One Thing Leads To Another
by Cindy Layton
My son, who dabbles in programming/ business applications and the like, made the comment that “one idea leads to another, and then another,” referring to the way that like-minded people who join together create a multiplier effect.
I replied, “It’s like that in writing, too.”
For business-people, and for creative people, (and aren’t they the same?) thoughts and ideas feed off each other. Mark Zuckerberg famously capitalized on the “hackathon” concept to quickly generate workable solutions to problems. Some may say that’s just a tech-quirky elevation on collaboration. We writers recognize that phenomenon when we attend a conference or a reading event or a writing seminar. It’s part of why you pay for an MFA. To be in a place with other creative people.
The idea, for writers, is to surround yourself with people who inspire you but who also push you to do better and be better.
I attended a hackathon this week, better known as the WWWA Writing Group. Eight years stronger and better, we still elevate each other. We provide to one another the gentle-but-truthful feedback that we genuinely need, ask for, and rely on.
But, outside of the hackathon concept, writers can sometimes get bogged down in ritual that interferes with productivity. My writing colleague, Elizabeth Solar, once advised me not to fall in love with any particular location for writing lest it become a trap. Better to be flexible and teach yourself to work in a variety of conditions, coffee shops, your kitchen, a basement corner, a park bench. Is coffee your condition for creativity? A soft armchair? A session with Netflix? Traps, all of them.
If conditionality is anything, it’s a mind-trap.
What do you need to write? Less than you’d think.
You don’t need endless expanses of time. Harper Lee worked as an airline reservation agent, Toni Morrison, as a professor, editor and single mother, while writing their great American novels.
Some of the most famous and successful writers didn’t even need a clear mind. Ernest Hemingway was rumored to drink a quart of whiskey a day. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a life-long opium addict. (In advance of the question, no, I don’t subscribe to the theory that whiskey or opium enhances creativity.)
So bring your needs, your essentials for writing, down to a most basic level. A utensil of some sort (pencil, paper?), an idea, a trusted source for feedback.
Oh, and in pandemic times, allowance is made for the requirement of a summer patio. I’ll give you that. No need for all-out utilitarianism.
