I don’t write to be famous, I don’t write to be known, I write because I am and I want to be read. How sad to fill a room with paintings no one sees or play music no one hears. Writing is talking without sound, singing without score and dancing without movement and yet, it is all of them. It is a solitary art conjured from thought and expressed by the need to communicate.

HEAD SLAPS, SPEED BUMPS and LIGHTBULBS, one woman's WTF, oops and ah-ha moments of life.

They were published once, and as every writer knows, once is not enough.




Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Hygenic Writing



Yup, this is me,  I posed for this one.
I have not taken a bath in about eight years. No I do not smell of wood smoke and dirty laundry, I’m a shower-girl.

There’s something about taking baths which does not make me feel clean. Oh sure, I like to languish in warm water just like everybody else, it is where we all started, but soaking in exfoliated skin and a day’s dirt mixed with soap scum, just doesn’t feel clean to me. The solution…to shower after a bath. I’ve done that but it’s inconvenient and leaves wet footprints on the rug. Let me explain.

My bathroom is really large, about the size of a guest room. It’s nice, not over the top luxurious but comfortable and relaxing, if relaxing is what you want to do. But, most of the time, I don’t have the time to relax, I’m in and out and on my way, because boys and girls, I have places to go and people to annoy. So I get clean fast and am out the door.

So what does that have to do with writing?

I write like I bathe, fast, with Suave, (cheap) and Ivory (traditional), I still use the soap that floats, old habits die hard. I write un-fancy and inexpensively and am traditional; I write what they want and I write how I talk, without the expletives. I would love to swear more but newspapers frown on fuck and shit in print, so I guess you could call me a hygienic writer.  

I’ve tried long baths and I’ve tried to embellish my expressions with pontifications which fill the hearts and minds of readers with thoughts much grander than their own. But that’s bullshit writing and though I can sling BS with the rest of them that’s not who I am. I’m a shower writer, hygienic, inexpensive and with writing habits which float like my soap, on the surface of life.

Are you a soaker or shower writer?
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 21, 2014 at 12:27 PM

    First of all, this post was great - it made me snort laugh. "Places to go, people to annoy" Hoot! .And then, "I would love to swear more but newspapers frown on fuck and shit in print," Hootie hoot!

    If by shower you mean clean, then I'm a soaker. Or maybe floater is a better word, but I digress. I just changed my Twitter thingy to say, "Writer of bad deeds, reader of bad deeds...," My latest WIP (I've mentioned this before) has, count'em, over 100 "fucks" in 337 pages. That doesn't include *shit* and *goddamn*. Which I don't capitalize b/c in my little peanut head, it makes it seem less blasphemous. I can fool myself, can't I?

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    1. Carolynnwith2NsOctober 21, 2014 at 9:10 PM

      Let's see, that's 'fuck' every three pages or so. Not bad actually. It's a southern women kind of thing I think, all sweet and polite on the outside, with a 'fuckity fuck' real woman on the inside. Up here we dispel with the sweet part and try to be polite, "go fuck yourself...please" we say.

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    2. DLMOctober 23, 2014 at 6:46 PM

      I'm a southern woman and I'm not particularly sweet, inside or out. ;) That said, my novels don't have much cursing because really, all linguistics and prejudices aside, I feel like it's anachronistic. I'm writing in a period when there really wasn't a concept of "dirty words" but an *oath* had serious power.

      So, in that sense, I'm "clean" (there's not even much sex in novel #1, though #2 will likely be more explicit).

      However, in the taking-forever-and-writing-way-the-hell-more-than-is-required, I'm a total bather. "The Ax and the Vase" is just about a decade in the making right now - between learning how to write, and learning how to query the thing, having a life, and a full time job and exactly nobody else in my household to ever do anything *ever*, I have not rushed. The WIP should take a lot less time, but still won't be one of these novel-in-six-months phenomena that simply leave me agape with lost wonder.

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    3. Carolynnwith2NsOctober 23, 2014 at 10:11 PM

      My first novel, six years, second three years, memoir, since 1989, my column...I can turn one out in forty-five minutes. I used to be a bather, now I spritz.

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  2. Jennifer R. DonohueOctober 21, 2014 at 8:23 PM

    I shower super-quick. If I occasion to have a bath, I refill the water at least once when it's cooled off, and have a book with me.

    So...I guess both? I write fast, edit quickly? Or I'm simply bad at analogies.

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    1. Carolynnwith2NsOctober 21, 2014 at 9:19 PM

      The last time I took a book in the bath with me the pages stuck to my fingers and I dropped the book in the water. It was an Old Farmers Almanac. That pretty much explains how relaxing baths are for me; check the weather forecast and the farm report. At least my candles weren't citronella.
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