It might be the coffee or the particular quality of light, but this morning while writing I remembered something that happened at the 2011 AWP bookfair.
Someone — I don’t remember who — was going around with a video camera and asking writers to tell the camera what they loved most about writing.
We were at our Di Mezzo il Mare booth, stealthily serving red wine and offering cheese, bread, tomatoes and grapes (served over a large Italian flag). Occasionally someone would have their journal, and we would take a photograph of a page inside their journal, because that’s what Di Mezzo is all about.
I remember being asked what I most loved about writing. My response had to do with the mode of attention that one engages when writing. I loved to be present and pay attention. I said something like that.
Joe Scapellato was asked, and he answered that he most loved the feeling of being immersed in another world. I liked that answer.
I followed the camera (and the camera-wielder) around for a bit to hear what other writers answered. Several, as I recall, spoke with relish of being in a state where the words flowed. Writers love to be in that place where there is some effort, but also the feeling of being free-flowing.
Other writers, like Joe, answered that they loved to enter that imaginative space. They enjoyed crossing the threshold into someplace fresh and original.
I love that we refer to it as a location, another place entirely: the other side.
It’s worth celebrating that writers feel OK with speaking about it in these terms because people are normally so self-conscious. It’s hard to speak about the imagination with precision, especially when feeling self-conscious.
What do you love about writing?
What are the qualities of the Other World for you?
What leads you there?
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