Oh, the Places You’ll Write!

Posted by David Duhr in Inspiration      14 comments

Aug
12

TL;DR version: This week I’m wondering about the strangest place at/in which you’ve ever written. Where was it, how did it happen, did it work for you, and did you ever return? Spoiler alert: Mine is either in the middle of a graveyard or in the cereal aisle of a Charlestown, Massachusetts, grocery store. What’s yours? Let us know below.

Sometimes inspiration comes in the most unlikely places. When that happens, are you prepared to pursue it?

Like most writers, I have some go-to writing spots: two particular benches in Riverside Park; a favorite bar, dark and quiet during the day, darker and quieter at night; a specific seat at a specific Dunkin’ Donuts chain. The loft at my parents’ house. The Esplanade whenever I’m in Boston.

These are places where I can sit still and write, while occasionally looking up to observe the things happening around me.

But I also favor writing while in motion: trains in particular, but also buses, subways, airplanes. Even cars. I’m sitting still and writing, but I’m also moving. I observe things happening around me, but that scenery changes because I’m also in motion.

Luckily I’m prone to neither motion nor immotion (not a word) sickness.

Your turn: Do you prefer to write while sitting still or while being in motion?

Boneyard Inspiration

It can be difficult to write in a setting we’re uncomfortable with.

(It can also be difficult to write in a setting we’re too comfortable with. I have a really hard time writing at home, for example.)

But every now and then I’ll find myself pulling my notebook out in a place I would have never expected.

I used to live in Boston’s North End, at the bottom of Copp’s Hill. Often I would walk through the graveyard there, squatting down to make out the faded inscriptions on those centuries-old tombstones.

One day, a phrase — I wish I remembered it — on a tomb gave me an idea for a poem. Maybe one of four times in my life I’ve had an idea for a poem. I had my notebook along with me, and a favorite coffee shop just a block away.

Instead, I plopped right down on top of that grave and wrote a super weird poem I never shared and will never share with anyone.

It was so peaceful, overlooking the harbor, far from any heavily trafficked street and pathway. Tourists wandered through the cemetery, but I was off the trail and in a rarely visited section. It didn’t strike me then as odd, writing a poem about a gravestone while I sat six feet above the bones of the stone’s subject. (At least in theory. Remains in that graveyard have been moved around so much.)

Looking back, that’s one of the strangest places I’ve ever written.

Your turn: What’s better for your writing, comfort or discomfort?

Dear Johnnie

Another: In a long-ago short story, I had a scene set in a grocery store. This was also when I lived in Boston, but the story was set in suburbia and the grocery store was one of those massive Wal-Mart-sized box stores. Meanwhile, people in my neighborhood had access only to convenience stores and 7-Elevens and small independent grocers and delis.

So I walked to the nearest giant grocery store. It was in Charlestown, across a very long bridge spanning the Charles, and through several questionable Chuck-Town neighborhoods. It took me about forty-five minutes to get there.

Once I did, I walked around with a basket (for show, I picked up a few things) and took notes on what I saw. The cereal aisle overwhelmed me: the selection, the colors, the various mascots aimed to grab the attention of sugar-hungry kids. It seemed to me that one could sample a different cereal every single day of the year and not repeat.

So I envisioned my scene taking place in the cereal aisle.

And then I sat on the floor of that Johnnie’s Foodmaster — long since closed and turned into a *#^*&$ Whole Foods — and wrote a draft of that scene.

That was weird.

I’ve written at MLB baseball games. Movie theaters, during a film! The spots are coming to me one by one. I once took some notes during a concert at a bar in Austin while my companions WTF’d me and each other.

This is why I try to always have my notebook on me, even though it often makes me feel pretentious and twee.

My memory is so bad that I can’t at all trust myself to remember ideas and notes as they come to me.

Your turn: What’s the strangest place you’ve purposefully taken yourself to in order to write?

What About You?

There’s no lesson to impart here. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa.

I’m simply reminiscing in a blog post.

And wondering how you operate.

Your turn: Where do you write? And when? Do you have favorite spots or do you try to change scenery? Can you write at home? Why or why not?

And what is the strangest place you’ve ever written? How did it happen? Were you successful? And did you ever return?

Let us know this and more in the comments below!

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is copy editor and fiction editor at the Texas Observer and writes about literature for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.

WriteByNight is a writers’ service dedicated to helping you achieve your creative potential and literary goals. We work with writers of all experience levels working in all genres, nationwide and worldwide. If you have a 2016 writing project that you’d like a little help with, take a look at our book coaching, private instruction and writer’s block counseling services. Join our mailing list and get a FREE writer’s diagnostic, “Common problems and SOLUTIONS for the struggling writer.”