A Bar, a Beer, a Notebook and a Pen

Back in my early poetry days, at the very beginning in the summer of ’97, I wrote the majority of my poems sitting at the shadowy bar in Botanica, a pint of Brooklyn Brown always at hand as my pen scribbled furiously in my notebook.

Tonight, a series of unexpected events set in motion by Roger’s bailing on the Mets game and me unable to find a taker for the extra ticket, found me watching the game at Coppersmith’s, a pint of Magic Hat #9 always at hand as my pen scribbled furiously in my notebook. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything by hand, and it was an incredible feeling as the words flowed, so much so even the bartender took notice: “He’s on a roll now!”

I cranked out 14 pages of prologue to a story that had popped into my head a couple of days ago and stuck with me, about a homeless guy dealing with a variation on Groundhog Day, but with end-of-the-world implications.

It was a day like any other.

The same day, in fact. Again.

Harold Jacobs blinked back the sleep in his eyes and twisted his torso to the right, stretching, the fabric of his vinyl windbreaker scuffling against the cardboard box that had been his bed last night. Or for the last six months, depending on how you kept count.

Harold had stopped keeping count a while back, when he’d run out of forearm to cut on his left arm, and refused to start on the right.

“Damned useless,” he’d realized.

“First draft” disclaimer and all that, but I like how the germ of an idea flowed onto the page and took on a life of its own. I’ve never been one for outlining a story ahead of time, preferring to be taken by surprise as it unspools from my brain onto the page. Of course, the problem there is that my brain is usually unspooling the story faster than I can transcribe it, and usually after a couple of nights of rather lucid dreaming, the story finishes and I lose interest in finishing writing it.

This time, though, I am going to do everything I can to hang onto the idea and finish it, even if I have to put together an outline that I’ll undoubtedly stray from several times as characters take on lives of their own and the story goes places I hadn’t expected.  Figure you can never be lost as long as you have a map, even if you decide to ignore its directions.

So missing the game (in person, at least) turned out to be a blessing as I unexpectedly jumpstarted my writing process.  All it took was Roger bailing on me at the last-minute; no one else being able to make it to the game; my deciding to walk up to 59th Street as I took care of a couple of errands, one of those errands being picking up Isaac a new notebook, which led to my getting a new one for myself; getting a flashback when I walked into Coppersmith’s of writing at Botanica; and pulling out the new notebook and starting to write.

While I’m not quite ready to say I’m back on track, it does certainly feel like I might be and that’s a good feeling.

Read and post comments |
Send to a friend

Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.