How to Pack

My wife is a lister. She takes her cues from Santa, making a list and checking it twice. However, she never forgets a thing. Ever.

Me, I have nothing against lists. They certainly keep me focused when walking into the grocery store. Yet when it comes to packing for a trip, they don’t work for me. A list is only as good as what I can remember to put on it. And its those few things I forget that drive me nuts and make the trip miserable.

Every year I trek off to the wild mountains of San Diego County for sixth-grade camp. I’m gone a week. It’s not really camping. There’s a heated shower and beds and a fireplace. It’s more like a hotel. It’s glamping (glamorous camping).

You’d think by know I’d have a solid list prepared, but I don’t. Instead I pack everything a few days in advance. One reason is that I know my mind takes a while to filter things. As it begins to churn over the idea of living for a week in a musty over-heated room, it begins to sprout new thoughts as to what I’d need. As the days get closer, I grab what comes to mind and pack it. I even pack all my toiletries and live out of the bag for a few days. I figure if I have to go back for something in the medicine cabinet, I ought to consider taking it.

Don’t get me wrong, I also make a few lists. Mostly things I can’t pack because I need them in the car or use them everyday. The goal is to make sure I could live out of my suitcase and not want for anything (other than a decent TV).

Tim Kane

Dagan Fish

I’m so excited to have the Fish anthology from Dagan Books coming out on February 8th. I submitted to this anthology way back in July. Seems a world ago. I opted for the flash fiction because, quite frankly, I’d never done one. It was fantastic. Having to boil down your words down to 1000. Crazy. Oh, and the awesome folks at Dagan also did a series of interviews with all the writers. Check out mine here.

Lost in Place

My wife has grown used to this by now. Every once in a while I get so involved in a project that I disappear into myself. While driving, my mind is plotting out scenes. While making dinner, I’m pricing together dialogue. And every free second, I’m delving into books or the Internet for research.

Do all writers do this? Does you need the poetic bent or does it happen to non-fiction scribblers too? It’s a bit like. Fugue state, except instead of forgetting my life and leaving home, I travel inward, totally enveloped by the story world.

Typically I emerge from this story coma with fresh insights. If I have a chance to write, I can easily wrack up thousands of words a day. (It helps if I have a deadline looming.)

Sometimes I’ll plan for this. For example, if I have difficult section to work out in a chapter, I’ll review it and then take a shower or go for a drive. These menial tasks let my mind wander. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve scribbled frantically while still wet from the shower. The worst part is that I don’t have my glasses as they steam up.

I also inhabit parking lots, scratching words onto whatever paper I can find: receipts, envelopes, those flyers they leave under windshields. Sometimes I have to set a timer or I’ll spend the next hour just writing in a parking space.

Tell me if you have any similar situations. Do you ever get lost in one place, your mind dropping off the planet?

Tim Kane