Three weeks ago, the Chicken Pox virus, after fifty years of dormancy since infecting me as a little boy, awoke and manifested into the medical condition known as Shingles. If you have not yet experienced this wonderful awakening, and you're feeling left out, here's what you do: have a friend drag you by the feet down a gravel road tied by rope to the bumper of a car. Then douse yourself with a bucket of alcohol. That's pretty much the shingles experience. Outside of heavy medication, there's no way to get comfortable to sit and write. So I tried writing standing up. Even though the Shingles virus has gone back into dormancy, and I no longer experience pain, I have to say, I like standing while writing. I will still write sitting. But for sure, I'm going to mix it up with some standing sessions. Perhaps it's because of the newness of standing, but I feel more focused in my writing when I stand. I'm standing next to my bed as I write this post, my MacBook at waist high sitting on the mantle of my bed. I am distracted by nothing. So my question today, how many of you write, or tried to write, standing up?
I've written standing up when there's a convenient place to do it. It's a nice change. Ernest Hemingway wrote in whatever position he felt comfortable, and that often meant standing at a high desk. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up - he was a big man and used the top of his refrigerator as a writing desk. (It should be mentioned that refrigerators were a lot smaller in his day than they are now.) Some great writers have written standing up. It's a valid way of working and worth trying out.
I misread you at first and got excited, because when I am writing dialog I'll stand up and talk it out out loud as if I am both the characters to make sure it the dialog isn't awful
I often write in different positions because I have Crohn's Disease. Sometimes I can't sit down, but I'm more likely to lay down to write rather than stand (then I have to switch to handwriting software or talk to text).
I have experienced the living hell that is shingles. Intolerable pain... Walter Murch isn't a writer, but a movie editor, and he works standing at a high desk because he feels it puts you in a different state of energy—that sitting down makes you sluggish or something (I don't remember how he expressed it, but I think this is his basic reasoning). He found when standing he can more easily get into the mood of the characters and feel the exchange of energy between them. Possibly for a scene where the characters are sitting he would sit, I'm not sure. But it seems to be about getting into the same kind of energy-state as the characters, and that could definitely apply to writing as well.
I write leaning back in a chair with my legs dangling over the arm rest or side tables, or laying down in bed with my feet kicked up on the footboard or ladder to my top bunk. I somehow can’t concentrate on my feet
Which raises the question—Why would you want to be concentrating on your feet when you're supposed to be writing? Shouldn't you be concentrating on the story? Ba-dum-tiss!
Mostly sitting down in one of those recliners you can adjust every which way at the press of a button. Old-people-chair. It's awesome. But because I share the study with my girlfriend, I can't smoke where I sit anymore, so every so often I'll get up for a smoke break. Let whatever I was working simmer for a bit and come back with new ideas. Sometimes I'm not done writing yet, so I take my laptop along into the kitchen and write standing up. It's kinda nice, because it makes me look like a keyboard player for a rockband. Slightly hunched over, nothing but me and the keys, hammering away with a cigarette between my lips, and a wide stance like the guitarist I couldn't be because they already had two. You gotta keep yourself entertained.
I feel for you, I had shingles many years back, and it was some of the worst pain I have ever had. The best position to write in, is the one that makes you the most comfortable. So if doing a one handed hand stand, while typing on your laptop is what makes you the most comfortable then do it. Like the old joke says, the way to get to Carnegie hall is to practice.
I wish I could concentrate on my writing, but I’ve got 40 tabs open in my brain over half of them are frozen and I still don’t know where the music is coming from.
