Free Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro Page A

your desk, if at all possible. Some place where you can tack images, quotes, postcards, scraps of thoughts and ideas that will help remind you of who you are and what you’re doing. When it comes to building a character, 78
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    to grounding one in a place and time, ask: What does she smell right now? What does the air feel like against her bare arms? Is there a siren in the distance? A slamming door? A car alarm? Is she thirsty? Hung over? Does her back ache? Not all of this needs to end up on the page. But you need to know.
    Because knowing your character’s five senses will open up the world around her. It may even unlock the story itself.

Bad Days
    Some of my worst writing days have been the ones that stretched out before me in all their glory. No doctor’s appoint-ments, no plumber coming to fix the bathroom leak, no early pickup for my son at school. Not even a pesky fly banging against the lamp shade. Eight clear hours. Just me and the silence. Me and the dogs asleep at my feet. Me and the scented candle, the fire roaring in the fireplace. Me and...
    Well, you see the problem: that little word, me. Wherever we go, to borrow a phrase from the Buddhist writer Jon Kabat-Zinn, there we are. It is easy to get in our own way. We can promise ourselves that we’re just going to check this one e-mail (make this bed, cook this sauce, run this errand) and before we know it, we have been swept away from our work as 79
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    if by a rogue wave. We grow angier as the day progresses this way. How can we be letting this happen? How, when circumstances were so damned perfect?
    Sometimes, it’s those perfect circumstances that can be the most oppressive. In another life—before motherhood—I spent months at a time at artists’ colonies—those bucolic, faraway places where lunch is dropped off at your cabin in the woods, and silence is the rule during daytime hours.
    Composers, painters, sculptors, poets, novelists all living and breathing their work—but I remember the difficulty I always had, settling into an ideal work environment. Especially if I’d headed off into the woods to attempt something new. In the endless quiet, my inner censor’s voice grew louder. A composer friend was once shown to his studio at a famous colony by a man who told him that Aaron Copland had composed Appalachian Spring in that same room. My friend spent the ensuing weeks staring out the window, mired in self-doubt.
    Sometimes we’re better off with just enough time. Or even not enough time.
    When my son was little, he loved a book by Judith Viorst called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day . Poor Alexander. He woke up with gum in his hair, he ended up in the middle seat during carpool, his mom forgot to pack dessert in his lunch box, he had a cavity at the dentist, and just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, he 80
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    saw people kissing on television. You can feel the momentum of a day like that turning against you, and if it does, sometimes the best thing to do is crawl back into bed and wait for it to pass.
    We have to learn to be kind to ourselves. What we’re doing isn’t easy. We have chosen to spend the better part of our lives in solitude, wrestling with our deepest thoughts and obsessions and concerns. We unleash the beast of memory; we peer into Pandora’s box. We do all this in the spirit of faith and exploration, with no guarantee that what we produce will be worthwhile. We don’t call in sick. We don’t take mental health days. We don’t get two weeks paid vacation, or summer Fridays, or holiday weekends. Often, we are out of step with the tempo of those around us. It can feel isolating and weird. And so, when the day turns against us, we might do well to follow the advice of the Buddhist writer Sylvia Boorstein, who talks to herself as if she’s a child she loves very much. Sweetheart, she’ll say. Darling. Honey. That’s all right. There, there. Go take