Mary Rechner works for Literary Arts as the program director of Writers in the Schools. Writers in the Schools cultivates young writers and supports Oregon authors through residencies in Portland area high schools. They recently launched a new blog, The Omniverous Alphabet.
Mary’s work has appeared in Washington Square, Oregon Literary Review, Oregon Humanities, Willamette Week and elsewhere.
Mary describes a good writing day this way:
First I have to wake up.
During the week if I’m not out of bed by 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. there’s a good chance I’m not going to write any pages.
I put on a pot of coffee and do some yoga in the living room while the coffee brews, making virtually no noise because I don’t want to wake up either of my two sons.
When the coffee is ready I take it upstairs into my office and shut the door. Once the door is shut I’m basically safe.
If I had any dreams I write them down and then I turn on my computer.
Either I work on a new story or my novel-in-progress. There’s usually a piece of paper with a few notes scrawled across it on my desk: Start on page 10; where’s her sense of humor! The scene that ends on page 120? What’s the point?
When I’m writing something new, I try to keep writing forward.
When I’m revising, I’m looking for opportunities—either something is missing and I need to write more, or something no longer works and needs to be cut.
I write in the morning because it’s quiet and I have good trusting creative energy. I write until 7:30 and then I wake my family and we get ready for school and work.
On the weekends I write in the morning, too, but I don’t get up as early.
When I write in the morning, I feel like I planted my seeds for the day. I assume my subconscious is working on my pages.
As the day wears on, I get a little too high strung and anxious for writing fiction. At night I like to read it.
