Does a battle assume there has been a victory? Writing has a threshold that must be crossed, marking the departure from everyday life and its patterns. The space writing affords can be threatening to the underpinnings of everything else. Writing lives … Continue reading
Tag Archives: writing
I just finished Dwight Garner’s “A Critic’s Tour of Literary Manhattan” in The New York Times (December 14, 2012). I’m smitten. I like heady romps through the bars and bookshops where original things take place. I swoon for the places … Continue reading
I was putting together another post on Amtrak when I stumbled across a New York Times Opinion on Amtrak’s Quiet Car by Tim Krieder. The Quiet Car is at first brilliant: I settle myself away from the din of the … Continue reading
Business travel breeds ideas. My business trips involve some off days, waiting around at my destination, combined with really long stretches of being “on.” Combine that with jet lag, and ideas that I’ve stowed away in the corners of my … Continue reading
I really enjoyed the selection and arrangement of diary excerpts in New York Diaries: 1609-2009 (Modern Library, 2012). Read my post on the book here. I particularly like how the segments capture the environment of New York depending on the period: … Continue reading
No, we aren’t looking to move! But I was flipping through a book in which I kept notes about my apartment hunt in 2005. I had 54 apartments on my list and looked at 30 of them – yep, 30 … Continue reading
I spent a lot of time chronicling my life from the time I was 8 until I was about 21 or so. I find that when I write other things (fiction, research papers, poetry, blogs) I don’t feel the need … Continue reading
I’ve been working on a short story for years about a friendship slipping into an unfamiliar place. One of these days I’ll fish it out of the muck. In my book (ha), trains are good places for writing, and good … Continue reading
First designated in 1913, the Lincoln Highway was the first transcontinental highway across the United States, stretching from Times Square in New York City to Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco. In 2005, I drove the … Continue reading
When I leave the city, it’s either on a plane or a train. On a plane, you have little sense of forward travel once you’ve reached cruising altitude. Everyone channels sardine-ism for a number of hours, and the landscape below … Continue reading