Producing Downtime

by Nicole Jones

During a phone conversation with my mom in March 2001, as I unloaded all my current unhappiness on her, she asked me if I was still writing. My perfunctory reply was yes, but later when I thought about it, I realized that I couldn't remember the last time. My last journal entry, which wasn't what she had meant, was August 2000. Yet, when people asked me what I enjoyed doing, writing was always at the top of the list, and I considered myself a writer. I chided myself, "If I am going to consider myself a writer, then I better be doing some writing then." I thought about what I needed to do to motivate myself again now that the deadlines and grades of college no longer were motivators. I perused the journals at Barnes and Noble (new notebooks are an especial weakness of mine) and chose one with a Stephen Mackey angel on the cover. Then I scanned the shelves of the writing section for a book to help me (new writing books are another weakness) and found Room to Write by Bonni Goldberg. I already had a fabulous Sensa pen that I'd dedicated exclusively to writing. The final purchase was an inexpensive backpack from Old Navy that I toted all of these new writing accoutrements in. I issued a stern lecture to myself, "You will fill this journal with writing. You will not do what you usually do and start this resolution with passion only to fizzle halfway into it. This is like the only diet that works; in order for you to be successful, it must be a life changing endeavor. You don't have to write every day, just more than you do right now, which won't be hard since you haven't written in a long time. Do not leave the house without this bag. You never know when you will feel the need or desire to write and if everything is with you, you might just do it instead of put it off until later."

I felt like a college student again carrying my backpack all the time, which was apropos since it was during my undergraduate work that I'd been the most creative and productive as a writer. Since my bag of writing goodies was always with me, it was easier to write more often. And I found that, just as all the books and writers promise, the more often I wrote, the more often I wanted to write. Instead of lamenting the idea that I should dedicate a certain amount of the day to writing, I sought out time to write that otherwise I would have wasted: lunch breaks, down time at work, and evenings at home when usually I watched reruns. One Saturday my backpack and I meandered through the Northwest Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center, and whenever my feet ached from walking or I tired of fighting the crowds, I found an area next to a good musical performer and spent time writing.

For a long time, all I wrote were the exercises prescribed in the Goldberg book. I used the exercises to write about things that had happened, or were happening, in my life, but it wasn't long before I used the suggestions as a jumping off point to completely fictional situations or characters. I didn't follow the book from beginning to end, and sometimes I wrote two or three exercises in a sitting while other times only one. I employed different methods of choosing the exercises: sometimes by the title ("Snot"), or by the quote offered at the end of the assignment ("What I fear in writing is the safe decision" Anne Rice), if it were particularly resonant to me. Room to Write guided me back to a life of writing self-discipline because it offered structure without requiring strict adherence to it. The lessons didn't build on each other in any particular way; what was interesting was rereading to see how my choices built upon each other. Even subconsciously, there was a reason why I chose one lesson one day and another the next, and it took distance from the writing to realize it. In less than seven months I had not only filled the journal, I had used some of the exercises in the journal to write a short story and a few poems. In one year, I filled three of those Mackey journals, and since then, two others (the rate of journal filling diminished as I focused on outside work).

Often I returned to the old journals to assess the writing and see if there was anything I could draw from. Recently, I've returned to the journals a lot, noticing a strand of commonality running through the hundreds of pages of writing, which I can only attribute to the fact that more often than not I write at the Triple J Café in Kirkland. Many of my story starts or ideas center on coffee shops. A couple in the process of ending their relationship discusses who has the better argument for getting "custody" of the coffee shop. Another couple meets on a first date at the coffee shop and upon finding a heads down penny, which is unlucky, commences on a journey to find two heads up pennies—one to undo the bad luck of the first and the other just for luck in general. A writer moves into a coffee shop because she believes that it's her muse and she can't write anywhere else. There are at least ten story ideas in the journals, besides those I've thought of since then.

Although I already knew that no writing is a waste, even if it does nothing more than collect dust on a shelf, I felt like it might be a waste to not collect these coffee shop stories into something publishable, like a short story or novel. There were too many characters that I liked to condense into a few for a short story, the form that I usually preferred. I decided to attempt a larger project, knowing that my tiny story starts would have to be expounded upon greatly and that all the individual storylines would have to be tied together with more than the coffee shop. I carefully sticky-noted all the pertinent entries, brainstormed on a broad arch (how to start and possibly how to end), simmered down the many characters into a manageable handful, and finally, the worst part for me, began typing all the story starts into my computer so I would have somewhere to start. I think about the novel all the time now, and I have to admit that I often become overwhelmed by the thought of all the work and time it's going to take. Now that I've proven to myself that I can fill seven journals if I put my mind to it, I feel more confident that I can accomplish this new goal as well. But in anticipation of the temptation to abandon it before it's finished, I've preemptively issued this lecture to myself: "You will finish this novel. You will not do what you usually do and start this resolution with passion only to fizzle halfway into it. You don't have to write every day, for now, just often, since the more often that you work on it, the sooner it will be finished."

As I meandered through the journals, I saw entries that weren't coffee shop related and felt a strange sense of guilt for skipping over them. I considered restructuring them to conform to the novel. However, then I would have too many characters and plots. What assuaged the guilt was a quote that I'd written on the inside cover of that first journal I bought. Dinah Mulock Craik said, "Keep what is worth keeping-and with the breath of kindness-blow the rest away. It was the quote on the calendar of March 2001, when all this started. I think it's a good omen, as well as a good rule to follow.

Nicole Janeen Jones is a fiction writer and poet when she isn't building Web sites. She's been published in Echoes Magazine, Ebbing Tide, and Liar Liar Literary Review. Her personal Web site is www.nicolejaneenjones.com.