I read about the various writer's routines, how the established writers organized their working process to achieve the maximum efficiency. From somebody who sat at his desk at some particular time every day. In a place with a total absence of any distractions. To somebody who had been writing notes on a train or a bus, being squeezed among the other passengers. Trying to write down things on a strip of paper suspended in the air and, at the same time, struggling to keep balance on that shaky moving vehicle.
I realized that the most interesting ideas come into my head when I have no opportunity to write them down. When I walk or read something without any desire to pause and switch to another activity. Like, for example, to write down those ideas. So usually I just let those thoughts to pass by with a hope that I will recall them later. It never happens. Because my memory is a fickle bitch, and those fleeting revelations are of as little importance to her as a memory of what exactly I did when I woke up. It all gets wiped out. To keep my brain clean and tidy, I guess.
So from the end of July and during August, when I went for a walk I started taking with me a smartphone. So whenever I had some interesting thought, I could write it into the notepad and then recall later. I quickly realized that some locations I frequented, like a park located along the route to the University district, put me in a certain state of mind, conducive to writing. I sat, surrounded by green lawns, and colorful flower beds, and the willow trees with their leaves shimmering like the sparkling schools of silvery fish. And this sight, illuminated by the summer sunshine, produced in me a special mood. I experienced the smooth and uninterruptible flow of thoughts and ideas. Then I could write them down and experience a feeling of accomplishment.
I wrote something like diary entries. Or I just tried to describe what I saw. Then I switched to more difficult tasks like working on the structure of my play or writing short stories. All this went so smooth, that I decided that this place and situation were perfect preconditions for writing.
I got into a habit of thinking about plots and various dialogues while I walked. Although, while it also was much easier to do during a walk rather than when I sat in my dusty room behind the laptop, the problem was that those thoughts and ideas were swift and evanescent like the vague silhouettes of nimble fish in a pond. One moment they were there, circling in my mind, and the next moment they were gone without a trace as if they never existed.
One of those days at the beginning of August I was trying to restructure my play and to write some dialogues for the second act. I sat in a shadow of the trees adjoining a narrow path covered with multi-colored gravel. The sun cast the tangerine light from the west side, and everything was submerged in a calm atmosphere of the summer evening. It would be perfect, if not for the mosquitos floating in the shadows and disrupting my focus.
I wrote part of what I'd planned, then moved to the pond. From this vantage point, I could see the tall futuristic buildings that sparkled in the orange light of early sunset. It was a vast open space; the pond was ringed by a wide pathway for jogging. Benches, flowerbeds, beaches covered with fresh green grass, willow trees. This space was populated by the dwellers of the nearby apartment blocks. They walked leisurely, jogged, stood and laid, surrounded by this lazy evening. The hot, sticky air of the day cooled down, becoming fresh and saturated with smells of grass, water, and flowers.
As the sun approached the horizon, everything drowned in a purple haze with the red glimpses of sun cast on tops of trees and buildings. I moved on, ascending the hill that led to the University District. I shuffled in my head what I'd managed to figure out about the play despite the efforts of mosquitoes to disrupt my thoughts. The following sequence of events was a bit strange.
So it was evening and after I had successfully finished the task of doing nothing in particular near the pond, I climbed the road that led upwards toward the university. It was dark already, and this summer darkness had been brutally ravaged by the headlights of cars, competing in how fast they could speed up producing the maximum amount of noise.
The air cooled down, and it felt a bit chilly. On my right, I saw a grill of the fence, the dilapidated outlines of which were revealed by a vague and dim luminescence of streetlights. The fence had a haunted look of something that came out from a gothic story about vampires. The vampires that lived in the gothic dilapidated castles surrounded by the gothic dilapidated fences.
On the other side of the grill laid the darkness interspersed with the vague and ghostly outlines of thick bushes. I looked at this picture translating the visuals into the descriptions. Actually, those were much better descriptions than that here, but anyway.
Apparently, I gave up on the task of rewriting the dialogues since I stopped thinking about that. At the same time, my brain already passed the peak of daily creativity. So I didn't expect much from it. I observed the gothic scenery on my right. I walked conjuring up various fancy words.
Then it struck me. I realized a strange thing. The name of the play the protagonist of my play had been writing "The hedgehogs" was the same as the name of the play itself. It was funny. Did I actually write about myself not even realizing it? It seemed crazy enough. "Ok, let's assume-" I decided " -that this is the case. Then I totally understand the underlying motives of protagonist's struggle, writing block, and, eventually, his mental condition."
This thing (however crazy it sounded when I first realized it) immediately connected many scattered dots in the narrative. Now many things that previously looked random and gratuitous started making perfect sense. And I realized that I knew how to rewrite the dialogues and especially what should have happened in the second act. With a perfect clarity.
Also, I realized that I walked up the empty street surrounded by the darkness of night. And there was no place in sight where I could sit down. On my right stood the haunted fence from a gothic story. On my left, the stream of cars whizzed by, penetrating the darkness with dazzling headlights.
So there was no other option, and I started to write standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the ghostly luminance of the streetlights. When I started, it had been an hour and a half before midnight. At some point, when I started to feel that my mission was approaching accomplishment, I looked at the clock on my smartphone. It was shortly before midnight, and I also had to walk a couple of kilometers to reach the closest subway station.
I decided that I still had enough time to write about this strange experience too while my impressions were fresh. So I walked a bit more toward the subway station, and then I found myself in an alley with the rows of squat apple trees on my left. I took a position beside one of the trees and started writing.
After what felt like a couple of minutes I glanced at the clock again to learn that it was half past midnight. And the subway was going to be closed really soon.
The following was a stroll throughout the empty dark alley between the rows of ghostly apple trees on my left and the tall ghostly fence on my right. I saw the moon which was about to be swallowed by some strange monster comprised of huge black clouds. Like it was a whale swallowing the moon. Then the moon appeared from behind the other side of the cloud like it traveled all the way through the digestive system of this big whale and then escaped. So it was a collection of images and impressions that looked and felt strange at that moment
