Month: August 2018

Writing Spaces: Catherine Austen

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Catherine Austen, author of “On Sulphur Mountain” in Issue #147.

Catherine Austen Writing Space: the Writing Side

I’ve had my own office at home for a few years now, since my oldest son moved out. The room is small and cosy, with the best lighting in the house. Half the room is for my writing, and half for my sewing. (I make quilts—some patchwork, some art.) It has all I need: a small desktop and computer, files to one side, and a to-do list on the table.

I have a stack of journals-in-waiting. (I splurge on Peter Pauper Press—they have the loveliest paper.) I journal every morning, and I read and take notes most evenings, but I do those things on the porch, at the kitchen table, at the cabin on the dock, pretty much anywhere but in my office. Journals and notebooks are where I play with ideas, ponder problems, plan scenes, and figure out where things need to go.

Catherine Austen Writing Space: Stack of journals

My office is where I turn ideas and notes into finished pages. It’s where I do the grunt work of drafting, revising, editing, to meet each day’s writing goals. (Today’s to-do list: edit one section of a youth writing anthology; expand a chapter outline into a scene-by-scene treatment; transcribe a chunk of research notes; write this blurb for TNQ.)

My workspace is reflective of my writing process because it offers a step away from writing. I can literally turn my back on a report or a novel and play with fabric.

Catherine Austen Writing Space: sewing side

Quilting is a good metaphor for writing a book. I often quilt by hand while watching TV. Sewing by hand for an hour results in very little progress. If you didn’t know any better, you might think it isn’t worth the bother, it’ll never amount to anything, there’s no way you could finish a whole quilt at this pace. But if you put in that hour a few times a week, week after week, you will eventually have a gorgeous quilt. It’s inevitable. (Well, the “gorgeous” part isn’t inevitable, but “finished” is.)

Catherine Austen Writing Space

Writing can be the same, especially if I’m revising a messy draft. I try to focus on today’s bit of work without getting overwhelmed by how much more awaits. Sometimes the trick is to make today’s goal so tiny that there’s no excuse to avoid it. “Revise chapter 4” might be too ambitious. I could put that off for weeks. But “Print chapter 4” is something I can do right now, and “Reread chapter 4” is something I could easily do this morning, and “Make editorial notes on chapter 4, scene 1” is doable this afternoon. And maybe that’s enough for the day. I can then put the work away with the intention of coming back to it tomorrow to make notes on scene 2. Eventually, inevitably, the revision will get done. (But again, the “gorgeous” bit isn’t inevitable. Alas.)

I keep an extra chair in my office for guests.

Catherine Austen Writing Space: Office Guest (cat on chair)

We’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look into the writing process – straight from the desks (and decks, docks, beds, and favourite hiking trails) of our contributors! Check out the full series here. 

Read more

Writing Spaces: Sue Sorensen

This week in Writing Spaces, we take a look at the working space of Sue Sorensen, author of “Which part didn’t you like?” and “You kept your name, I kept my name” in Issue #147.

 

Sue Sorensen Writing Space. Pencil and paper on outdoor table.

All I need to write a poem is a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. And I don’t have any particular place I like to write. Like many writers I gravitate toward libraries and coffee shops. Sometimes I write in bed. But it doesn’t matter all that much. I’ve written on the bus. Scribbled a line on the back of an envelope as I passed through the kitchen. Later I’ll edit on the computer. But at a certain point it’s back to paper and pen again. I can get happily lost in the editing process. The poem is usually fast, but the edit can take years.

I have two offices: at home and at my university. That’s where my books are, of course, and I do find that reading other poets (or almost anything) does tend to generate my own poetry. I have self-consciously taken on Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Herbert for certain poems. Reading Margaret Atwood and Mary Karr charges me up. But my poetry is very personal, so really I write out of a deep, even dreadful need. Sometimes that primitive need will provide a phrase that gets the rest of the poem going. I have dreamed lines that I wrote down as soon as I awoke and they became poems. (Fiction is completely different in its designs on me.)

Sue Sorensen Writing Space. Notebooks.

Many of my poems have started from jottings in notebooks. Right now I’m carrying two, for no real reason, and over the years I’ve had many. These notebooks have an almost unreadable superfluity of stuff in them: names and dimensions of IKEA furniture, notes I’ve written in the dark about movies, titles for short stories, blood pressure readings, and lots of dream fragments. Perhaps more than anything I collect quotations at lectures or when reading.

Some of my most painful poems, like these ones published in TNQ 147, wanted to be written in public places. Probably I needed the safety of that public space to do what I was doing. We don’t talk enough about how dangerous poetry can and ought to be.

We’re giving you a behind-the-scenes look into the writing process – straight from the desks (and decks, docks, beds, and favourite hiking trails) of our contributors! Check out the full series here. 

Read more