Judy Reeves - Door and Windows

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	Write about receiving messages You are lost What you see in the distance You thought nobody noticed This is what you need for the journey Write about sleeping < How to get started writing? Write. Write about the best of intentions Write about a time you wanted to leave but couldn't You're waiting... Write about taking risks There is a memory of a ____________ Write about a bed

Doors and Windows

      This is the part of rewriting that I love: the doors and windows that appear in the first, rough drafts like invitations that whisper, "come in, go deeper, open me, look inside." These openings are opportunities for the writer to take the piece to another level -- layering, creating texture, adding depth.

      As I reread my practice pieces, I underline these door and windows. Or as I keyboard the material into the computer I write (door) in the copy, much as I have done in this sentence. In read and critique group we have a little icon we use on one another's manuscripts - a small, three-sided rectangle, (no bottom line) with a circle mid-point at one side, that signifies a door to open. (The circle being the doorknob… I wish I could draw it for you now.)

      Nearly every piece of first-draft writing will be littered with so many doors and windows it will look like a Holiday Inn. As an example, I'll pull a piece from my own notebook:

"Eloise wanted to ask Eudora to tell her fortune. To read tea leaves or look at cards, whatever she did to divine hidden secrets. She wanted Eudora to tell her about the baby. From the beginning, this pregnancy seemed different."

      The door is right after the last sentence "… this pregnancy seemed different." I go back to my notebook, a fresh sheet of paper, and write that line at the top of the page. Then I go through the door and begin to list the ways the pregnancy was different. From the beginning she had a craving for peaches; her hair changed color - from blonde to red - and became curly, like a fresh permanent; she could make out in clear detail the fine map of lines on the underside of leaves, could sense rain two days coming and her breath smelled of lemons.

      I would list the details, and perhaps Eloise's reaction to them, what she thought about all this, maybe the first time she noticed the craving for peaches. I would write and write and write until I felt not only present in the room that the door opened on, but like I owned the place. Like I had plumped the pillows and dusted the furniture, arranged the books in my own way. After a spell of free-writing, I would go back to my computer, keyboard the entry, editing and choosing those details that made the piece more interesting.

      Writing is always a two-step process. The first: writing the raw, rough stuff that comes from the intuitive. The second: rewriting and editing, working from the critical, logical mind. Each step takes us to the other. The rough must be hewn, the hewn sends us back to the rough for more material.

      Review some practice pieces from your notebook, or some second or third draft writing that you've worked on. Look for doors and windows. You'll notice them because of a certain curiosity you may feel about something, a sense that there is more going on than what shows on the page. Underline these openings and go back to your notebook. Take some time. Too often I see writers who are in such a hurry to get where they think they're going, they miss opportunities to go deeper into the piece where the truth might be.

      Like secret passageways that open onto hidden rooms, something more interesting, more evocative, may lie behind the door you've discovered. Enter. Go in. Don't knock. Allow the element of surprise to capture whatever's there in the act.

      Of course, not all doors and windows are meant to be entered. Or, maybe it would be better said, not all of what you find when you go through the doors and windows is meant to be used in the current piece. When a writer takes us through every room in the hotel, we forget the point of the whole thing. Weren't we on our way to the restaurant? This can happen when the writer gets bogged down in backstory or gives too much information about a minor character that isn't important to the story. Does it really matter that the hotel maid with the missing front tooth lost it in a late night croquet game? That's a whole different story. One you may be curious about and want to write about, but not now.

      Note: You may enter through a door that will take you into a place that is more interesting than the place you've been hanging out. If so, go there. Go where the energy is, I say. But be certain you're not using the door as an emergency exit because it's getting too hot in the room where you are.