Write Free! Write Blind!

Last weekend I attended a party for a dear friend’s eightieth birthday. It was hardly a surprise that the subject of writing came up.

First, my eighty-year old friend (Cristopher Dell) is both a published writer himself and the son of Floyd Dell…novelist, playwright, poet, and one time lover of Edna St. Vincent Millay. (Note that it is Floyd’s wife B whom I recall fondly, not Millay!)

Second, some of us read toasts that we’d prepared for Cris. Among such brainy folk, we reached for erudition.

Our lovely but devilish hostess had carefully arranged place cards, seating ten or twelve of us on a long bench behind two tables where – since we couldn’t escape – we engaged with unlikely neighbors. I found myself next to one of the birthday boy’s sons-in-law, a cinematographer of some renown, who had heard rumors I was writing a novel. “Just a mystery,” said I, modestly. “But I’m writing mysteries too,” said he. “I’m on my fourth!”

Enchanted to have discovered a passion in common, we compared sub-genres, word-length, agents, and writing challenges. His stories have a more international flavor than mine. They’re longer. (Pissing contest…a first for me!) He’s found an agent, while I’ve merely sent out tentative feelers. We both, however, write blind. That is, he sits at his laptop with a piece of blank paper covering the screen. And I – an accurate touch typist – sometimes sit at my own with closed eyes.

In essence it’s free-writing we’re doing, although both of us sustain the technique for longer stretches than do most free-writers (who actually set a time limit). He finds that he’s less inhibited when he drafts scenes this way, and only removes the taped paper for revising and editing. I use it when drafting new scenes myself, but the technique also comes in handy for revising a scene I find dead on the page. Or I'll do it to channel a character...to position myself behind her eyes instead of my own.

Another goal, I suppose, is right-brain fluency. It amounts to following one’s pen across the page in order to circumvent the censor. To prevent words from blocking expression of under-the-surface ideas. To layer ideas, as in brainstorming, without the critic’s nay-saying interference.

Typing super fast works too, but it’s dangerous for anyone whose typing skills leave something to be desired. I found myself barreling through the novel’s climax throughout my latest round of revisions, approaching warp speed at the keyboard. In similar vein my sister, who used to paint, has picked up her brush again recently, practicing a technique called "point zero" painting. She says this method doesn't focus on the product “but on the process of continually surrendering the mind to a more child-like state to allow intuition to be heard.” How cool is that!

I had a few additional things in common with my cinematographer friend from the party. We’re both MWA members. We find mystery writers sterling folks. We both envy Bouchercon 2007 attendees who even now are wending their way to Anchorage for tomorrow’s conference. (I hear next year’s is in Baltimore. For two mystery fledglings – both DC natives – an east coast venue seems less daunting.)

So what techniques do you recommend for keeping the critic at bay and unleashing the wild writer inside?

- Lois