Write Your A** Off (Part 2)

Today I participated in the 2008 Write-a-Thon, a day devoted to writing (by the seat of your pants) to raise money for the New York Writers Coalition. The event was held in a most lovely and interesting space -- the library and classrooms of the The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, a charitable organization founded in 1785 to provide cultural, educational, and social services to families of skilled craftsmen.

I knew if I went wandering early in the day I would never get to my writing -- there were too many cool things to look at: old prints and artifacts that lined the main staircase, a collection of various antique locks on the balcony. So I spent the morning writing a poem about yesterday's lunch:

Friday Lunch

That was the best lunch ever.
Five of us, wedged tight in the corner
beneath a wall of wine bottles,
one of them open on our table.

Tapas! Patatas bravas,
tasty tidbits of things we'd never eat alone.
Lamb tongue and ramps!
"Oh, go on and try it -- it's good.
You just need to pretend
you don't know what it is."

Outside the pane glass:
Spring-soaked Irving Place,
swarming with ghosts.
Inside, the same sweet song
of food and friends
that we've sung for a hundred years.

Shared stories of mother, of son,
of a girl once dated.
Stories about work and the weekend to come.
Then coffee and dessert.

Check paid, cigarettes smoked
under the awning while debating
whether to walk or cab it.
A decision, a parting,
the lingering comfort of
Rioja and the rain.

********************

At today's lunch, Colson Whitehead gave a talk about writing and being a writer. Basically he said he went into writing because he was too lazy to get a real job and wanted to stay home and avoid people and drink beer and smoke cigarettes. All the same reasons I wish *I* were a writer! He was great! And very funny and sincere, I think, in his advise to us.

Later in the afternoon, I took a writing workshop where I composed the beginnings of what I might try to turn into two short stories. There were only two of us in the workshop and my classmate wrote and read a snippet that I hope she will shape into a more expanded story. Jeanne writes a food blog, which was perfectly serendipitous given that I spent the morning writing about yesterday's lunch.