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| I took my own crack at magic time one fall. I needed a deep, meaningful chapter for the novel, early in the story. I booked a pair of nights at Bait House, a one-room shack just off the road in northwest Travis County. It was appointed with a microwave, a sink, and a back porch to contemplate and concoct. My iPad has a keyboard and was a low-fuss laptop for me. Nothing about Bait House was as gorgeous as the Backshore. My bride and I savored the sound of that beach years ago, completely unaware of the Dune Shacks just a mile away. The sound of cars along the Bait House road was as common as waves on a beach. Hey, wait a minute. That’s a sound I enjoy. I put the rush of tires into my imagination as waves and could set the noise aside. Some of the worst trouble that my heroine experiences in the novel came out of those two days. I could have written even more across the two afternoons and two mornings. It was only 13 pages, but hey, it was a baker’s dozen bits of a key part of the story. O’Neill had been coming to his Dune Shack for more than 10 years before it started to slide into the sea. He called his hideaway “a grand place to be alone and undisturbed.” He also had good work habits in place. There’s something about writing a project that you know will need other artists to become a reality. A script needs actors, a director, scenic wizards. Somebody is waiting for that output, perhaps. O’Neill already had a few notable plays when he made his way to his magic seasons. My lesson and my advice from Bait House comes down to this: Have a goal that’s specific, make a promise you won’t want to admit you’ll break, and build in some rewards. Turning your gaze away from the world is good practice for writing a book or a play or a movie script. But set a reasonable expectation for your retreat. Observe your output at home and figure you’ll improve your word count by maybe 100 percent. Quantity might not be as essential as quality. That chapter that I wrote is one of my favorites, even three drafts later. Can you do this kind of retreating for yourself without a destination? It’s worth a try, if you have a way to create in a new space, even if it’s just a back porch or a deck (with a shade, if you’re in Texas). I would advise you to break ties with the Internet, something harder to do than I imagined at Bait House. “I’ll just look that up” is an easy thing to say, and you might just type [check this] in front of something that seems to require research. A shack can become a nursery for newborn paragraphs, sections, or even chapters. You just need to feed it your solitude and a discipline like one you’d employ to keep an infant safe. Be the parent that your book deserves, especially if you’ll spend time working in the nursery. |
