A Writer Who Doesn’t Write Things Down

Project 365, Day 57/365

The writer’s block has been real this week. An idea came to me while eating dinner tonight but by the time I sat down at my laptop, it was gone. I need to start writing things down. A writer that doesn’t write things down. What a silly idea.

Huh…having just written that down, it reminds me of a time I was working on a story back when I worked at a fancy interiors magazine (Luxe Interiors + Design). I traveled often for that job…a job that gave me the gift of many stamps in my passport. This particular memory places me in England. I was there for a two-fold assignment: I’d spend the first few days of my trip with two of my favorite women from the advertising team attending a trade show, and the rest of my time on what would become one of the greatest whirlwind trips through Europe I ever took. We hit England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands in search of antiques. There are so many stories I could tell from that trip. Maybe I’ll dedicate a week to it one day.

But today’s short tale is just before the adventure began. My mind is a bit hazy on whether I was with my colleagues at the time, or my antiques tour guide (another day, I’ll tell you all about her), but eh, not that important. We were invited to dine at a private dinner club in London. As things tended to be with me at the time, I had no idea the “importance” of who I was dining with or where we were, but evidently, it was quite the storied place. I wish I could remember the name of it, or who we were there with but evidently, the man that would be joining us for dinner was someone. I think he was in the art world…maybe? Gosh, I really do not remember. Shame on me.

But we sat down for dinner in a dimly lit, very English room…lots of velvets and rich leathers that had likely seen more years than I have…times five. All cracked and worn in but in the most charming way. I remember there was a fireplace roaring…it’s England, so there’s always a fireplace roaring. If you looked closely at me, I nearly guarantee that you could read the discomfort and self-consciousness all over my face. There I was, a Florida girl in what was probably an outfit from Loft, sitting in a room that only the exclusive, tippy-top of the art world could access, knowing absolutely nothing about art and trying to not embarrass myself.

I did what I typically did in those situations. I sat. I listened. I laughed if I understood and it was funny. I tried to be as small as possible. But the man who was the guest of honor that night was a conversationalist. Sitting there, small, not talking, wasn’t going to be an option. I did my best, wavering between headnods and my comfortable “observe, say nothing” mode.

At one point, he went around and had each of us speak. It sounds obnoxious and pushy, but it was actually fine. He made it so that by the time the round table got to you, you were excited to say something about yourself, having learned some great things about the others.

“I’m a writer…a magazine editor,” I explained. I can remember looking at his face and seeing bemusement framed by his white beard, his wrinkles magnified by the shadows cast by the candlelight. “Why aren’t you taking notes? Writers are always taking notes, jotting things down, worried they’ll miss a detail.”

I thought that was funny for a few reasons.

One reason was that I wasn’t there to write, actually. I might use it for “color” in the story I was working on, but I knew that night wouldn’t be a focus of my feature. But the second more pressing reason was that that’s exactly the reason why I don’t normally write things down. If I’m too busy writing, I’ll miss a detail…of my surroundings, of what a person’s face looked like when they said the thing that they said. Of what things smelled like or what was going on in the surroundings. I always found that those precise details, the things you probably wouldn’t write down to quote, were the things that made the story in the end.

And that’s exactly what I answered him in return. Maybe I rewrote the memory in my mind, but I recall him sitting back in his tufted leather barrel-armed dining chair and absorbing what I said, clinking glass in the background. “That’s something I’ve never heard a writer say, and I’ve been interviewed by a lot of writers,” he said. If it wasn’t for the dimness of the room, everyone would have probably seen my cheeks flush. I didn’t think what I said had any weight to it. It was just what I thought. What I did. But you know, it felt really nice that he saw something special in it. It’s nice to feel special.

It’s similar to how everyone now is always seeing the world through the camera on their smartphones. Always trying to capture something to then show to someone else, be it on social media or directly. All the while, you’re actually missing the moment or thing for what it is. Nothing EVER looks as good through a smartphone lens as it does through your eyeballs. I mean, I get it…I snap photos and videos of things often, but it makes my stomach turn just a bit when you see a crowd of people, all experiencing life through the 6-inch screen on their phone. WHAT IS THAT? WHAT ARE WE DOING?

Anyway, I’m not in the headspace tonight to turn this into a greater exploration of the human condition and our addiction to highly accessible technology. It’s really just about a little blip of a memory I had as I was writing that I forgot to write down what I wanted to write about. 🙂

See you tomorrow, friends.