Melanie: To start, I would like to thank all of you for coming to talk to me. Anne, you were discussing about the one-inch picture frame that you pick up, would you like to explain that to me?
Anne: So after I've completely exhausted myself thinking about the people I most resent in the world, and my more arresting financial problems, and, of course, the orthodontia, I remember to pick up the one-inch picture frame and to figure out a one-inch piece of my story to tell, one small scene, one memory, one exchange. I also remember a story that I know I've told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."
Ray: What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are.
Carolyn: You see, I can't just switch from life mode to writer mode. Usually it takes three days to get into the writer mode. Three days of quiet non-life mode, lots of coffee and no interruptions.
Ray: How do you commence to start to begin an almost new kind of writing, to terrify and scare? You stumble into it, mostly. You don't know what you're doing, and suddenly, it's done. You don't set out to reform a certain kind of writing. It evolves out of your own life and night scares. Suddenly you look around and see that you have done something almost fresh.6. Caroline: Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission.
Melanie: That is very understood. It is effortless as long as you do not set your mind to it. You simply can not pressure yourself. What is your take on that, Anne?
Anne: Even after I'd been doing this for years, panic would set in. I'd try to write a lead, but instead I'd write a couple of dreadful sentences, xx them out, try again, xx everything out, and then feel despair and worry settle on my chest like an x-ray apron. It's over, I'd think, calmly. I'm not going to be able to get the magic to work this time. I'm ruined. I'm through. I'm toast. Maybe, I'd think, I can get my old job back as a clerk-typist. But probably not. I'd get up and study my teeth in the mirror for a while. Then I'd stop, remember to breath, make a few phone calls, hit the kitchen and chow down. Eventually I'd go back and sit down at my desk, and sign for the next ten minutes. Finally I would pick up my one-inch picture frame, stare into it as if for the answer, and every time the answer would come: all I had to do was to write a really shitty first draft of, say, the opening paragraph. And no one was going to see it.
Melanie: That is very interesting! You have to calm down. When you are finished, what do you do? What is the result?
Anne: The next day though, I'd sit down, go through it all with a colored pen.
Melanie: Ray, you had mentioned something similar to that.
Ray: I realized I had at last written a really fine story. The first, in ten years of writing. And not only was it a fine story, but it was some sort of hybrid, something verging on the new.
Melanie: That is a long time! What about for you Carolyn? It must take a while to get ideas, and put them on a typewriter, especially when you mess up and have to retype it?
Carolyn: I laugh. Typewriter is starting to gasp and moan.
Melanie: Hahah, the typewriter sounds like it misses you! When you have something to write, what do you do?
Carolyn: I start back up the attic stairs to the gasping weeping typewriter, and husband arrives home with mail.
Melanie: Wow, that is funny! Reality always has its disturbances. It was nice talking to all three of you!