Writing Space

I used to have a place at Beech Mountain that was my parents then mine for a while where I read and studied and hiked.

Also, I go to the beach and have a family reunion, take lots of books and writing materials and then don’t really do any of it. I think I could go back to the beach or the mountains and just rent a place for a week and see what happens, will I write that much and read. Read Ruth Ozeki again A Tale for the Time Being.   And see what happens to my mind with her mind this time around.

And the books based in Cairo by the Egyptian writer, Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize
Palace Walk and Palace of Desire
both books assigned by Natalie Goldberg.

Both she and Fernando Flores read and suggest books, his mostly nonfiction.

What would a life be like if I lived true to Natalie’s teachings and listening to Upaya Zen podcasts and just read?

Cook a big pot of vegetable soup and read and write what gets provoked by the reading
And devote myself to that exploration. That comfort that knowing that peace

Is it the place that brings forth creativity?

Or is it what?

I loved being at Beech Mountain by myself and spreading out over that long dining room table with piles of papers and books and I didn’t have to clean them up overnight and could just settle down to William Faulkner, Ruth Ozeki and now my new book about trees, The Overstory that Bill recommended and the new one by Per Peterson based in Norway

Taking me to another time or another place

One in Norway about the resistance and the people smuggling people out of Norway, Jews, over the border to Sweden where they would be safe.

Or another about the Lofoten islands up north where you had to row to school as school was on a different island than the farm. I gave that book and another to our lousy guide know it all who lives in Denmark and goes back and forth to Norway to take Americans up and down the coast to visit farms. He is bright but a know-it-all and I didn’t enjoy his company nor he mine.

I am a know-it-all about him being a know it all. Similar to my proclivity to be annoyed with people who are so easily annoyed by traffic, politics, food, noise, etc.

I have written about place
A studio
A place to write like Norman Mailer for 8 hours, no distractions, no email, no devices.

This is in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac today. I recommend subscribing to this.

Mailer was incredibly productive and stuck to a strict writing regimen. He wrote every day from 9 to 5, up until his death at the age of 84. For the last 27 years of his life, he shared a studio with his sixth and last wife, Norris Church Mailer, an artist and writer. They each had their own space. Mailer sat on a wooden chair looking out at the Provincetown Bay — he liked to be near water when he wrote — but he closed the curtains when he really needed to concentrate. Mailer and his wife ate breakfast and lunch on their own schedule, but they would meet up at 6 p.m. to drink wine and eat dinner.
The routine worked for most types of writing, but he couldn’t force his novels. He said: “A novel is more like falling in love. You don’t say, ‘I’m going to fall in love next Tuesday, I’m going to begin my novel.’ The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.” He carried a small, spiral-bound notebook with him at all times, in case inspiration struck.
He wrote by hand — he usually wrote in the morning and then typed it up in the afternoon or gave it to an assistant to type. He said: “I used to have a little studio in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks from my house — no telephone, not much else. The only thing I ever did there was work. It was perfect. I was like a draft horse with a conditioned reflex. I came in ready to sit at my desk. No television, no way to call out. Didn’t want to be tempted. “

A reading room, a writing room where I am not also doing laundry and answering the door, my biggest fear at being in the retirement home is answering the door and seeming aloof and unavailable.
Maybe I could have a writing studio there in Davidson, uninterrupted loft over Main street or Depot street, maybe a room in the Birdsnest Music studio are they using all that room?

It isn’t about place
It is about schedule

It is about being devoted to the story
And letting it come and come.