In my last post I talked about taking myself on as a client, trying to schedule my own writing time while working as a busy freelance editor––which is easier said than done. In the mean time, I had been wanting to visit The Head and the Hand Press, a local small press that also functions as a writing space. I am already a member of the awesome co-working space Indy Hall, but the buzzing atmosphere there tends to inspire me to hustle and bustle with my freelancing business and not to sit quietly and write. I liked the idea that I could go to this other place where I could spend the day only working on my own writing.
Last Wednesday I found myself with a rare day off. I wasn’t expecting a new project to arrive until Thursday and I just completed another one. No more excuses, I told myself: make it your writing day. So here’s my account of how it went down.
11:00am: Leave the house. Yes, my day sometimes starts this late. Though I recently challenged myself to start waking up much earlier to get to the gym, last week I was on my waking-up-late schedule.
11:00–11:45am: Flier for the Red Sofa. Since I’d just had postcards printed for my poetry workshop, I went around my neighborhood in West Philly distributing them to advertise. Writing day has yet to actually begin.
11:45am–12:00pm: Drive to The Head and the Hand, which is located in Fishtown. This involves getting on the I-95 North, which as a native New Yorker I find amazing and bizarre: I can take the highway to get from one neighborhood to another in Philly.
12:00pm: Arrive at The Head and the Hand. Off a raggedy looking street, I see the icon on the door.
12:05pm: I enter up a staircase. The place is very quiet. This is alarming at first, but then I remember that this is a good thing. This is what I came here for.
12:10pm: I am greeted by Claire, the creative manager. I immediately get into a conversation with her and ask for a tour of the place. There’s no way I’m about to start writing yet.
12:30pm: After the tour and more chatting, I decide that I have procrastinated enough. I set up my laptop at one of the adorable, hand-made writing desks. I take a moment to let it all sink in, just looking at my writing space: the light, clean wood, the little yellow flower in a jar. I smile to myself and inhale deeply. This is what having time and space to write feels like.
12:40pm: I take out the book I brought with me for poetry inspiration: Northern Tales: Traditional Stories of Eskimo and Indian Peoples. I have been reading books of indigenous mythology as a way to help me write poems that address climate change (more on that in future posts).
2:00pm: I have read and read and read story after story just waiting for a spark, and it finally comes. I land on a striking image and decide it’s time to follow its lead. I set the timer for 30 minutes and begin to write.
2:30pm: I have written a poem.
2:35pm: And it’s damn good.
2:40pm: I keep writing past the timer.
2:45pm: I finish up my hand-written draft and type it into a Word doc.
2:50pm: Bask in the glow of a really solid first draft.
2:55pm: Revise that draft a bit.
3:00pm: Notice someone else has entered the room, a fellow writer and editor who is also a member of Indy Hall.
4:00pm: Get “lunch” with said writer/editor at Soup Kitchen. Yum. We chat about our former publishing jobs in New York, about what we’re writing and what we’ve been editing.
5:00pm: Head back to Head and the Hand for more reading. No more writing happens today, but that one poem took a lot out of me. This is hard for people who don’t write poems to understand, I think.
6:00pm: I see a tweet from Twitter-and-now-real-life friend Trina, saying that she is at Head and the Hand. I turn around and she’s right behind me at the desk across the room. We giggle and take a picture together that later surfaces on Instagram. I marvel at the Internet.
6:10pm: Now the space is starting to fill up with writers. I feel cool cause I’ve been writing ALL DAY. But of course by writing I mean mostly reading all day, with 45 minutes of actual writing.
8:00pm: Everyone gathers for Workshop Wednesday. We snack on Oreo cookies and red wine. We chat about the latest Woody Allen film, which is awesome by the way. We chat about the whole history of Woody Allen films. I somehow start preaching about my love for creative non-fiction. Head and the Hand editor Linda Gallant passionately explains why the narrative arc of Breaking Bad is brilliant. I tell myself I need to get back into that show, even though it scares me. I talk about how Maria Popova is going to speak at Kelly Writers House next week and that she has the best website ever. Claire agrees. We gush.
10:45pm: I get in the car to go home. The feeling that comes after having written––not unlike the feeling after exercise––settles into my brain, a sweet and quiet buzz. I have spent more time reading and talking today than writing. But that’s all a part of the writing process. And I wrote. A damn good poem, I’d say.