Phase Two

That first movie script was followed by more work in the entertainment field. These aren’t elegant or profound writing challenges, but there was a certain craftsmanship about it that kept me going. I looked for time to sink deep into my own writing, but during those days in the business that never happened. Finally, the work stopped coming, maybe because I started turning down work or maybe my style wasn’t appealing any more. It doesn’t matter – I was done.

Despite all the writing I’ve done, I’m still puzzled by the process. When the writing is happening, it comes from some other place, from someplace outside what I think of as me. Of course there’s a part that’s mechanical, like looking up place names or getting the order of people coming into the room just right. I feel like I’m thinking about that. But the part that makes the writing alive – that’s a mystery.

The Greeks said the Muses provide the inspiration. That doesn’t make sense to me. Even though the Muses were gods, they were people-like and somehow that makes them incapable of creating the livingness of the words. People – and gods for that matter – are too wrapped up in all their tangled emotions - confused and slightly dazed. The liveness of writing is pure, far purer than seems possible to come from people or gods.

For me, the writing comes from some place. Not the description kind of place (It happened on the corner of North and Main officer…) but a real living breathing kind of place with ants and trees, rain, old leaves and scraps of lumber and sidewalks. I don’t mean it comes from the dirt and rocks and dead leaves themselves but what some call the Gaia or the living earth. The living earth contains everything – plastic bags and fire hydrants, rotten banana peals – simply everything.

So now here’s my secret: the place my writing comes from is the little entry way just on the south east corner of the cottage. That little hall is the easiest way to get from the cottage out to the beach, and is usually full of tracked-in sand and cluttered with dropped beach paraphernalia. It’s right next to my studio – through that door right there. I leave the door open a little, so whatever is in there can make it into my studio.

I’ve tried to write in other places. Once I rented a studio in Santa Cruse for about a year. It was absolutely beautiful – I could see the beach, and there was a delightful set of café’s down on the street below where I could go get a coffee or meet friends for lunch. I was able to crank out material, but it was fake. There was no life in it, and I stopped going there to write. There were other places that were even worse. Everything that I wrote there just seemed plastic and dead.

So after a while I stopped looking for another place to write, and came back here to work. It was terribly inconvenient and I had to make excuses to my colleagues in the entertainment business on why I was spending so much time in Maine.

I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out why this little hall is so important. Sitting in the hall and sitting next to it in my studio is about the same – being close seems to be the important thing. When I ask myself too many questions about why, the writing just stops dead. So I don’t think about it much, and have just accepted it.

And one final odd thing: if there are others in the house, and there are comings and goings, and the screen door slams, the writing comes fast and furious. I love having a full cottage. Everything seems to work best then, although when they all leave and the cottage settles down to earth, there’s a wonderful afterglow that also pushes the writing up and out of the hall.

So I sit here and wait for the screen door in the entry way to slam, so I know that the writing will come soon. You can picture me right now, sitting here watching the waves, listening to the gulls and the rain. Waiting.