There’s been silence on the blog, and let me tell you,  silence on all other writing fronts.  It would be depressing if it wasn’t just another dip of many in the writing sine curve; in the last few weeks I’ve been alternately elated and obsessed with my own shortcomings.  During these darker periods everything I hear is a reflection of my own perverted image of myself as a writer; someone tells me I have a strong background in politics, for instance, and that it might be fun to utilize this, and I hear “you’re worthless!”.  Luckily I think I’ve reached, for the time being, a happy middle ground, and, with the help of a new haircut, a new study, and a new idea, I might be able to resume writing as usual.

The new haircut?  Probably incidental to the creative process, but every little helps.  Perhaps what was weighing me down was not my own lack of confidence after all, but split ends and an overgrown fringe.  The new study?  An attempt to force myself into a new routine.  It still overlooks the garden, but it’s upstairs.  Lack of proximity to the tea kettle worries me slightly, but then, it might be easier to block out the rest of the world from upstairs.  And the new idea–or, rather, the new take on the old idea?  I’m not telling, not yet, but it involves, in addition to the usual (Oxford, psychology of place, literary ghosts), Don Quixote, the modern novel, a sequel, the first world war, and a lot of work.  I think it’s gonna be good.

For reasons totally unrelated to the book, I’ve been reading some of P.G. Wodehouse’s letters recently, and I’m convinced that this is why I’m not as worried as usual over my recent spell of creative impotence.  Late in his life, Wodehouse, already an enormously successful and prolific author, still both enjoyed the process of writing, and struggled with it greatly.  In one letter he tells a friend he’s had to rewrite the beginning of a new novel many times, that he’s been working for months and that it’s only now coming together.  I feel like that about this one.

We’re having a heat wave.  It’s nice; it’s strange.  I walk around in a daze all day.  Any energy that hadn’t already been sapped by my worries over the book has now bled out into the sunlight, become more heat.  I take long naps on the couch when I’m not at work and listen to the songs from the ice-cream truck. Sometimes I think the whole city has gone mad; we’re under the influence of someone else’s circus-dream.

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Here is what I know (or what I have learned?): writing requires immense courage.

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Perhaps I need a more inspiring setting. Somewhere with whitecaps and blustery ridges. Or, at least, with a handsome, overgrown garden out back, where the slugs work their way through the mint plant, where we can sit on the bench and gaze through the treetops at a summer (or autumn, or winter, or spring) moon while leaves from the plum tree drop into our wine glasses, and a sunny lounge, shelves overstuffed with books, looking out onto the street, where people cycle past, whistling.

I like the North End; but it’s not inspiring in that way. It’s the sort of place I’d probably want to live if I had a 9-5 job and a few friends nearby to grab a quick cocktail before Grey’s Anatomy. But I am/have none of those things. Give me my garden. Give me my rainy streets, and my slugs, and my little beautiful bowls of compost scattered about the kitchen, and my piles and piles of books, and I shall write you a story.

But now when I step outside all I see are the skinny North End girls walking their dogs; the old Italian ladies arguing in their floral-print housecoats; men hosing down the sidewalk in front of their restaurants, boys in pants that don’t fit with cell phones plastered to their faces. I smell pizza, and cannolis. It’s a pleasant enough atmosphere, and of all the places I’ve lived in Boston I really do like it best here; but it’s not the same. It doesn’t do for me what I think I need my home to do. And I can breath a sigh of relief when I come inside and fix a cup of tea and curl up in my chair, but the relief is only temporary. My stories are stifled here. There’s no room for story when everyone keeps time to the beat of the 9-5 woman’s heels, and makes sure to be home in time for Monday football (of the American variety). There’s only room for daydreaming.

I like my Laundromat, though. It smells good, and I can sit crosslegged at the table in the center of the room and wait for my clothes to be spun and cleaned and watch everyone else moving around me. I liked that it smelled like Fall today. The air had that feeling. It’s something so subtle—like a texture, something you both see and feel. I know it’s silly to say, but you can just feel the cold creeping in, coming up over the curve of the earth. You breath, and there are little diamonds of winter, sharp and cool, in the air that was—just yesterday, you think!—warm and hazy.

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