Alpennia Blog: Moving the Furniture
Oct. 20th, 2015 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjEvery once in a while I like to more the furniture around in a room simply to try out new ways of moving through the space. I haven't done any new rearrangements since moving into my current house 5 years ago, simply because the available space and the existing furniture fall naturally into a particular arrangement. But it can be worth speculating on trying different things.
My "writing furniture" seems to benefit more from some regular rearrangement. Towards the beginning of summer (I don't actually recall exactly when), I embraced a new schedule of driving in early to Berkeley and writing at the local Peets Coffee before work. And it made me more productive...for a while. Lately, though, I've fallen a bit into a habit of noodling around on the web before I get to writing -- checking social media, writing my daily blog post. And when you combine that with a certain slowness in dragging out of bed, somehow the actual writing time slips away.
So I've returned to one of my previous techniques: dictating while driving. Then when I get to the coffee shop, rather than having to feel motivated to compose, all I have to be motivated for is transcription. I'm getting back on track and the only thing it actually displaces is podcast-listening. (I still do podcasts on the drive home.)
Unlike the furniture in my home, my "writing furniture" doesn't really have a single perfect sweet spot. Rather, it seems to benefit from getting changed up regularly. I suspect that the same tendency towards habit that works to my benefit, also becomes a problem if I lazily associate my "writing furniture" with non-productive activities. Or maybe I should think of it as "restless leg syndrome for the writer".
In any event, I'm working on chapter 15 this week--one of Serafina's chapters. Even though I knew from the start that Mother of Souls wasn't going to be a "romance" in the standard meaning, I'd originally intended my two new viewpoint characters to have ended up in bed together by now. Instead, we have had a couple of awkward kisses, teetering on the border between playful transgression, comforting friendship, and lonely yearning. I've re-arranged the furniture somewhat by giving Serafina a couple of temporary lovers, one on-page and one off. But the main emotional theme between Serafina and Luzie is the negotiation of a physical relationship when neither woman is "in love" in the strictest sense. They each need something that the other can offer, but they haven't yet figured out quite what that is or how to ask for it.
But as the Rotenek season turns towards summer, the domestic "furniture" of Luzie Valorin's boarding house gets rearranged with the return of her sons from school. And that rearrangement is going to throw the two women together in a new and different configuration. And isn't that a perfect time to enter a new phase in a relationship? Just when two young boys are going to be underfoot and jealous of your constant attention?
My "writing furniture" seems to benefit more from some regular rearrangement. Towards the beginning of summer (I don't actually recall exactly when), I embraced a new schedule of driving in early to Berkeley and writing at the local Peets Coffee before work. And it made me more productive...for a while. Lately, though, I've fallen a bit into a habit of noodling around on the web before I get to writing -- checking social media, writing my daily blog post. And when you combine that with a certain slowness in dragging out of bed, somehow the actual writing time slips away.
So I've returned to one of my previous techniques: dictating while driving. Then when I get to the coffee shop, rather than having to feel motivated to compose, all I have to be motivated for is transcription. I'm getting back on track and the only thing it actually displaces is podcast-listening. (I still do podcasts on the drive home.)
Unlike the furniture in my home, my "writing furniture" doesn't really have a single perfect sweet spot. Rather, it seems to benefit from getting changed up regularly. I suspect that the same tendency towards habit that works to my benefit, also becomes a problem if I lazily associate my "writing furniture" with non-productive activities. Or maybe I should think of it as "restless leg syndrome for the writer".
In any event, I'm working on chapter 15 this week--one of Serafina's chapters. Even though I knew from the start that Mother of Souls wasn't going to be a "romance" in the standard meaning, I'd originally intended my two new viewpoint characters to have ended up in bed together by now. Instead, we have had a couple of awkward kisses, teetering on the border between playful transgression, comforting friendship, and lonely yearning. I've re-arranged the furniture somewhat by giving Serafina a couple of temporary lovers, one on-page and one off. But the main emotional theme between Serafina and Luzie is the negotiation of a physical relationship when neither woman is "in love" in the strictest sense. They each need something that the other can offer, but they haven't yet figured out quite what that is or how to ask for it.
But as the Rotenek season turns towards summer, the domestic "furniture" of Luzie Valorin's boarding house gets rearranged with the return of her sons from school. And that rearrangement is going to throw the two women together in a new and different configuration. And isn't that a perfect time to enter a new phase in a relationship? Just when two young boys are going to be underfoot and jealous of your constant attention?
