A Man and His Shed—A Permit in Hand

A few years ago, The Daily Telegraph published a story about men and their sheds. Not necessarily writers and their sheds. Just men of any stripe with a desire for a sort of outdoorsy man-cave, a place to escape, to hide from family, kids, life, or to watch football on a Sunday afternoon.  

I read that story with irritation. Not annoyance with the men who wanted such a retreat, but for those who would think my plan for a shed had a similar motivation.

My shed is not what these men desire. It is a writer’s shed, a place the author Michael Pollan has called, “the space of a daydream.” Pollan wrote a wonderful book — A Place of My Own — about his own journey designing and building his writer’s shed in Connecticut. Like his shed, I would like to think that my writer’s shack would also be, as his was, “built with words.” I will not build it. I’m leaving that up to the experts. But its essence, the metaphoric foundation will be constructed with single words, one-by-one.

I am keenly aware of this now, and only now that I finally have the building permit in my hand. With this, I can’t help but consider move-in day—the carrying of books, the arrangement of a desk, the position of my chair. Before this, however, I will paint the ceiling frame white, like the ceiling in Dylan Thomas’ shed, and cover the walls in barn wood or similar like the beautifully clean writing space of E.B. White.

The permit will soon be tacked to a tree in the yard and the men in boots will maneuver gravel and lumber, they will measure twice and cut once, and they will shingle the roof and pound nails with heavy hammers. And in the end I will have a place to fill with words. It will not be Thomas’ boathouse, or Thoreau’s cabin, or George Bernard Shaw’s tiny shack. It will not be designed to what they had. It will surely hold the spirit of those wonderful spaces, but this shed will be mine. Only one hundred feet from the back door of the house, I will have my own uncomplicated “hut in the woods.”

More to come on the development and construction as the days move on. 

                                                    E.B. White's writing shed

                                             Dylan Thomas' boathouse in Wales

                                          George Bernard Shaw's writing hut

                                         Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden

Being Fearless

I walk into a coffee shop this morning and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” is playing on the audio system.

“How are you today?” the barista asks.

“Can’t be bad if I’m starting my day with the Man in Black,” I say.

She smiles.

“He was such a badass,” I continue. “Like Dylan.”

She smiles again. But I’m not sure if it’s a smile of agreement or she’s simply trying to sell me a latte. Maybe she’s appeasing an old man who has been thinking a lot lately about the art of being fearless, and how I somehow missed that important ingredient when I was building my early creative self.

Cash, Dylan, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and countless others of my generation and today have and are creatively without the slightest apprehension. They throw their guitars on their backs, their notebooks in their canvas suitcases, their laptops under their arms and get after it. They go sing their songs, write their words without constraint.

When I was young and playing guitar, writing some songs of my own, I did it the safe way. Sure, I did it, but I didn’t hitchhike to Greenwich Village, I played at the student union on my campus steps away from my dorm. Not so fearless. And my songs, the ones I wrote, had a formula, a tempo, an aesthetic that could be found readily on the radio. Boring. Oh, I was decent enough, people clapped, I was even praised sometimes, but I was far from being creatively fearless.

A few years after those halcyon days, I put on a tie, some cotton khaki pants, and played the part. I was a journalist and I liked the role. I won some awards, did some good work, but was I fearless like a Woodward and Berstein? No. I did my job and I did it well, but I was pedestrian.

Today, I’m thinking about that. What makes the greats fearless, even from the beginning? What makes them take the big and bold chances with their work, their life, their creative self?

At nearly sixty years old, I’m more fearless now than I have ever been. But it is no longer combined with the promise of youth; a young man’s belief that he is immortal and his work—his songs, his writing, his poems—are the most important thing in the world. Like many who work creatively, I find I must do it. I’m compelled to write and from time to time create music, but the fire that rages when one is young is not there. It burns, but not as brightly.

Or does it?

A crazy idea: What if I grabbed my guitar and practiced hard and wrote some more songs and went out to share them? Go on a little tour? Play some bars, small festivals in dumpy towns and learn to be fearless. I play okay. I can write decently. I know how to perform in front of people without fainting. My next book—October Song—is about a songwriting contest and facing big changes in one’s life. So, I think I know how to do this. I could call it the “Fearless Tour” or the “No Regrets Tour” or “The Old Man Needs to Prove Something Tour.”

If I have any regrets, it’s that I didn’t start writing creatively and without restraints at a younger age, that I didn’t strap on my guitar and jump on a VW bus and play anywhere and everywhere, all over the place. I didn’t realize when I was young that I needed to be more fearless, that I needed to push the edges more often, that I needed to stretch to the point of snapping. It wasn’t that I was afraid of snapping, I just didn’t know any better.

But I do now.

Yes I do.

Why Dylan Doesn't Give a Damn...But You Should

First things first, Bob Dylan, for the most part, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any Swedish literary prize. He’s Bob Dylan. It’s what he does—shuns the usual, rejects the norm, breaks barriers, dismisses convention.

On the other hand, Dylan loves it. He’s giving the finger to the status quo while reveling, albeit internally, that his life’s work, his body of songs is as important and relevant, compelling and significant as any writer’s writer.

Dylan loves writers—Kerouac, Ginsberg in the early going. There are rumors Dylan visits Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts every year. He loves words, Dylan does. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

One of the arguments against Dylan and the Nobel Prize—song lyrics are not literature. Silly. Yes, some are and some certainly aren’t. But in a world where media entities blur the edges of disciplines, that argument doesn’t hold up anymore. Smart for the Nobel Committee to recognize this without specifically saying it. 

And for all those who question the selection of Dylan because they can’t get past the man’s voice, his chameleon-like career, or are dismissing the lesser-songs in his canon, well, you just don’t get it and probably never will. That’s okay. It doesn’t matter. Bob Dylan doesn’t care. And I don’t either.

Here’s why.

Dylan has been my personal Nobel Laureate for decades. Even when he put out music with lyrics that were, I believed, below him—even when he started doing the Tex-Mex thing, even when he got preachy about God, even when his voice got so gravelly that I could hardly make out his words, even with that shaky performance at the Grammy’s, even when he started singing Sinatra. Doesn’t matter. The lyrics, the literature he’s given us in hundreds of songs is worth these small, insignificant hurdles.

When I was a teenager, I remember hearing the song “Masters of War” played from a vinyl album in a friend’s basement family room. Dylan was pissed. He didn’t yell, he didn’t growl, he didn’t beat his chest. But he was pissed and every word in that song screamed disgust with those “masters.” I remember thinking: Who has the guts to do that? To get that pissed off in a song? To sing those words, those glorious words. Then I heard “Girl from the North Country” and I cried. I still cry when I hear that song. Again, it’s the words, those wonderful words.

Last spring I had the opportunity to sing a couple of Dylan songs with my guitar at a Dylan birthday party celebration at the Filament Theatre in Chicago. One of the songs was “Boots of Spanish Leather.” Words. Such words.

Words. These are what Dylan has given us. It’s what the Nobel Committee heard, read. It’s what moved them. It’s what moved me, moved America, moved the world. Just like all the Nobel Laureates of Literature. Dylan joins a mighty list. Just consider the American writers:

Sinclair Lewis
Eugene O'Neill
Pearl Buck
T.S. Eliot
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
John Steinbeck
Saul Bellow
Issac Singer
Czeslaw Milosz
Joseph Brodsky
Derek Walcott
Toni Morrison

BOB DYLAN 

I do truly believe, as I first wrote, Dylan doesn’t give a damn about a Nobel Prize. But he does give a damn about words.

Thank God he did and still does.

A Writer Considers Building a Shed

I think I need a writer's shed.

I've always been a writer who loves to write in the chaos of a coffee shop—the whir of the espresso machine and all the clinking of ceramic, at least in a cool/good coffee shop.

But I've also been enamored and in love with the writer's spaces of those who long to be alone and in their own little world—Thoreau's cabin, Roald Dahl's hut, George Bernard Shaw's hut, Emerson's shack, or, my favorite, Dylan Thomas' primitive boathouse in Wales.

My wonderful Leslie gave me a present not long ago—a watercolor original painting of the inside of Thomas' space in Laugharne.

                                        

The boathouse is deliciously ruffled, yet full of Thomas' inspirations. Photos and drawings of favorite creatives—Walt Whitman and others. These are tacked and taped to the walls. There are drawings and quotes littering the space. Books on the floor and scattered on a shelf. And windows to the stunning beauty of Wales. 

                          

I'm not considering a boathouse. And I'm not as ambitious as Shaw was. His hut was actually on a turntable so that it moved with the sun, allowing him to create primitively efficient solar power heat.

But I am ready to embark on this idea. A 10x8 space in the corner of the property—a getaway, a sacred space, a writer's haven. It's not a man cave; it's not an escape. Electricity? Maybe not. A hurricane lamp seems efficient. Heat is needed? There are propane-powered space heaters, right? Cooling? A good fan and some air flow built in through the design. Simple. Clean. Heavenly.

I've read about other writers who have built their own and it can be expensive or you can go the cheaper route, dressing up a shed from Home Depot. I'm not looking to build a separate housing unit, but it has to have some aesthetic appeal. It has to look like a place one would want to be—where one would want to find themselves on a breezy fall night, massaging words and themes.

Journalist and author Michael Pollan built a shed for himself and wrote a book about it—A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams. In the first paragraphs he writes:

"Is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words over until they'd assumed a habitable shape? What they propose, to anyone who admits them into the space of a daydream, is a place of solitude a few steps off the beaten track of everyday life." 

I ordered the book. Let's see what happens. 

Every Writer Wants to be Something Bigger

I had a blah day. It was angsty (is that a word?) and self indulgent. I was lost in my own ineptitude and my own mediocrity. But...it's okay. These things happen to people who care about their craft. At least that's my excuse.

It started, I think, from hurdles I needed to get over with the publisher of my forthcoming memoir, October Song. Nothing that can't be fixed. But issues are issues. And I would rather not deal with them. I would rather just write. I won't go into all of it here, not necessary. But it comes from the details of modern publishing—trusting proofreaders and copy editors, and believing that your work is worthy when it sometimes is minimized into just another book on the shelf, just another author in a world full of them.

So, that got me thinking about writing and its bigger meaning. Maybe not just for me, but for anyone who writes. This can get us into trouble, you know? If we think there is a bigger meaning and we are not living up to that meaning, well, it could get "angsty."

Consider this...a quote from the writer Don DeLillo:

"The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. The writer is the man or woman who automatically takes a stance against his or her government. There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous. Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail." --Don DeLillo, from the 1988 interview with Ann Arensberg.

Wow. If every writers tired to live up to this statement, we might just all off ourselves. Don't misunderstand, I love this quote and I love what it stands for. But, seriously, it's heady. And what happens when we aren't so "dangerous?" Are we failures? Should be just give it up? Consider ourselves hopelessly mediocre and move on?

Every writer goes through times of uncertainty, self-doubt, believing that what they are doing is unworthy and pointless. It comes with the territory. But I wonder—aren't most of what we are doing, writing, ultimately forgettable? I'm not being defeatist; I'm being realistic. Aren't only a handful of us—the truly great—immortal? Aren't those the only ones that really matter?

Yes, this it getting a bit bleak. But here's where it turns around.

I was interviewed the other day on the radio about NIGHT RADIO, my novel. The interviewer had pulled quotes from the book that had "moved her." Really? I had written words that moved someone? And when she read them over the air, I questioned, aloud—did I write that? Not that I was impressed in some way, I was simply astonished that I had put words down that were worth repeating, worth sharing, worth interpreting and considering in some spiritual way, some deeper way.

I'll carry that with me now through this "angsty" phase. I suggest, as you write and create and find yourself in that "angsty" way when you want to be something bigger and bolder, that you find a piece of your art that you are proud of, or better still, something someone else has been moved by and let it wash over you.

The Truth About Writer's Block: There is No Such Thing

I'm calling you out.

You do not have writer's block. There is no such thing. It is not contagious, and no one, not you, not anybody will ever catch this non-existent ailment. It's an excuse.

Who says so? Me. And many others.

From Lois Lowry, the author of The Giver:

"Did you ever go to have your braces adjusted and hear your orthodontist say. 'Oh, I'm sorry, I can't dot it. I have dentist's block today.' Of course not."

And from Linda Sue Park, author of A Long Walk to Water:

"I think it could be called I-do-not-feel-like-writing block."

Face it. Writer's block is bullshit.

Novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of Love in the Time of Cholera, once said the only cure for the writer facing a blank page is death.

So, if you don't want to die...you better write!

I agree that we all have times when writing feels like digging a ditch or we are simply ill-prepared for the task or Game of Thrones is on or the NFL season is getting started or our car needs an oil change. Pick a reason not to write. There are a million. But if you are a writer, you must write. Something. Anything.

Make a goal. "I will write one good paragraph today." Stay away from word count. You'll focus too much on the numbers. Then whatever you write, before you close the laptop, leave a little behind, a bit in the tank. Ernest Hemingway said he never stopped writing until he had a pretty good idea where he was going next, so when he returned he was ready.

And lastly, drop the phrase from your list of excuses. Drop it from your vocabulary. If it isn't there, then you can't see it, hear it, feel it, or experience it.

Think of your writing as working out. It may not be pleasant getting started on that elliptical, but once you get going, you'll feel great. And when you're done for the day, you are on top of the world.

So, sit down, open your laptop, your journal, your note pad and write, write, write.

A Writer in Cuba

There's only one English language bookstore in Havana. Cuba Libro is said to be a literary oasis...with Cuban coffee. It's run by the travel and health journalist, Connor Gory. I've never met her, but I want to and I hope to when I visit Cuba in June of 2017.

I have longed to travel to Cuba for more than a decade, probably two. Its mystery to Americans, its Hemingway history, its people, its reputation for social justice, its love of Che Guevara and the idealism of revolution, all of this is deep in me. Where it all comes from is not necessarily clear to me...and maybe that is why I so believe I need to go.

I do not pretend to be a Cuba scholar. I do not pretend to know its true nature or its spirit. But I hope to and maybe Cuba Libro can help. I've reached out about a possible visit when I'm in Havana, maybe the chance to hold a reading in this restful, organic, spiritual place. Wouldn't that be a special thing—reading from one of my books in a Havana bookstore? Wouldn't it be lovely to donate some of my books, and others, to Libro? I have reached out to Cuba Libro, but have not yet heard from the staff or connected with its owner and driving force, Connor, but I certainly hope I do. There's time.

When booking the travel,  I was asked by the agent helping me, a Cuban named Jane, if the Hemingway leg of the trip—to his home, Finca Vigia outside Havana—was "necessary." She was trying to help me keep the cost manageable. "Jane," I said, "I am the writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park, Illinois. I have to go to the Finca. I must go. That stays." I think it was after this exchange that Jane really understood some of my motivations about my travels. "Plus," I continued, "my two sons are coming with me, and they would think their father had gone daft not venturing out to Cojimar, the tiny village near the Finca, where The Old Man and the Sea was set." Jane laughed. It wasn't a joke.

I plan to learn more Spanish—more than pollo and hola—since Cuban Spanish is different than Mexican or Madrid Spanish. It has Afro-Caribbean roots. I want to understand the draw of the Malecon and learn to savor the music and its importance in the culture, and to welcome the Cuban way—talking loud and often, embracing people physically and emotionally, and celebrating the good they do.  And I want to smoke a cigar in the middle of the day in Old Havana.

But I also want to write—when I'm there and when I return. I want to put thoughtful observations on paper—the things I see and the things I feel. I want the place to envelope me, to be a part of it in real time and to capture it in words, and not simply walk through it as if I'm watching animals in a zoo.

One night while we are there, we plan to stay with a family in Trinidad, Cuba's central tobacco town with its 17th century streets under the striking Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco and its iconic bell tower. I want to drink rum with the locals. And I want to converse, to talk, to listen, to spend time and forget the clock. And then maybe have another cigar.

It's months away but I am already in Cuba in many ways, reading Pico Iyer's Cuba and the Night and a wonderful book of essays entitled Cuba in Mind, and dreaming. There has been a great deal of dreaming.