Fleeing the Scene of the Crime--Freshening up the Process II

It's summer, and yoga studios are offering classes in all manner of places: at the park, on the porch, at the beach. This novelty in yoga locations is not just a nice way to get in touch with nature, but a savvy marketing move as well. Summer is a time when we want to break with routine, play, and go on trips, even if it's just a trip to the park rather than to the local yoga studio. It's a smart way to keep people coming to class when they are least focused and feel most like they want a break from their disciplined regular routine.

I sometimes feel the need to change the scene of my writing as well.

Traditionally, I think of this literally: taking my laptop to the coffee shop, to the porch, to a tiny closet. Wherever the "energy" feels fresh. Indeed, in grad school, I would often talk about how I'd "used up" a particular coffee shop and needed to find one that felt fresh.

But changing the scene can be less literal as well. Because writing can often feel challenging, trauma-filled, and like an impossibly long-term goal, a particular draft may start to feel like the scene of a crime. There's just too much gore around by the time a chapter hits the 50-page mark!

When a piece of writing starts to feel this way, switching "locations" may be helpful. For example, my current book chapter has become a bit of a monster at 60 pages. Today, I needed to revise the handful of paragraphs that make up its conclusion and the transition to a next chapter, but facing the heinous scene of so many minor crimes (as yet incomplete footnotes, yellow highlights, etc.) was daunting. The solution for me was to pull those paragraphs out from the behemoth and work through them in a clean word document. Like the new coffee shop, the new page doesn't yet have bad vibes associated with it.

Maybe not as fun as yoga in the park, but it worked for me.

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