The painter lifts and lowers his brush. He steps back from his canvas, rubs the paint from his hands with a rag. He breathes, moves. Aware of his arms, legs, feet. As for the writer? The lowly writer is doomed to the chair. The single view ahead of him. He has to be indoors–usually. I am a person who hates to be indoors, hates to sit down for extended stretches. I want to be out with the animals. Is there a problem here?
I write on planes, trains. I write in my head, in the car. At least that gives me the illusion of motion. It helps to take me out of the cage of the brain. Once I gave myself the assignment of writing a very short story as I walked on the beach toward an inlet far ahead. I passed a ghost crab, stopped, pecked a sentence or two into my phone. I passed pelicans flying full speed over breakers–another sentence. By the time I reached the inlet I had a semblance of that very short story. I thought I’d solved something. I wanted to believe that it could be like this from the here on out, but Writing wants the chair, which always has a harder plan in mind.
–Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy, The Burning House, and Unbuilt Projects. He is currently the New Voices Professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University in Camden.
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