The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft

Writing in the Open

W^T/MC IM THE OPEN/ Where does your writing actuallyget done—in time, and in space? What have been the conditions that, perhaps unpredictably, produced your most interesting work?Are there places or times youwould consider impossible to write?Are there places or times you believe would assure you happy writing? I remember thrifty undergraduate days,when I wrote most of my poems in a closet and on the backs of envelopes. I stacked my clothes on the bedroom floor and politely departed from my roommate by retiring to the closet, where I had a desk and chair and lamp. I was thinner then, could fold myself compact. (In a dream once, I had a narrow desk on which to write poetry—so narrow that only short lines were possible.) Sometimes I miss that closet. With the light on and the door closed, there wasincredible focus to the page beforeme. A friend asked his classif there were conditions that would make writing impossible. They were full of ideas. In fact, most of them described the conditions of their lives, and tried to convince him that these conditions made writing impossible: work, family, telephones, housework, errands, fatigue—all the building blocks of daily life. Faced with this, my friend rashlyvowed to write a story in the hour before his own wedding. He did it. But then he couldn't find anyone who wanted to hear his new story—we were all very busy. The fact is, the act of writing itself is the only possible time and place. The immediate vertigo of the moving pen, of a rattling keyboard , of spontaneous utterance while walkingiswhere the muse resides . You write where there is an opening. But how to begin? I don't begin, the writing does. I don't try,I yield. I havewritten in trees, on planes, by flashlight, during symphonies, by the light of a movie screen, while driving (I've lately sworn off this), during faculty meetings, and while making dinner. Every shirt must have a pocket, and everypocket a notebook and apen. Once the musebites, it's delicious anywhere.For the act of writing begins before youconsciously know if you have time. Your hands do it. What is so right about a good coffee shop, for example?What so sets the tone of creative endeavor that the whole room seems to partake of the buzz? I think immediately of a Paris cafe, where when you look up from your own writing, half the people around you are writing aswell, scribbling away with fountain pens at their letters and diaries and nicely bound notebooks. I love the slogan of a Parisian pen maker:A chaque style, un stylo, "for every style, a pen"—as if the pen itself made such a difference. But perhaps it does. A Parisian friend inquires, "What isyour favorite nib—not the pen, but the nib, the working tip?" She favors twenty-four-carat gold, fine, and gives me the name of the maker.With the right pen, in the right cafe, the hum of some talkprovides a qualityof intimate seclusion that is difficult to match when alone. I have a favorite cafe—and inwinter I take the table by the heater. And I have a favorite table in a favorite library in Paris, and a favorite grate where the homeless gather to curl in the cold, and a favorite threadbare apartment where the toilet is a hole in the closet floor. Writers are at home in a homeless place, if stories throng there. Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris: If you will work an hour a day,or read a book a day,you can stay for free. The tone isjust right. The night the thief smashed the glass and broke 98 | T H EM U S E S A M O N G U S in there, we residents ended the incident by discussing pens with a pair of gendarmes under the streetlight: "Mais oui, le Waterman. . . ." The college where I work, for allits efficient buildings in lovely settings , does not possess a room suitable for writing a poem. There is a writing center, of course, which is helpful, and a writing lab filled with computers. There is a lounge in the English Department, and there are classrooms and study rooms and a fine library with tasteful lamps on solid tables. But none of this is quite right for writing...