ON WRITING WELL, pt. 1

via quora.com

One idea is to write a lot, just not about writing well.

As a youth I enjoyed reading about writers and their lives.

Their work? Not so much.

Writers’ biographies were more interesting than anything they wrote at the time.

With the idea that living like a writer would make a better writer, those biographies were golden.

With college came the big lit anthologies with more writer biographies. What could be better, short stories, novel excerpts, and poems.

After that it was easy to connect writers and lifestyles.

But which lifestyle is best for writers?

Only one took hold, and it took a while: A New York City apartment.

My first NYC place came after a life changing, at least for me, break up.

During one of my coast to coast relocations, first it was the Oregon coast to Philadelphia, Philly to Eugene, the Eugene to Delaware, the trip from Delaware to NYC was a shortie.

My girlie decided I needed more time in the relationship incubator before taking the next step. I was already living in her family home, coming out from the UofO English department to spend the rest of my life with her.

But something happened, as something always does with baby boomers, and I was out. The plan was to find a place near her and continue our romance.

What I think happened was the idea of romance wasn’t the same for both of us. I found out later that she had a hard time believing anyone would care about her enough to move across the country.

She was a local gal with local roots and apparently not all of them were cut regarding her former dating life. You know what I mean? Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t have other boyfriends during my time, but the evidence is in. She got around more than expected.

What does a Delaware woman have to do with writing well? Her mother was head of the writing department at the local college. In other words the academic enemy to roving boys with a writing well dream dating her daughter.

Momma warned her daughter about certain men, then daughter told me the news.

Hello, NYC.

At the time it didn’t seem fair to get my junk crushed by a pair of mother/daughter ball breakers. Since then I see them in a different light. Call it struggling.

Everyone struggles. Some make the hard stuff look easy; some make the easy stuff look hard. The mom was divorced when I met her. The daughter has been married a few times since me. It seems fair enough.

My first NYC apartment was way the hell out in Brooklyn with huge old apartment buildings set back from triple wide sidewalks and a six lane local street.

The apartment came with a de-clawed cat and roaches.

On the sidewalk during nice days a gang of old ladies unfolded their beach chairs for some sun. It was a regular thing day after day, week after week. Like friends from youth, these ladies found comfort in each others company.

When I walked by they took comfort in scowling at me. You’ve seen the look, or more like the look away. I got the shun from them as a group, and I was new.

Instead of digging in and finding out why, I just smiled at them like I’d do anyone walking past. Apparently that’s a suspicious move in NYC.

Smile? What’s he up to.

Then I noticed the numbers, the tattoos, on their arms. It was a small thing, faded and dark. I didn’t see them the same after that. Each had a horrific story of survival in Nazi death camps. From that time forward I worked to win them over.

Imagine the awkward in that? A young man who comes home and locks himself in an apartment to write and a lineup of ladies who were once locked up.

After reading William Styron’s book Sophie’s Choice a few years later, my sidewalk beach ladies came into a sharper focus.

By then I was across the country again and living in Portland. A small apartment with a view of a parking lot where I locked myself in to write.

It’s the same lifestyle as today, just a different location.