Vagabond Snap

My writing lunch:
This week, with no particular prompting from me, 7 unacquainted people asked me “What does your life as a writer look like?” This week, 7 unacquainted people learned how inarticulate I am capable of being. I’d never thought about how my life as a writer could be separate from the rest of my life.

Yes, of course, I’ve thought about all of the things I want my life as a writer to be (and which it is at its best moments):
* brainstorming sessions huddled over coffee tables and flopped over beanbags
*press packets
* drinking too much coffee
* riding too many airplanes
*stacks of library books to my knees
*lines that sting like a burn and shouts like a party
*nanowrimo parties
* research papers that mate with plot bunnies and repopulate the once clean carpet

I’d also thought about the spiral of lukewarm ramen and too-close deadlines that I feared writing could be and often is:
*smothering blankets of block that tend to hit in the early winter and the midsummer and bruise
*losing business cards I need, 5 minutes before I need them
*messy break-ups with people who I loved deeply and liked almost as much as my work
*being stuck in a bus terminal for 17 hours with only an $8 food voucher
*a clear disability and an equally clear lack of healthcare options
*computer crashes
*post poetry breakdowns
*discovering 20 ways to use food pantry peanut butter
*that embarrassing moment when a relative/cab driver/boy I sat next to in Euro. History that now makes twice that I do asks “But what’s your day job?” or “..Are you sure you’re cut out for this?”
*the even more awkward (and devastating) evenings spent staring at an empty openoffice screen wondering the same thing.

Maybe it’s this speed-hungry yo-yo of survivalist extremes that drew me to writing. I think it’s mostly the fact that nothing could drive me away. I was 6 years old when I wrote my first short story: an incomprehensible handscribbled epic involving dinosaurs, nuns and sentient potatoes. 15 years later, writing exercises have involved less dinosaurs, nuns or potatoes, but no less gratitude for the ability to build worlds and break down the one I live in. This is my living, so I may as well try to make a paycheck. So, when asked about what differs in my life from the life of a non-writer…I think about writing constantly. What I can write next, what I should avoid, what I like reading, what I need to learn, what I have to teach and what I give up so I can get a good piece.

As for the rest of the time? I guess it’s time for me to find out.