When I'm writing I'm writing 2

When I am writing I am following a trail which is a trail that the story itself generates, with some help from me. The trail is winding, I can’t see beyond the next curve. If I keep my eyes sharp there are discoveries along the way that are part of the story or could be. I can feel that the end is coming, is maybe over the next hill.

Sometimes the story shuts me out – it is as impenetrable as a walled city – inside its walls life is going on – markets, love affairs, politics, colorful weaving, gossip, intricate metalwork – but when the walls are shut I can’t get at it, although I believe or hope it is still there and that someday the gates will open or the walls will fall down, or that I will scale them or blow them up, that there will be a signal from a tower, a white flag.

Sometimes the story makes itself a stranger to me, or perhaps it is me who is the stranger. We forget how to speak to each other sometimes, the story and I. We have a past, but we disagree on the essentials. There has been a loss of trust, a betrayal. The story hides itself from me, it is cold and unforgiving.

Can the story be a house? Sometimes with many rooms, sometimes with few. A little ramshackle maybe, a fixer-upper. I try the door but the wood is swollen with the rain. I peer into the windows which are obscured with dust or heavy curtains so that only a chink of light gets through. Smoke drifts from the chimney to tell me that someone or something is alive in there, but no one will answer my knock. To get in I will have to break in a basement window or put a ladder up to the second floor porch.

Writing is for me a going inside, inside and down.

I often write on the couch, sometimes at my desk in the spare room. I used to write in the classroom along with my studetns. I have written in coffee shops, at the beach. In the library. At a desk made from a door resting on two file cabinets. At a dining room table. On a patio. On a lawn next to a hill of rocks that led down to an abandoned quarry.

Writing does not produce calluses as other sorts of work do, unless there are calluses of the mind. I can feel the memory of pressure on my finger tips, the pressure of the computer keys, and a slight vibration in my fingernails that lasts for a few seconds when I stop typing. A minor strain in my wrist. The crick in my neck which has bent itself toward my work. A place in my head that thinks of turning into a headache but holds back for now. My eyelids droop. My lips tighten and release. I scratch my leg and sigh. Stretch and fall back against the chair.