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Craft of Writing

Judy Simpers

Where is Your There?

Yesterday I sat on the couch with a pencil in my hand and wrote nary a word. I'm gonna give it another try today. My problem is I can't seem to get there. You know. The there. Every writer has one.

My there is as fleeting and as solid as my breath. It's my inch-high writer's galaxy that stretches out to accommodate me as I write, that vanishes when I notice it's upon me. Ah yes. That there.

I seek it relentlessly. Sometimes I wish I was under house arrest, without distractions I could spend hours in there. As I eavesdrop on non-writer's conversations, I cringe when they say, "I've been there."

I squeeze the vinyl to stop myself from popping over the booth to shout, "No, you haven't been there." Instead I shake, shake, shake my head. For nobody, no how, can visit my there.

I'm curious of other writer's there. I squirm as I imagine my jittery excitement to sit beside a writer at a bookstore and start a conversation with, "Have you been there?" And have the writer respond with a smile and nod of his head and a perfectly pronounced, "Yes."

It is taboo to ask, "What is there?"

Writer's won't describe their there. They can't. They can speak of its existence. But if a writer describes their there or looks too closely at the details it may tear like tissue paper and their internal Editor would gobble it up.

Last Saturday, a woman standing ahead of me in a grocery line held out her nearly empty wallet.

"What's left to life when eggs cost two dollars," she said in despair. "What is there?"

I gasped. I couldn't believe what I heard.

"Did you mean to say WHERE is there?" I asked.

"What?" said the woman.

I leaned closer. "Are you a writer?" I asked.

She looked over her shoulder at me suspiciously. "No," she said and turned her broad back to me.

I nodded my head. Of course. She's not a writer.

I have the urge to thump my chest and spit on my hands when I think of how I can twist a character's emotions, stinky up a the scene if I choose, and lure a reader to turn the page. Anything I want shall be. In there, I have no guilt, no schedule, no duties. My imps live in there. My muse too. In there I choose the residents. The Editor paces outside.

I love being there. I hug there. I cherish there. I have to admit I am selfishly happy that not everyone knows about there. It's as if their discovery would swipe the red off my lollipop. I do feel sorry for non-writers though. Do they have a there that follows them around? Ignored, shrunken, and unused?

Being there is better than a gel ink pen gliding across a smooth, spacious 9 x 12 doodle pad. My most common occurrences of being there have been in the shower, under the spray. My most dangerous was while I was driving. My favorite occurrence was during a blizzard and I was safely snuggled beneath a comforter.

There can't be any better.

There is tricky. For when you think you're there, you're not. And when you don't think, don't think, don't think. you're there. 'It's neither here nor there', I've heard a commentator once say. And I must agree. Once while writing in front of the television, a loud commercial almost brought me out of there, for a half tick of a second I had an inkling, a realization, I was there. If I had pondered the inkling I would have been kicked out of there.

My elusive there.
 
So there you have it. I hope.
 
 
About the Author
Judy Simpers is a member of SCBWI, a professional organization for writers and illustrators of children's literature and a member of Writers' Village University, an online membership site. She is a children's writer's course developer, facilitator, and mentor at WVU. Along with being founder and coordinator of the Annual Round Robin Study Group Challenge, Judy is a site guide for new WVU members. She has had writer's tips offered in the WVU newsletter, published an article in T-Zero: The Writer's Ezine, and is a copy editor at ePress Online publishing. In between writing projects and submitting manuscripts, she finds time to be the playground attendant in the Children's Hour study group. She has founded and participates in a Reading Children's Book club. Judy Simpers resides in coastal North Carolina.