Writing in hotel rooms

I got my first computer in 1990. It was one of those chunky little Macs with a tiny screen that didn't even display a whole page of text. Never mind. I loved it. It was much easier than I thought it would be to make the transition from writing in longhand on yellow legal pads and plain white paper on the kitchen table to processing words on the screen. I never looked back. I find it difficult now to compose a sympathy card or a post card message because my handwriting has deteriorated to the point of illegibility, and I am much too accustomed to the delete function on my computer to craft a sentence in one draft. Two of my good friends who write extraordinary fiction start their drafts in long hand. I am awestruck.

I also have become habituated to writing in my home office. I like my Aeron chair and the easy accessibility of snacks. I like working with the door open five feet from my chair, and I like being able to walk outside when I need a break and even more fresh air. I like having my reference books and source documents right there where I need them. I like being able to spread out to the living room when the piles of documents and files threaten to take over every inch of floor space in the tiny office. Anyway, it's where I have produced every single word that has been published in the last twelve years.

I travel a lot for work and for family. Sometimes I bring my computer -- still a Mac but now a sleeker PowerBook G4 laptop. I mostly use it for email and sometimes to transcribe my notes when I'm collecting data on the road. So today I am engaged in a brave new experiment. I am working on the Book in my hotel room in Quebec City. I am here for the IFLA Conference, which stretches on endlessly for those of us who are delegates to Standing Committees. There is a lot of down time, which I am determined not to waste.

Here is what I like about writing in this new environment. Because I obviously couldn't tote a bunch of books with me, I am writing without access to the many sources that will eventually be cited. (Not everything I need to know is on the Internet.) I am accustomed to stopping frequently to check a citation or to look up a fact. Where did Anne Carroll Moore publish her book review column? When did she communicate her dislike of Stuart Little to E.B. White? What is the correct name of the Geisel Award for easy reading books? That kind of thing.

Somehow not being able to stop and fact-check as I go along has feed me to write in broader brush strokes and to focus more on the overall narrative flow. I have written in an earlier post about how I have struggled to find an authentic and personal voice when writing within the conventions of academic prose. It is also a struggle to find the narrative arc. It is all too easy to get bogged down in a series of disconnected facts. I admire writers like Jim Murphy whose impeccably researched informational books read like stories. I may have learned today, writing in my hotel room, the first lesson in how to do that.