Where Do You Write?

Park benches, easy chairs, floors, classrooms, beds, teacher desks, hotel rooms, coffee shops, fast food benches, desks, bean bags, lobbies, cars, staircases, boats, trees, patios, big rocks–even, at one ill-advised point, the bleachers during a demolition derby. I’ve tried to write in all these places, sometimes with more luck than others.

For some of us, “place” is part of the ritual of writing. We can get very particular: do we need to write? Music, television, headphones? Ergonomic seating, or just a place where won’t fall off a mountain?

I’ve seen impassioned defenses of writing by computer or by hand, in absolute silence or during the breakfast rush at Hardee’s, on moleskin journals or spiral notebooks. . . And, if you care about pens, that discussion will last for a while.

Some places do have a kind of magic. One of my favorite places is the upper balcony in the lobby of the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. The Brown is home to residencies for Spalding University’s MFA program; during residency, you can’t toss a legal pad from the balcony without hitting writers of all genres, all experiences, all stages.

In my favorite nook, I can see everything–friends gathered at the bar, students encircling the grand piano, new guests dragging their luggage across the gleaming floor. I can write in my own space, but I’m part of things too, and I can feel my creative impulses fizzing like Pop Rocks.

Right now I’m at home, writing on a ten-year-old MacBook (which needs to work for a few more months–pray for me, y’all) with a small tuxedo cat under my elbow and two dogs at my feet. All the curtains are open, the trees are tossing outside in the wind, the room is quiet except for a couple of fans and my raging tinnitus.

That’s fine by me. Maybe this isn’t the lobby of the Brown Hotel; maybe I’m not relaxing at a beachside retreat. But, for the moment, I have time to work, and that’s more precious than a whole bundle of brand-new pens.