A Quiet Place

lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

The dishes are done. The cats are napping. Quiet at last. I sit down to write. Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! “What are you doing, Mommy?” my son asks between mouthfuls of cheesy puffed corn snacks.

“I’m writing.”

“I’ll bring my toys back here and play then.” Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

I stare at the blank page. Two fat crows squawk and caw back and forth to each other outside the window. My son is staging an epic battle between a cluster of shock troopers and a battalion of Middle Age knights adorned with gold fleur-de-lis. “Bam! Clang! Wham! Crash! Blam!” One of the crows flies up to the tin-covered patio roof. His feet scritch and scratch as he struts to and fro.

One of the greatest struggles I face as a writer is how to tune out the noise and find a quiet place amidst the din and clamor of daily life. Sadly, I have not discovered any magic formula. What have I learned? The more I fight the noise, the more I make excuses why I can’t write right now, the more I blame the people and things around me for my lack of creativity and productivity, the more miserable I become and the more my writing suffers.

a quiet placeIt’s okay to write in a noisy house. If that’s all you have available to you, take a deep breath and dive in. It’s okay to tell everyone in the house you’ll be unavailable for an hour, a half hour, even fifteen minutes. If you’re interrupted by anything other than an emergency, it’s okay to half-heartedly listen and respond with auto-pilot “mhmms.”

Trust me, the noise isn’t going anywhere. From the hiss and froth of your local coffee shop, to the “he said, she said,” conversation of the teenagers in the “Quiet Study Area” of the library, to the rustle of leaves in the trees, noise is everywhere. Besides, if I’m perfectly honest, there have been times I’ve complained I couldn’t write because it was too quiet.

Forget about finding the perfect circumstances. They’re never perfect. Focus on the words. Tell the story. Stop fretting about the Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! Behind you. Gnaw on it. March with it. Write.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.