{"id":2034,"date":"2011-05-31T11:39:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T11:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/?p=2034"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:33:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T14:33:22","slug":"in-the-writer-superstitions-dept-the-magic-pad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2011\/05\/31\/in-the-writer-superstitions-dept-the-magic-pad\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Writer Superstitions Dep’t: The Magic Pad"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Almost all writers I know have work superstitions, though it’s not something we usually discuss except amongst ourselves. They’re like the superstitions some sportsmen have — the way, for example, that baseball players cross themselves when they’re coming up to bat. (Often provoking the response, Oh, come on now, you didn’t have to cross yourself so many times. And do you really have to touch yourself <\/em>there right afterwards? How can your nethers need so much adjustment when you’ve hardly moved? And now you’re doing it <\/em>again. <\/em>I’m looking away now<\/em>… )<\/p>\n

For writers it can be any one of a number of things, or a combination of them. Which way the desk is oriented. How many cups of coffee you have to have before you can sit down and start work. A certain kind of pencil to scribble notes or doodles with. The right seat in the right cafe. Not starting work before a specific time. Not starting work after<\/em> a specific time. Some of these habits just seem to begin themselves: some are a behavior or an accessory\u00a0 that may have been sheerly accidental at the time, but which the writer has come to associate with work that just came out right.<\/p>\n

This is mine: grid paper. Specifically, this grid paper<\/a> from the Swiss supermarket\/department store chain Migros.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’d have to do a little digging to nail down the exact <\/em>date when this started, but it goes back at least to the late 1990s\u2014not long before the Transcendent Pig <\/a>started turning up in the YW books.<\/a> (I’m pretty sure that the writing episode featuring the Pig that’s described here <\/a> was conducted on Migros grid paper: “the pad” is mentioned, and before the Pad came along, it would have been just plain white printer paper.) In any case I was in Switzerland a lot during the 90’s\u2014 doing research for A Wind from the South<\/em>,<\/a> among other things\u2014and since everybody who stays in Switzerland for any length of time winds up in a Migros sooner or later, it was probably a given that I would run across these pads eventually and pick one up.<\/p>\n

But they’ve turned out to be really nice to work on. Reasons:<\/p>\n