“Do you work in your pajamas?”
Someone asked me that once. My answer, of course, was “No.”
But I understood the question. It was a query leading up to the second most frequently asked question for writers, right after “Where do you get your ideas?” People will ask, How do you work? What they mean is, How do you work physically? The idea that we work (probably but not necessarily) at home has a curious allure. Not surprising, considering the difficulties of commuting, of actually getting to one’s workplace. If you work at home, people assume, you can have a leisurely life, almost like not working at all.
But no, I don’t work in my pajamas. I get up, get dressed, take the dog out if I have a dog at the time, have breakfast, scan the newspaper (print edition, please), and make my workplace coffee. Then, fully awake but not yet distracted by the outside world, ready to enter whatever fictional world I am dealing with, I go to my desk and work.
Pencil and paper?
Typewriter?
Computer?
Dictation?
I have worked in all these ways except the last. I wrote my first five published books by hand, in spiral-bound, lined-paper notebooks. I used old-fashioned yellow No. 2 pencils. I had six of them, replenished as needed. Every morning I would sharpen them. It was a little ritual to transition me into whatever fictional world I was creating. I remember the sensation I had when I wrote with those pencils. The scenes I saw in my mind were transmitted down through my arm, my hand, onto the paper. It was an intimate thing. There was no clattering machinery to intrude between me and the story I wanted to tell. I worked in silence. Some writers work to the accompaniment of music. I couldn’t do that, because music has its own rhythm. I needed to hear in my mind the rhythm of the language I was putting onto paper.
After I wrote my pages (about six per day) I typed them because a manuscript has to be typed for me to be able to correct it.
Then, after years of composing with pencil and paper, I faced the prospect of writing “Massachusetts,” which was going to be a long—very long—novel. By that time I had developed severe writer’s cramp. (Yes, it’s a real thing.) I was in some pain. I didn’t see how I could write anything, let alone a long manuscript, by hand.
My husband, through some feat of magic, conjured up a silent typewriter. At that point I owned an old IBM Selectric—a good machine, but noisy. I could not have composed manuscript on it. The silence of the new little typewriter was perfect for my task. It was almost as intimate as writing with a pencil. I wrote and wrote on it until, after I finished the manuscript and had a new one to write, I wore it out.
It was time to transition into the modern world. I acquired a computer. Confusing at first, but a nice, quiet keyboard.
Another book, another machine. At one point I had a laptop. Laptops are not made for people who type fast.
So that’s how I work now—computer and printer. Both laptops and desktops are quiet enough not to intrude, so I can still hear the language of my manuscript—the sound of the words on the page. I keep to a schedule. I drink a lot of coffee.
Pajamas? I haven’t worn them since I was eight.