Writing Fantasies

I’m sitting in my book-lined study somewhere in Vermont. The leaves have begun to change into their autumn regalia. A small fire pops and sizzles in the fireplace. The dog is sleeping on a braided rug before the hearth, no doubt dreaming of this morning’s trek through the woods that surround my home.

Okay. Enough of that garbage.

The reality? My home office is a mess. The two kittens I rescued and have been fostering since June have been testing gravity on every knickknack on my shelves. Not even books are safe from their endless curiosity. They’ve kicked cat litter everywhere. My wastepaper basket is the source of endless exploration. I’m trying to write the first draft of a story for an anthology a fellow writer is putting together, but I don’t know if I’ll make the deadline. I finished the novel but have been struggling to get through the final edits. My printer just gave up the ghost and there is no money to replace it. I’m taking on as much medical transcription work I can manage as my husband’s winter layoff looms. We need to have the plumber in, and our 2004 Saturn has to go back to the shop.

I need an escape.

Now, I’m a big fan of Author Tube. For the uninitiated, Author Tube is where authors (mostly aspiring or self-published) post videos chronicling their writing days. If I’m struggling to get my mind into writing gear, I often turn to it to get things moving. It’s fun. But while some include honest discussions about their personal and professional struggles, I sometimes come away with the feeling that I must be doing something wrong. My house doesn’t look like that. Hell, my neighborhood doesn’t look like that. Some Author Tubers aren’t even published yet, but money never seems to be an issue for them. Is having a YouTube channel that lucrative?

There are some common practices among them. Fairy lights sparkle on the walls and bookshelves. Everyone is awash in washi tape. There are expensive planners and multicolored pens, sticky notes and rewards for reaching a word count goal. I think I’ve learned half a dozen different and far more difficult ways to make coffee than simply pushing a button on Mr. Coffee. Writing retreats are a regular thing (again, how can they afford it?). Tarot cards, crystals, and horoscopes have replaced the expected talismans of the past–a lucky pen, a favorite sweater, a snifter of brandy. And what the heck is a Kanban board?

It finally dawned on me that the intended audience may be falling into the same trap that caught and strangled many authors of my generation. The fantasy. The illusion of the writing life. The hint of the magical. The cozy, quiet, productive, and lucrative life of an author. An idyllic world of great lighting and B-roll. It’s the author’s equivalent of Leave it to Beaver. It can leave you with the awful feeling that you aren’t authentic or can’t be productive if you don’t have the proper setting and materials.

We don’t need fairy lights and tarot cards to write well, any more than the authors of yesterday needed a wood-lined den in a cottage in the woods where it’s perpetually autumn. None of it matters. What you see on Author Tube is heavily staged and edited. Nobody’s life is that smooth, ordered, clean, and cozy. It’s a fiction built around a difficult art form. It’s fun to watch, but it isn’t, and need not be, your reality. In the real world, life is dirty and hard, and writing is like trying to sculpt a statue out of mud.

Look, do whatever works for you, but don’t let the trappings put in place by others become a prerequisite for getting to the page. Carry around that old notebook you got at the supermarket. Jot down ideas that come to you while you wait in the cold for the bus.

Pen and paper. That’s where the magic is.