Prompt: All the Places You’ve Written
Posted by David Duhr in 
Discussion questions:Â This week I want us to take a look at some of the memorable places we’ve written, whether they’re former favorite writing spots or one-time stolen moments during our travels, or even during our everyday lives. Write about the places you’ve written! And like last time, feel free to share a photo.
Last week, during our discussion of our writing spaces, a comment from Charles grabbed my attention as an excellent topic for a related prompt:
“I don’t have an ‘ideal’ writing space,” Charles wrote. “I have many! … I have written in my car at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa, at the stern of a pitching icebreaker off the Norwegian coast in February.”
We talked about the place we write, so now let’s talk about the places we have written.
What are some of the most interesting or memorable settings in which you’ve written? A former version of “your writing space,” maybe, or a more exotic locale during your travels when you stole a moment to write about the experience. Even a mundane train or plane ride where you had a major creative breakthrough.
Describe the setting and why it sticks out in your memory. What did you write there, and why was it such a meaningful experience? Or write about the opposite: A place where you thought you’d have a meaningful writing experience but it didn’t pan out.
Take this prompt in whatever direction you’d like, and then share the results with us in the comments below.
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WriteByNight writing coach and co-founder David Duhr is fiction editor at the Texas Observer and co-host of the Yak Babies podcast, and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.
It’s been a struggle for quite some time. The last place I’ve written was in my dreams.
Hi Bill. I’m sorry to hear this; having been there (again and again), I know how crippling that struggle can feel. What happens when you sit down to write? Nothing comes, or it’s slow going? You can write but then you don’t like what you’ve written?
David, thanks for your reply and sorry for starting this prompt off with my sob story. We have all experienced this, I feel certain. Of late I am focused on one portion of my story, trying to make it perfect instead of getting the first draft finished. I know I need not do this but it seems I don’t take my own advice.
Perfectionism can be a hard one to kick. I can sometimes get around it by reminding myself that nobody need see the draft I’m working on. It doesn’t matter if not every word is perfect *right now* because I’m the only one who will ever know.
Slightly different versions of the same place–college classrooms. When I “returned to college” I spent much time in the little desk-chairs taking night classes. Several of these classes (Lit, Religion, Civics) required much writing. I took several tests that consisted only of a question or two, but I spent three or four hours of constant writing in answering. This is memorable because I entered this time of higher education with the deliberate intention of writing as well as I could in all classes (because classroom writing had always intimidated me). The classroom environment also intimidated me, but I found that… Read more »
I love this. There’s something about a night class that makes me feel extra creative. From my short-lived master’s experience, an image that always makes me feel warm is a group of 10 of us or so talking about writing and reading in winter nighttime classrooms lined with large windows overlooking Boston Common. Some evil shit was always happening down there in the dark, but up in that cozy room nothing mattered but the written word. (Some ivory tower connotations, for sure, but hey.)
Aye. Variations on a theme.
I haven’t written all over the world but I have all over the USA. While traveling for almost 2 years on my motorcycle and camping, I wrote in the evenings. I actually finished three books and published one while traveling. So I’ve written while at Acadia National Park, Yellowstone and the Grand Teton, Glacier National Park, Denali National Park, Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia National Park, while doing the Natchez Trace Parkway and the Blue Ridge Parkway, El Paso where I had to redo my one book, Carlsbad Caverns (I actually made some notes on my phone while in the caverns).… Read more »
I definitely envy you those settings. One of my most vivid writing spots is at a cabin not far (I think?) from you, somewhere in or around Williams. Breathtaking scenery. I didn’t have any horses reading over my shoulder, though, which I feel is a missed opportunity.
I’m about 20 miles from Williams, AZ. I live outside of Ash Fork. Williams does have breathtaking scenery and is only 62 miles from the Grand Canyon (and yes, I’ve been there more than once.) Definitely different than S. Florida…lol
I remember seeing a billboard for “the best seafood in Williams” and realizing just how far from any sea we were and how rare it is for me to be so far from water. It was a nice change of pace/scenery.
I find myself compelled to write in those places with a powerful emotional karma: Breakfast outdoors under the porch roof of Parkers Maple Barn in the snow in New Hampshire, y’all know about the pitching icebreaker in northern Norwegian seas last Feb, my 3rd floor room of the Waterford Inn in Provincetown waiting to see my step-daughter I last saw 25 years ago, mid-shift in the kitchen of a Boston homeless shelter where I worked for 3 years, Crane Beach at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, Symphony Hall in Boston on a snowy Saturday night….I have a long list!
I love these. P-Town is one of my favorite spots to write, Long Point in particular, right at the tip. One in Boston, randomly: The cafe/bar in what’s now the fancy Revere Hotel but used to be a standard Radisson. They had a surprisingly excellent burger and a quiet atmosphere. I can’t imagine it has the same feeling today.
How did you manage to write on a pitching icebreaker?
That one word you used “feeling” ! Is how and why I write, just as you pointed out it’s a feeling of a place, something that pulls at the heart that makes a place good for writing. Somehow variables of food and drink, lighting, like the long rays of a Sunday afternoon in November that creates that timeless quality, the worn leather of a old bar seat, the smells, the spirits that haunt a place ….P-Town in particular is full of these! As was your spot in the Radisson! These places seem to have both sadness and joy, past anniversary parties,… Read more »
“the worn leather of a old bar seat.” That right there is a great opening image for a story.
Hmmmm, that’s an interesting thought….I’ll concoct an Ode to the Barstool
No exotic places, a few hotel rooms, a few cafes…Writing roughly a page or better a day for several months now.
Hey, that’s more like it. Good work, Dave. You kept at it, and it’s been paying off.
Any particularly memorable hotel room or cafe?
I’ve written in approximately a bazillion memorable places. Here’s a sampler for which I’ve been able to (fairly easily) retrieve both writing excerpts and photos. Where it began: Tuesday Aug 31 Today we went to the country. We went camping. I caught a baby frog. We visited Grandma. Then I played Bingo. I won a Book. I saw a Deer. — 1965, written inside a Department of Education, The City of New York, Elementary School Record No. 9 Teacher’s Note Book (dressed in a cover made by my father). Diary spans July 4-Sept. 10. *** Gorham Hotel, New York City, 1983:… Read more »
Thanks for this, Elissa. At least one of your photos always fills me with intense ’80s nostalgia, in this case the Gorham. All that wood paneling! If I ever have an office or house of my own, I’m going to try to recreate that look.
I’d like to think I have the guts to touch a moose, or merely stand that close to it, but… I don’t. I would be sprinting. Or at the very least, hiding, cowering.
You’ve definitely been around, my friend. Thanks for sharing so much of it with us.
Rooms and houses with dark wood paneling typically show up in my dreams, probably inspired by the Woburn place. My living room (and writing space) in the in-law apartment I rented in Cambridge was also paneled and had a steeply-pitched ceiling. Add the window overlooking greenery and the whole thing felt like a treehouse.
The Gorham was amazingly cheap to stay in and was around the corner from Carnegie Hall. Room came with a kitchenette. I spent a couple of nights there during a month where I basically couch-surfed before resettling in MA.
The full moose story occurs on May 4, 1990:
https://hurricanecountry.blogspot.com/2005/08/unexpected-trails.html
When I travel, I carry a trio of “weapons”: my notebook, cell phone, and tablet. I rarely get away to write because I have a great space at home to do so. But experience has taught me to be prepared when I’m not at home because that’s when ideas seem to strike. I’ve jotted everything from ideas to full-blown scenes using one of these mediums in places like the Smoky Mountains (TN); log cabin overlooking a lake in Heyward, WI; San Francisco, CA; and plenty of places in-between and at all times of the day and night. My muse has… Read more »
I’ve never been to Heyward. That’s really up there, man. But it is near Spooner, about which Debra Monroe writes beautifully in a memoir you may like, My Unsentimental Education.
I always loved Sinclair Lewis’s essay “How I Wrote A Novel On Trains and Beside the Kitchen Sink”. Basically, he would snatch an hour where- and whenever he could. Leaning on the kitchen sink in the morning while his son had his bottle, on the train to NYC, during a lunch break in the park…he could usually get in a solid two hours per day. I can relate, because I got a heck of a lot done on NJ Transit trains and buses. I can work in public, as long as no one bothers me and I can fade into… Read more »
Writing in snatches like this always appeals to me, but I’m rarely able to execute it. It takes me a while to get into the right headspace, so unless I have a solid amount of time, without interruptions, I’m in trouble. I’m glad it works for you.
forfeck, head, cockpit, spreaders (only in calm weather and at anchor)