BOOMER WRITER WHO DOESN’T WRITE EXPLAINS ‘PROCESS’

You’ve seen the boomer writer in a coffee shop, or at least used to before covid took up residence.

They have a table, a backpack, and coffee, while they unpack like a campout. That’s the early stage. Later, they show their work place, a replica of the one they wanted to avoid, their home desk.

What is going on in that mess?

For the non-writing writer, the mess is key. It’s research, a first draft, or notes. It’s an outline, a secondary project, or some light editing.

Most of all, the mess is the distraction so they can say, “Once I get this all cleared up, I can return to my work-in-progress.”

That’s the promise they tell themselves to keep the dream alive.

And don’t kid yourself, it is alive. If you have any doubts, just ask what they’re working on. Block out time for the answer.

Boomer Writer Process, Or How To Find A Seat And Stay There

Hemingway took it an extreme with:

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

I get lightheaded just reading that. Talk about a messy coffee house.

Some writers work best with routine, others chaos, but I suspect the non-writing writer steals a moment here and there to scribble something on a scrap of paper that gets tossed, or washed.

Are they writing? Yes. Are they a writer? Yes. Do they have a writing goal? What’s it matter to you what their writing goals are?

That’s the thing with writers while they write, they sit quietly.

And who doesn’t enjoy a space where someone is quiet enough to not ruin the mood? (A double negative is a positive, based on country music.)

Take A Seat, Boomer Writer

New York, I Love You is a movie of of short clips with famous actors playing roles in the city. It’s a take on a similar film in Paris.

Twenty filmmakers have five minutes each; the audience must weave a single narrative out of twenty moments. The 20 moments are fused by transitional interstitial sequences. 

I watched the New York version with greater interest than I do most things on TV. Which means I didn’t all asleep, then say I wasn’t asleep when I woke up at the end.

The scenes felt familiar, though the last time I was there was long ago, way back in the ’70’s. For example:

A woman stood outside a restaurant smoking and talking to the man who lit her cigarette. She talked some racy shit about sex with strangers to the man, who got pretty fired up and tried to kiss her. She dodged him, then said, “I’m going back inside and sitting across from my husband who won’t look at me, or talk to me.”

The camera showed half the table, her half, then pulled away, and it was just too damn good.

In another vignette, a scruffy man on the sidewalk lights a beautiful woman’s cigarette, then starts his hustle talk. He’s a sex technician who knows all of the mysterious spots. The lady listens with an amused expression.

At the end of his pitch, she makes a revelation of revelations that drops him in his dreams for the night. No spoilers here.

A high school kid is excited to go to the prom when his date bails on him for a college guy. The kid mopes around and the local store owner notices and tells him his daughter would be his date instead. He shows her picture, a portrait of a beautiful girl.

The kid arrives up to find his date is wheelchair bound. He gets a little more mopey, but they go to the prom, then dinner at Tavern On The Green, where he sees his ex-girlfriend and her NYU film studies date. Awkward gets more awkward. It’s a delight.

The Writer Trap In NYC

I ran off to New York in my twenties to show I could make it there, which according to the Book Of Frank, meant I could make it anywhere.

The friends I made were around the same age, but New York guys, so they had more going on than the youthful Bulldog. I wore flannel plaid shirts and got asked if I was a logger or something. Like any of them had a clue.

I sat in the third floor lunch room of One Battery Park Plaza while my pal chatted up the Italian girls from data entry. One of them came over to my table to talk. We liked each other and shared a few secrets. I was the exotic guy in a school of fish from Queens. Hey, John.

After work one night I took a walk with one of the girls from Purchase And Sales on the seventh floor. We got a coffee, a slice, and cruised around lower Manhattan. A couple or hours later we arrived at her apartment building. She was nice, good company. We stopped at the front steps and talked. Then talked some more.

When she invited me in, I used the same story I’d heard from girls I had invited to my dump in Brooklyn.

I made up an out of town girlfriend I was being true to and couldn’t break that trust.

It all came back watching New York, I Love You, especially the reason I ran out of the city when I did. If you don’t leave on time, you never leave, and nothing will ever dislodge you.

The women I met were interested in new blood from Oregon. “What’s it like out there,” which sounded like something early European explorers heard on their return from the New World.

If I had stayed a week longer I would have gotten tangled up in a family web of love and inclusion I could never leave. I gave notice at work, to my landlord, and said goodbye to my new friends. They reminded me that the airlines were on strike.

If I waited on the plane, I would have been homeless and unemployed in New York. What to do?

Dennis Troise drove to my place and helped me lug my crap down three flights of stairs to his car. We headed to the Westside and Port Authority, otherwise known as the Greyhound terminal.

Three days of non-stop rolling across America, I got off the bus in Portland a free man out in the western wilderness I call home.

It was a beautiful thing. Portland never looked better, a boomer writer paradise.