Susan Tepper Interview, Question #3--Intuition or Planning?

Tree: I know you have characterized yourself as an intuitive, spontaneous writer, as compared to an outliner or planner. Could you share some thoughts about your writing habits, even such mundane things (that can be very important) as, for example, pens or pencils. Special kind of pen? What kind of notebooks? Home or cafés? Any computer programs? Neat or tidy desk? Give us a picture of you as a working writer!

Susan: If you can picture someone acting compulsively, then you pretty much get me as a writer.

It's my drug of choice.

I wake up with poems on my brain in the middle of the night and dash into the next room to write them down. Lately that has eased up a bit, thank god.
But I'm like the person who buys the big double pack of Oreos and sits down and eats until the last cookie is gone. In other words, I have no will or willpower over writing.

Tree: But as a writer, you do have to sit down and work on something. Of all the writing projects I presume you have in your brain, how do you organize the day's work?

Susan: I don't make decisions. I don't say: I want to write a novel. I sit down at my computer in a cramped, pathetically overstuffed little room and start typing and whatever comes through me onto the page, that's what I write. The other day, I overheard someone saying something in a diner, and I thought: that would make a good story title.

If writing wasn't so completely enthralling to me, I probably would have gone nuts by now. The whole thing totally absorbs me. The writing, the submitting, the promotion, the editing, the magazine, my writer friends, my reading series... on and on.

Tree: But what about the times you need for actual writing? Do you like mornings, afternoons, any particular needs of that sort?

Susan: The only time I'm not writing on a daily basis is when I'm traveling. I never travel with a laptop or notebook. I adore travel so much, I want to take in everything without being distracted. If I could travel endlessly, I might quit writing.

Oh! I just caught a little insight. Writing is travel! So that's the key to the puzzle -- I'm a compulsive traveler! In actual travel, I travel with my husband, Miles, who is a great travel companion.

Tree: What can I say? I'm an organized writer who makes endless lists and action plans. But a part of me is just like you. I usually start the day with very free-wheeling writing exercises and I have to say some of my best writing has come from those times when I empty my mind and just type whatever comes directly from my brain to my fingertips.

I think it's good for writers to be comfortable with both approaches and draw on them as needed, maybe trust an intuitive approach for the initial work and then re-approach it more critically for the revision. But we have to trust the duende who bring us the ideas and the flow, right? Never second guess them or they might stop helping us! Thanks, Susan. Until tomorrow!