This is just to say that the survey was doable from Sweden--a place where I am often refused movies and UTube because of illegal file streaming.
But while I am on the line I will tell you how my creative process has varied over the years. I used to think I couldn't be creative without puffing on a life-shortening cigarette. That was incorrect. I learned it was possible to write and not smoke when I fell in love with a man who kindly asked if I had to smoke in bed. This led to me kicking the habit, the man is gone, but the habit stayed gone too and for that I am forever grateful to him. The purpose of this anecdote (apart from practice for participation on a reality show that might give cash input) is to say that all these fetishes without which writers think they can't write, they can. Yes, you can.
My old fixed method of capturing the elusive muse by banging away at a manual, then electric, typewriter with a cigarette in the corner of my mouth, correction fluid at the ready, and hungry children crying because supper was burning on the stove, is a thing of the past.
I was employed for nearly two decades to translate and write about technical and corporate things, freelanced on the side, while mothering three strong-willed children and attending university classes at night. Yet I wrote--most of it pretty stinking, I'll grant you, but everybody has been there and done that.
During this lengthy period, I went through stages: turning over the poem in my head while walking to work was one, another was scribbling in a pad while waiting for or riding the bus, yet another was ushered in by the life-changing personal computer and a life without whitener, carbon copies and small notepads that entered the washing machine full of brilliant notes and exited as empty metal spirals.
Then one fine day, the children were fledged and flown and since no one would then starve but me, I set up my own business with the idea of having more time to “write” my own brilliant stuff. That ideal situation did not happen. However being my own boss (whatever that means) meant I could jiggle my time and squeeze out poems and the occasional story while pursuing a client deadline.
Now it is time to cut to the chase and confess the methodology of how I work today (being officially, though perhaps temporarily, retired since about a year ago).
With few exceptions, I start my day with paper, pencil and eraser (with or without an idea, just like commercial copywriting) while drinking my first cup of java. Often I jumpstart by reading something, anything, poetry, the newspaper or what I turned out the day before. The paperwork part might involve setting up a rhyme scheme, then finding a first line, and when it gets hot and I can’t keep up the flow, I move to my PC. I compose both poetry and prose there. I am still talking about the draft stage.
After the text starts to solidify—now we are no longer in the drafting stage but in the consolidation stage—I alternate between printout & pencil and the text in the computer. I save my printouts of the various versions until I think I am done. Sometimes there is afterwork a month or years later, but that is another story that will wait for another survey.
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