Reading Glasses and Writing
That’s why that tiny print on the back of an aspirin bottle seemed to be getting smaller! It wasn’t some grand plot by the pharmaceutical company to confuse me into taking more than the recommended dosage. It was the need for reading glasses. Nertz. So I left the eye doctor, drove to the local pharmacy, and with my thirteen-year-old as fashion consultant, picked out a pair of cool, funky 1.75 magnification readers. Some of you will already know, that’s not terribly strong magnification, but suddenly the world of small print came into focus. Unfortunately, a new world of wrinkles on the back of my hands also came into focus. And around my eyes? And what were those little things growing out of the skin around my neck? For the first day, I played with putting the glasses on and seeing things I hadn’t seen in a very long time, or ever, then taking them off for the PhotoShop version of me to which I had grown accustomed.
About a month later (and with a new wardrobe of reading glasses), I ran into an art professor from my college days who asked if I was working on anything at the moment. I’m used to hearing that question from writer friends, so without thinking, I said, yes, I was working on another book, blah, blah, “heaven vs. hell,” “YA romance,” “illusions to evil as a serpent,” yada yada, “probably something Freudian there,” etc. She took a step back.
Of course, she didn’t know about this whole phase of my life, so I had to backtrack, fill her in on my life over the past twenty-odd years, and explain how I had transitioned from drawing to writing. It was there that we ran into an interesting lag with me trying to explain how the shift from fine arts to writing had not been a huge leap. I could tell I was losing her. She simply wasn’t buying that someone in her art department could chuck years of practice for another totally unrelated discipline. It was that awkward moment in a conversation when you know neither of you has anything in common any more, and each is using body language to describe your desire to run away and find a more kindred spirit, when this professor said something profound.
“I love your artsy fartsy glasses.”
And then everything, for a brief, brilliant moment, shifted into focus! It was the glasses—those wild, beautiful, red glasses with the little glass studs that brought everything up close for fine perusal, and when I took them off, I could see the pretty, glossy version, all touched up. Eureka!
So I re-launched my defensive explanation. Writing IS like art. They both require the same macro/micro shifting. We both begin with the sketch of a story, then we hone in on the minutia, go back to looking at the big picture, focus in on a scene, a phrase, a word, “sigh..” We look at theme—water. An ocean setting? Do the words drip? Are they fluid? We pull back to see the ocean. We zoom in to examine character, physical descriptions, descriptions with double meaning, words with double meaning, a sigh. We pull out and look at marketing strategies. Web-sites, articles, networking, inspiration, and… we sigh.
And then she understood, and I was a kindred spirit again. I can still type without my reading glasses. My arms are still long enough. I can look from my keyboard (still in focus) to the mountains through the window, across the road and I think, “that’s the setting for my next book.” But I have to pull on the readers again to jot down on a post-it note, “setting—South West Mountains, the opening of the Piedmont, the opening of the story, mountains are the hero, strength, rise and fall, a breath, a sigh…”
I’ve got to go back for my annual eye exam in a couple of months. It’s no telling what wonders (or warts) a new pair of glasses might reveal, but without a doubt, I’m eventually going to need bifocals. Hope it improves my writing.
Sofie Couch, a.k.a., Annette Couch-Jareb, is working on the third book in a YA series, as well as other free-associative bits and bobs. www.sofiecouch.com