I write in the dark.
I don’t want any distractions, so I go into my bedroom, pull the curtains shut, and write in complete blackness.
I do it because I want to focus only on the images of the story I’m writing, and when I have the lights on, my eyes start to notice things in my apartment that take me out of that stream of images.
I also think writing in the dark helps me to be more honest in my writing. I write dark mystery thrillers, and I want to talk to the reader about the dark subject matter with complete openness.
I once sat at a bar across from a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I said, “I’ve got something I want to tell you, but I don’t know, I feel embarrassed.” He asked me what it was, and I hesitated, but he kept pressing me, and just as I was about to finally tell him, the lights of the bar clicked on, and the bouncer shouted that it was closing time. Right then, before I could say anything, my friend said, “Don’t tell me with the lights on. It’d be weird now.”
I want my writing to have that private but honest quality of a confession, to feel like something you might only say in a dark corner of a bar to a close friend. And I think that by writing in the dark, I can better summon that kind of openness.
When I got the suggested revisions to my debut novel Shadow Drive, my son had just been born. And I wanted to be with him every moment I could. In those early weeks, I found the best time to write was when he was napping. I rocked him to sleep on my chest, and as soon as his eyes closed, I began typing.
And it felt sort of perfect. I had written this book about a dad who is taking care of his child, but I wasn’t a father when I wrote the first draft. Now, however, when I was doing the revisions, I had my son literally on my chest as I typed, and I think it helped me to revise the father-child relationship in the book in a way that echoed the emotions I felt for my own son.
Now that Shadow Drive is out, I can’t believe how much everything has grown since I wrote it. My son is now getting almost too big to sleep on me while I type, and my book is no longer just words I typed in the dark but an actual physical book anyone can read.
Nolan Cubero is a writer and director originally from Louisville, Kentucky. He studied linguistics at Brooklyn College and is currently a law student at UCLA School of Law. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.
