staring out the window – Deborah Makarios

At a screen, yes, but where are you looking? Look up. What do you see?

Though I would be the last person to suggest that a human is no more than their body, I do believe that our bodies influence us, perhaps more than we are aware, and in ways we are not aware of.

The environment we choose or create for ourselves is expressive, symbolic – perhaps subconsciously, and perhaps in a code understood only by ourselves, but symbolic just the same.

I’ve spent the last ten months looking out the window. Not the whole time, obviously, but a lot of the time I spent at my desk this year was spent staring out the window, thinking, dreaming, or just watching in case the postie came past.

Why? Because that’s where I put my desk when it arrived: under the one window in the study, looking out onto the road. But why? Because that’s where it fit without having to move anything around, without having to disrupt the way things were. It was the path of least resistance. As was gazing out the window.

Then this last week, with all the Christmas preparation in full swing (including making old-fashioned steamed puddings), the furniture-moving bug bit. I got the urge to move the desk.
It’s not a small desk (4 1/2′ wide, 2 1/2′ deep & high) and being made of rimu it’s not terribly light, either. Especially when stuffed with stationery. And then there’s the six-foot-tall bookcase full of books and papers (not rimu, but still heavy), and the remarkably heavy easy chair – both of which would have to cross the floor to make room for the desk.

I did it anyway. It was a kind of compulsion. Sometimes you just gotta move furniture.

My desk now faces the wall. To the left of me: books. To the right of me: books. In front of me: pen, paper, corkboard. Work.
It has been a good year, a relaxing year in many ways, but the time for staring out the window has passed. It’s time to get serious (though never, I trust, joyless). This is a place for work.

What’s in front of you? Where are you looking? What are you secretly saying to yourself?

Today I wrote those magic words: The End.

I’ve been working on this particular WIP since before I started this blog, so long I can’t even remember when I first had the dream that started it.

This isn’t actually the first draft as such, it’s the first full draft. The first first draft (with its many rewritten beginnings and approximate word-count of 27,387) lay down and died of apathy in June last year, and by that October I was ready to hit the road running, having taken some time to plan.

Admittedly, I did at that point think I could finish the first draft by the end of the year while working full-time. I did finish it by the end of the year, just not that year.

The reason it took so long is that it is so long: the approximate final word-count was 158,840 words. Yup. One hundred and fifty-eight thousand, eight hundred and forty. There are languages with fewer words than that.

The reason for this length, I suspect, is that I wrote down everything. Screeds of stuff that I know won’t be in the final draft, details that are inessential to the plot, but all things that I needed to know. I couldn’t just write “She climbed the cliff-face,” I had to know each hand- and foot-hold. (And now that I know, I can edit them out.)

That’s one of the many insights I’ve had about myself as a writer during the course of this draft. There have been a few.

I work best in big chunks, since it takes me so long to pick up the threads.

A short stint is more fruitful than nothing, but more frustrating (see above).

Inspiration can strike at any time, but a pen acts as a lightning rod. A pen in the hand, that is. Lightning rods don’t lie flat.

I need to re-learn the mechanics of writing, so my wrist and hand don’t start to ache after six pages or so.

When I’m writing, I often appear to be staring out the window. I don’t always see what’s happening outside. (I ~~brake~~ break for posties!)

Once I know exactly what happens next, I can hit speeds that surprise even me: yesterday I wrote eighteen pages. Long-hand. In the last week, I wrote over fifty pages, forty-two of them in three days. (Yes, my wrist hurts.)

According to some, the current length is “epic”, although I’m sure it’ll be much smaller once I’ve finished the doubtless epic series of rewrites that lie ahead of me.
But not just yet. I think I’ll potter for the rest of the month, and probably work on something else first in the new year, just to give myself the distance that lends perspective.

And to celebrate my “epic” achievement, I’m going to invest in a brand-new shiny fountain pen, just like I promised myself.

Tag: staring out the window

Where Are You Looking?

The End