Throughout the month of November while I was frantically noveling, raking up words by the bushel and bagging them in a thumb drive, I mostly blogged items I had prepared before November began, being too busy with the book to bother with the blog. Imagine my gratitude to the noted graphologist (one who studies writers in their own habitat), Dr. Argyle Schield, when he offered to post some of his field notes recorded over the month while observing actual writers in the wild. I was glad for at least some current content on these pages. Being the master of concision he is, Dr. Schield said he wanted to use Twitter to tweet the observations, meaning none could be longer than 140 characters. I suggested to him we give the series a creative and original title. He agreed, so we put our heads together and came up with “Writers in the Mist.” Clever, huh? Below are the first nine of Argyle’s observations. I’m publishing the rest soon. I hope you find them as fascinating and insightful as I do.
(Writers in the Mist Introduction)
WITM: Before labor, buys both pen and printer ink, though he writes with cyber. Classic instinctual nesting behavior for delivering a novel.
WITM: Witnessed hunter-gatherer writers obsessively counting piles of foraged words, adding a few more and compulsively re-counting again.
WITM: Schizophrenic writers in the wild: one minute, their fingers fly over the keyboard and the next, they avoid the “pen” as if it were a snake.
WITM: In the wild, most writers just carry journal and pen. Lately they lug folders and papers everywhere. Maybe a talisman of some sort?
WITM: Chanced on a writer inspired: Light from heaven shined on his beaming countenance and was it? yes! Harp music filled the glade.
WITM: A small bevy of writers sensing my presence try to appear oblivious and preoccupied, wanting privacy yet also wanting to be published.
WITM: The leader of the pack holds his pen almost constantly, carrying and twirling it obsessively between furious bouts of writing.
WITM: Many writers in the wild take twice as long to get where they’re going, dawdling here and there to scribble notes in a journal.
WITM: Fascinating! Wild writers swing from vigor to lassitude, energetically writing one minute, listless the next. Why such extremes?
