Dana the Spy

“The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people." -Graham Greene, English novelist

I'm a writer; I'm a spy. I listen in on conversations, even those I'm not a part of, and I write down the things that you've said. I watch as you tap your wedding ring on the dining table, run your finger around the rim of your wineglass, ogle the woman with Sarah Jessica Parker hair sitting across the room. Everything you do, everything you say, every gesture you make--I capture them all. Thanks for the inspiration.

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I wrote the paragraph above during one of my morning writing sessions a couple of months ago, and I often think about it. I love the idea of being a spy. As a child, two of my favorite books were Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret. Harriet knew everything, and I wanted to be her. I would lurk around corners, hide in closets, listen to conversations with my ear to the wall... And I would write down what I heard and saw: tidbits of information, flashes of dialogue, descriptions of the colorful personalities I came across each day. These real-life details helped me in my early attempts at writing; they brought life to my stories.

As I grew older, I continued to spy on people, although I was no longer a lurker. Instead I spied out in the open, usually at restaurants or while waiting in lines. When I first moved to New York a few years ago, my then-boyfriend and I went out to dinner, and I think he was a little annoyed with me because I continually shushed him so that I could hear (and write down) the conversations around me. I remember remarking that our waiter looked just like my main character's best friend, and then I took out my purse-size notebook so I could record all the details.

I still spy today.

I love being a writer, and I think to be a writer, you do need to spy. You need to pay attention to the people and places around you and use what you learn to help make your characters real: three-dimensional rather than flat and one-dimensional. The details count, and what better place to find them than in "real" life?

Flipping the switch

One of my biggest writing challenges is my struggle to make the transition from Mom mode to Writer mode. I schedule some of my writing time during my daughter's nap (my son has quiet playtime then), and I often have trouble leaving behind all of the stresses of the day in order to concentrate on my writing. Instead of working on my WIP, I'll find myself making a store list or doing laundry or just sitting in front of the computer thinking about the meltdown my kids had at storytime or what I need to do to get dinner on the table on time. All of these thoughts get tangled up with thoughts about my story and my characters, resulting in a snarl of ideas that seems impossible to sort out in those few precious moments of writing time.

Certainly this struggle isn't unusual, and I'm sure that all writers, whether they stay at home with their kids or work outside (or inside) their homes, have similar struggles. One thing I've been trying to do to ensure better productivity is to schedule more writing time early in the morning, when the house is still quiet and the stresses of the day haven't yet had a chance to become forefront in my mind. I've been scheduling this morning time since the beginning of April, and although it's been working well, I would like to be able to get even writing done at different times throughout the day. However, flipping that switch from Mommy mode to Writer mode is proving to be very difficult, and I'm not yet sure how to overcome that challenge.

I'm curious. How do you put aside other thoughts so that you can fully concentrate on your writing?