certain
type of pen and paper that allows you to express your story
ideas better that others? I like the Bic Velocity ball point
click and thrift shop sewn spine notebooks with floppy covers.
I write like crazy in them and take them everywhere. I feel,
well, "writerly" when I use them. You may have an Alphasmart
and write at supersonic speed. One day I'll join the twenty-first
century. But not today.
When
I sit down at my desk in my holey, buttonless, blue cotton
cardigan I almost feel like Grace Metalious or Ayn Rand. When
I was twelve, I saw a photo of Metalious on the back of her
blockbuster Peyton Place. She wore jeans and stared at her
typewriter as if it held every mystery that perplexes mankind.
At that time I decided being a writer was very cool, and I
wanted to live like That Girl in my own Manhattan apartment
and have a neat-o boyfriend like Donald Holinger or Bobby
Sherman. I grew up to have a neat-o husband who looks a little
like Paul Reiser and I live in a house in the DC burbs--I'm
a lucky girl, even if I'm not that girl.
As
for other writer's stuff, if it were not for the immediacy
and the spell check feature of computers, I might compose
on the same Olivetti I had in grade school. There's something
lulling and creative-enhancing about the tappity tap of a
manual typewriter rather than the "toc toc" of my IBM laptop
keys. But I wouldn't trade my laptop for anything. It's probably
the first computer to have crawled from technology's primordial
ooze, but it fits me like a well-worn shoe.
I
asked WRW's charming VP about her stuff, and she confessed
that a mini Slinky sits on her desk most of the time. When
her brain needs a rest her fingers do the walking with the
coiled metal. We also discussed the need to, from time to
time, get up from the desk and walk around and let the circulation
flow back to our butts. Sometimes we walk right to our cars
and head for the local bookstore, or even better, a rare books
sale. In the DC area book sales abound, especially in the
fall. I have stood in line with the "book nerds" an hour or
so before the huge Goodwill sale begins, which, I guess, makes
me a book nerd too. When the doors open--Watch Out! I have
lots of out-of-print books bought at bargain prices from those
sales. You are welcome to join me in the stampede--seriously.
It's great fun, and I feel no guilt that I'm not home working
because I know I'm finding great resource material. Good stuff!
No guilt!
Is
there any time you should be guilty about not writing? That
is purely up to you. If you set up personal writing goals,
try to keep them. Sometimes life (recent tragic events not
withstanding) can get stuck between you and the storytelling.
You are, after all, human. If you think of writing as a sanctuary,
you will always want to go there.
But
back to the stuff. I bet all of you have good stuff in your
writing spaces. I may not want your stuff, nor would you want
mine, believe me, you don't! Yet, it's all about nesting isn't
it? Don't we feel secure in our own space, surrounded by familiar,
comfortable, and even helpful things? If you need stuff, go
get some and come back to your story, a few dollars poorer,
but with a refreshed mind. I know if I'm browsing the Romance
section of any bookstore, I get all antsy to get back home
and pound out the pages.
If
the term "stuff" is too pedestrian for you, consider that
you have "accoutrements". They may say a lot about you or
your characters. If you came to my house and saw three different
colors of ketchup: red, green, and purple (yes, purple), you
would say I have a fairly spoiled, but greatly loved, child.
You would be right, but wouldn't it be more interesting to
think I was an artist who uses condiments for pigments? Your
stuff can work for you and your writing. Use them as creative
jumping off points.
Now,
please excuse me while I go have some of the stuff that fuels
my writing: a Diet Coke Big Gulp and a turkey hot dog with
onions, mustard, and purple ketchup.
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