Writing & Inventing

Last week I retreated to a cabin in the High Sierra, with my co-writer Patricia Harrelson, to work on The Right Sisters. It was an energetic, productive, and at times, comical experience.

We immersed ourselves in the lives of eight women inventors, reviewing transcriptions of our interviews with them, researching and fact checking key points, talking in depth about the common and unique themes among them, and eventually reading and revising the drafts we have written of their chapters. What occurred to me as we worked was how similar the writing process is to the inventing process.

The are both creative endeavors that require deep and meaningful attention and action. Patricia and I talked at length about each inventor. We hiked to the river and to a giant rock pile, notebooks in hand so we could record the insights that came to us. We stretched our bodies in yoga poses and our understanding of each woman deepened. I remember the talking, thinking, walking, and stretching that went into developing KleenSlate and my erasers and paddles.



A little humor is essential to both processes. Our cabin was funky. It was very old and tilted on the foundation, so we slept and wrote on an angle. A skunk family had nested under the cabin all winter, so that during the heat of midday a pungent scent wafted through the floorboards. At night, we had a regular visitor, a critter who made a rukus in the little kitchen, nibbling on fruit we'd left on the table and knocking pans off the stove. These discomforts seemed to feed our process rather than detract from it. We giggled at our cockeyed computers sitting on the table and shone flashlights into the kitchen at night trying to "catch" the critter in its beam.



We never caught sight of him, but we caught much more. The essence and flavor of the women inventors who have so wholeheartedly shared their stories with us. It is going to be a GREAT BOOK!