
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990                   TAG: 9005290189
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VICTORIAN METHOD

THERE ARE hundreds of schemes available to ensure the success of writers. And at one time or another, I've tried them all. I've drawn up elaborate time-flow charts and detailed management schedules. I've signed contracts with myself regarding the time of day I'll write, the number of pages I'll write each day, the number of words I'll write on each of these pages, the number of books I'll read in a year, the number of trips I'll make to research libraries, and the ways in which I'll continue to love myself despite the rejection letters.

I've made pacts with other writers. (I'd have made a pact with the Devil himself had it been offered on certain days.) I've set the alarm clock one hour earlier to write; I've stayed up one hour later instead. I've plotted novels on index cards, legal pads, and the backs of the pages of first drafts for other novels. I've "journaled" until my hand ached. I've even sat, sometimes, waiting for inspiration - a method far less likely to give results than waiting for actual lightning.

But always I've known there's one more method to try. Always I've known I had the Victorians to fall back on.

The great success of those voluble Victorians, you see, grew out of their habit of walking. They walked and walked and walked. They walked across the moors. They walked across the fields to one another's houses. They walked across Italy and the Alps, way out into the hinterlands of France and Scotland, all over London and Germany. They walked just about everywhere.

And then they went home and wrote enormous, involved novels that go on for hundreds of pages.

So last night when my list regarding rejection letters failed to have the desired effect, I set out to try the Victorian method: I set out to take a walk.

Now, because there aren't any moors in Floyd County, I had three choices: I could walk with the cows through the field, I could walk through the woods, or I could walk along one of the roads. You don't see people walking the roads around here much, as the speed limit is understood to be "As-Fast-As-You-Can-Get-Away-With." But it was nearing dusk, and I was keenly aware of the threats posed by poison ivy and cow-pies approached unawares; so I started up the road, keeping well to the left-hand side.

It was a lovely evening. The cardinals were calling. Little yellow and pink flowers bloomed among the cast-off bottles beside the road. The sky could have rightly been called "cerulean." I began to feel inspired. Ah, I told myself, look how the breeze makes that grassy field seem to wave like the sea! Ah, I sighed, the whole of our great green Earth might be wrapped up in the beauty of that one little quartzy rock!

Then I crossed over some invisible line and a furious beagle took loud exception to my presence on his road, in his county, in his state, on his planet! His back hairs stood up and his little yellow teeth shone. He bellowed. He bayed. He ran at my ankles and snapped. Doing my best to keep calm, I started for home. But he kept at it, and the rocks at my feet began to look more and more like anti-dog missiles.

But I foreswore temper. (George Eliot would have been proud.) I merely marched stalwartly on, with that blasted dog screaming at my back until I was out of his beady-eyed sight.

I'm pretty sure I now know why the Victorians are so often described as walking with staffs. Although I can't say my stroll left me completely uninspired, next time I think I'll walk with the cows. Or maybe I'll just draw up a new and improved set of long-range objectives instead.

by CNB