I saw what you did to that cat and, well, I just wanted to thank you. I also want a peanut.
I love the idea of sitting in an Adirondack chair on a sunny day with a pad and a pen. There’s something so romantic, so wonderful about writing in nature. So, once in a while, I give it a try.
And then the pollen goes up my nose. And the bugs bite. And the sun get too hot and my hands get sweaty, and, since I’m a lefty, I smear the ink with my sweaty hand – which is not such a big deal because I’m not writing anything worth keeping anyway, because every time a leaf crinkles, I look up in eager anticipation of finding that feral cat that I oh, so wanna hit with a rock because NO ONE menaces my squirrels without hearing from me, buddy!
Ahem.
So I guess what I’m saying is that, when I try to write in it, nature distracts and annoys me.
Otherwise nature and I have no real problems. It often delights me. When the weather is right, I could stand around in nature all day interacting with it in the most genial and stupid ways. For example, the other day I caught myself waving at a squirrel. He didn’t wave back – that would be asking too much, I suppose – but he did seem to take the gesture in the spirit in which it was given and that pleased me no end.
Better still, I have discoverd that actions such as these improve my writing.
I have the bad habit of chaining myself to my desk. Even when my brain refuses to work, I stay put. In general this could be defined as good self-discipline. You can’t just sit around and wait for the muse, after all. It never shows up when you want it to. Since the words aren’t going to write themselves, I muscle through.
But every writer reaches a point when good self-discipline evolves into something that looks a whole lot more like masochism. Nothing’s gonna come no matter how hard you try.
So I pry myself away and tell myself it’s not procrastination if I deliver myself back to the desk eventually. Then I take a walk and wave at squirrels. Doing so restores my overall sense of well-being. It provides the second wind I need to get back to my awful, awful writing and make something that at least resembles progress.
Better yet, such a walk allows me to pursue my new hobby: feral cat chasing. In the grand scheme of things, saving a squirrel is always more important than a well-written paragraph.
When I’m not promoting the historical dynamo that is Sarah Josepha Hale (My children’s book comes out on September 1, by the way!) or working on a story ideas about the disgusting habits of Fluff Monkeys, I get paid to edit an alumni magazine. It’s a wonderful job where I get to interview a number of fascinating people who have great stories to tell.
I also interview teenagers, and, well, that’s sometimes a different story. It’s not that the kids aren’t smart or have nothing interesting to tell me – they are and they do. The problem is that some of them don’t yet know how to answer questions about themselves. Even the most casual interview environments make them uncomfortable.
This discomfort often manifests itself in one of two distinctly teenage ways:
1. The teen (a girl, usually) goes on a caffeinated ramble, filling the briefest of silences with lots and lots of words. Any words will do, really.
2. The teen (a boy, obviously) grunts to say “yes.” Or maybe the grunt was a “no.” Maybe it’s a “maybe?” Or maybe it wasn’t a grunt at all; maybe Mr. Teen just has gas.
All teens I speak with aren’t this way, of course, many really do shine in an interview. But I’ve encountered the above types often enough to wish that I had some kind of crystal ball to get inside their heads and pull out what I need.
Fortunately, I have one!
I first decided to get a Magic 8 Ball after watching an episode of Friends and noticing that Chandler had one on his office desk. I’m not a huge fan of either Friends or Chandler, but I loved the idea of having an 8 Ball of my own. I had one when I was a kid, but in my tweens I purged it with my other toys. I was under the impression that a toy-less room would make me more of an adult; instead it just made me a sullen teen with an un-fun room.
My plan was to keep the 8 Ball on my desk at work and, whenever one of my colleagues suggested an idea for a magazine story, I would consult it by asking, “Is that idea stupid, or what?”
Fun fact: the thingamabob that predicts the future is a 20-sided die with 10 positive responses, five negative responses, and five vague “ask me later, I’m sleepy”-style responses. So if you think an idea is stupid, the odds are pretty good that the 8 Ball will agree with you.
My antics with the 8 Ball were good for a few laughs. Soon thereafter it became part of the landscape, just another thing on my desk.
Little did I know that my 8 Ball would soon be important tool of the trade. This epiphany came less than a week after I brought it to work.
I had to interview a senior who conveyed all the signs of the Type One teen I mentioned above. She was blathering before she could even finish wrestling her book bag through my office door. She told me that she was having a crazy day and she was tired because there’s a test coming up and she’s nervous about it and she would very much like to check her email if it was okay with me and it would only take a second and she’s so sorry that she’s late and keeping me waiting this way and blah and the blah blah blah and blah.
While this little train wreck was playing itself out, she sat herself down in the chair next to my desk and started to play with the 8 Ball, shaking it with vigor and peering into the viewfinder.
I interrupted her. “What did you ask it?”
This stopped her monologue cold. “Ask what?”
“The ball.”
“Oh” she looked at the ball in her hands as if for the first time. “Nothing. I was just…” And then she trailed off. I could tell her answer was honest. She grabbed the ball just to do something with her hands.
“Nothing?” I sputtered. “I hope you realize that you are holding in your hands a powerful piece of black magic. You don’t hold a Magic 8 Ball and ask it nothing. It is not done. You gotta ask it something or it will get annoyed.” (And yes, I really said this. My tone suggested I was joking and not crazy. It’s the same tone I use on my six-year-old son when I want him to get into a giggle fit.)
With only a little more cajoling, I got her to ask the 8 Ball a question.
“You have to say it out loud,” I explained. “It needs to hear you.”
“Oh,” she said. She paused and asked, “Did I get into Brown?”
The ball replied with a “Most Likely,” and this report actually relieved her. We talked about Brown and about what made the university so important her. Then we talked about that test and what she was up to these days and yada yada yada. The formal setting of the office was not as intimidating as it was a few minutes before. We were just having a friendly chat. A friendly chat where I was taking notes.
When she began to slip back into her old conversational habits, I reintroduced the 8 Ball, which forced her to focus her mind on a specific, single idea. Then the 8 Ball forced her to sit still and wait for an answer to the question she asked.
I interviewed that young woman several years ago. At the time I had about 10 years of professional interviewing experience under my belt. In other words, I knew how extract information from people. But I had never, ever, seen anything like this before.
It was, well, magical.
On this blog I like to write about a lot of different things. But I always make an effort to keep all of my posts thematically linked under the common umbrella of “Creative Thinking.”
Creative thinking can come in many forms. Sometimes getting your mind to work in a new and innovative way takes a great deal of conscious effort. Other times a great idea comes by way of a happy accident. My Magic 8 Ball was one such happy accident.
Could it have been my happiest accident? I’m not sure. But according to one inside source, “All Signs Point to ‘Yes.’”
Hey, Look! A Writer Fellow! 