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| Yup, this is me, I posed for this one. |
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?
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!
ReplyDeleteIf 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?
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.
DeleteI'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.
DeleteSo, 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.
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.
DeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteSo...I guess both? I write fast, edit quickly? Or I'm simply bad at analogies.
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.
DeleteReplyDelete