Writing in the Midst of Chaos

Yesterday morning, I had to finish writing a travel article on Costa Rica’s Playa Samara even though my husband and daughter were home.  Four little girls screamed and giggled from the pool below the terrace on which I’d sequestered myself.  Parents hollered back and forth across the patio.  Parakeets sailed across the sky squawking.  I didn’t have a source’s last name, couldn’t find a street address for the place on which I was trying to report (“walk up the dirt road and turn left at the gate” doesn’t work for most editors), my cell phone was dead, and Skype didn’t seem to recognize me as a real person.

Back in Oregon, I would’ve shut myself in our backyard studio for a couple of hours, read and revised the piece, then sent it off to editors.  But we’re still in Costa Rica, sharing a one-bedroom condo in a complex full of neighbors who potluck on the central patio and have long loud political conversations as their cigarette smoke drifts upward to where I hunch over my laptop with the sun beating down, trying to concentrate on a sentence at a time while my husband generously makes movies of Wizard of Oz action figures with our daughter down in the living room.

How is it possible to write in the midst of chaos?  Some people simply can’t do it.  I have a friend who waits for that magic moment when her house is empty, and then she puts the cat out, turns off the radio and TV, sits down at the desk and invokes her muse.  As a travel writer and the mother of a young child, I seldom enjoy such a luxury.  Like other professional parent-writers, I write at odd hours–five AM, 11 PM–and in weird places, scribbling in a notebook outside the preschool, or keyboarding frantically during a couple of “Tumblebooks“.

To avoid "Monkey-Mind," write in a public place.

Though the previous paragraphs may sound like it, I’m not really complaining.  In her book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg inspired a whole generation of emerging wordsmiths to write in coffeehouses and bakeries, suggesting that background noise gives one part of the mind (the “monkey-mind” part) something to focus on so that the  creative part can get to work.  Though I used to be a solitary writer who needed absolute silence to work, I find now that I’m less lonely, and less tempted to surf the Web and check Facebook, when there’s a lot going on around me as I’m writing.

These days, I tell my coaching clients who feel daunted by the task of writing a short essay or article to take themselves to their favorite coffeehouse with a notebook and pen (I know, old school).  I ask them to order their signature drink, and–in homage to Natalie–a chocolate chip cookie, then to sit down in a booth and stay there until the rough draft of the piece is done.  More likely than not, the cappuccino machine’s whine begins to fade, the singular chatter of customers blends into a quiet rumble, and the music over the loudspeakers disappears.  The writing takes over.

On those days full of grace, I stumble out of the coffee house, just as I emerged yesterday from the Costa Rican terrace, blinking and rubbing my eyes and murmuring–like Fred Willard in A Mighty Wind–”Wha’ happened?”

Dude, you just wrote a rough draft in an hour.

What happens is that you honor what is, be it children or dogs or a business meeting at the table next to you or a parrot singing Spanish opera from its cage (no kidding) and you never let it stop you from writing.

And something else–internal chaos isn’t a reason to throw down the pen, either.  I penned some of my funniest essays in the midst of my beloved grandmother’s illness and death of cancer.  I wrote my memoir, Gringa, while I despaired over the two and a half year wait to adopt my daughter.  Regardless of what misfortune has befallen us, we find solace in opening the notebook and getting to work.

Readers, what does your particular chaos look like and sound like? How do you write in the midst of it?  Feel free to comment below.

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