Gin and Cigarettes

Sounds like a blues tune. Feels like heaven. These are two of my significant vices, the black flip side of creativity, the sparks that fuel much of my writing. Most of my writing nights start with a carefully rationed cigarette on the deck of 3-D. I allow myself no more than six a week. They don’t mix well with running and I try to run at least 10 miles a week.

I sit on my postage-stamp sized deck, the one with just enough room for one chair, at twilight, the time the French call l’heure bleu, and ponder my writing for the night. Poetry or fiction? If it’s fiction, short or long? Right now I have three short stories in progress, a novel that’s about half way completed, one that needs a complete overhaul and one that’s in the notes/scribbling stage. Too many choices and not enough time – I can’t seem to land on anything except poems long enough to finish. I don’t struggle with writer’s block, like so many people. I’m more like a magpie distracted by a bright, shiny new thought that cries to be explored. One cigarette, though, and the cascade of images and characters begins. It’s a momentous feeling, dangerously breathtaking, like good sex.

Which is where the gin comes in… it slows my magpie mind down long enough to focus on the words I need, not just the thrill of knowing I have the roots of the poem, the story or the scene. As the gin settles in, I can lose myself in the place I need to be to pull out the right words for the task at hand.

This is how it started…

Back in February of 2009, this is what I wrote about needing a space of my own:

“Virginia Woolf wrote a Room of One’s Own, making the case that there will never be a female Shakespeare until women have both money and privacy. I’m not aspiring to Shakespeare. I’m not even aspiring to Woolf. She’s a little too intense for my tastes although I admire her dedication and ability to craft complex, meaningful sentences.

I do dream about what I could create with some space and some privacy, both of which would take a lot more income than I currently can lay my hands on. But before the creating takes place I would luxuriate in having a place where I could read without interruptions. Where I could sit without seeing piles of paper that aren’t mine, toys that need to be put away, shoes strewn around, breakfast crumbs and dishes that need to be washed. A place I could take a long bath without a racket outside in the hall, light candles without fearing someone is going to knock them over and burn the place down, drink a mug of coffee while I make notes.

I’m sure the novelty of all that would wear off eventually and I would be able to sit in a sunny corner with some music on, organize my thoughts and write on a computer whose screen wasn’t smudged with small fingerprints. And instead of the haphazard, disjointed stuff that seems to be all I’m capable of producing these days, I’d write seamless prose – paragraphs and pages of it. Then, after a few hours, I’d put it all away neatly, wash my coffee mug, clean the bathroom, turn off the lights, lock the door and go back home to my life.”

All kinds of circumstances, some good, some not so good, made it possible for this to become real in March… Life in (apartment) 3-D started April 1. I now have space and privacy to write and I’ve done a lot of that although not nearly as much as I would like or should.

The life I go back to is much different than the life I had back then and it continues to change, shaping itself into new and interesting forms on a daily basis. It seems that I’m both the agent of my own changes and a sometimes innocent bystander in the chaos that gets thrown my way. And that seems to be life in 3-D…