Writing in Parking Lots
By Alison Luterman

Alison is a student in Jane Underwood's writing class (Find this longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister in our Writing & Literature category.) who wrote this essay to answer the ageless question put to writers: "When Do You Write?"

I am writing this in the parking lot of Walgreen's where I just purchased a couple of manuscript mailers, a new type of anti-frizz serum for my hair (hope springs eternal!) a discounted day-after-Easter bunny, solid milk chocolate, fifty cents, and a small tablet of light purple eye shadow.

Now, this is the life. I can apply the eye shadow in the rear view mirror and check how it looks, (too light) eat my chocolate bunny in peace, without sharing, and write.

Every once in a while, people who come to a workshop or class I'm teaching ask me how I'm so productive and prolific. They think there must be some secret because I have been published, and that this one shining fact must mean I have superior work habits.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The people who ask me about my work habits are inevitably parents who work full time jobs and can't seem to squeeze in the requisite twenty minutes a day in which to write the great American novel in between board meetings and Little League. They blame themselves; they imagine that if only they could get up a half-hour earlier in the mornings, they too could be published and happy and virtuous.

I'm sure somewhere out there is a writer with kids and a full time job and superior work habits, but I am not that person. I am lazy and teach part-part-part-time and spend the rest of my day reading clothing catalogues and complaining on the phone to my girlfriends. If I had children I probably would forget to feed them. I do have, as of this writing, a slightly used unofficial foster teenager, but that's a different story. She mostly feeds herself, and sometimes me too.

But back to the question of When Do You Write? For me, the answer to this question is easy: I write when I'm procrastinating some other important task. For example, this essay is being written on April 23rd. My taxes are not yet done. Once again, I've filed for an extension. I write when the bathroom needs to be cleaned, when the garden needs to be weeded, or when I'm skipping some important meeting. Paperwork is always good for a poem: when my California Poets in the Schools contracts are due, the muse gets very busy.

The best and easiest way to write I've found, is to carry my journal with me at all times and to write in parking lots. The parking lot of the gym is an exceptionally good place. I can avoid doing a workout (see above) and begin a poem, all at the same time. Short stories, essays, letters to God—anything but the Stairmaster!

Ever since I was a little kid, I've had trouble with transitions. I don't mean just the usual huge life transitions, birth, death, divorce, moving across country—everyone has trouble with those, for godsakes.

No, I mean little itty-bitty transitions like waking up and putting my feet on the hard bedroom floor. Arriving home from somewhere and having to turn off the car and go into the house. Getting out of the shower dripping wet and needing to towel off and get dressed. Sleeping/waking, car/house, wet /dry. You can see why life has been very, very hard for me.

In order to soften the cruelly jarring sensation of moving from one environment to another, I have a little habit of reading everything that isn't nailed down. Indeed, I can be observed all over town, sitting in my car and reading week-old newspapers with absorbed interest. Occasionally, however, there's nothing to read in the car, or I've read it all ten times already, and that's when I really get productive and prolific. I pull out my notebook and write.

I find that the gym parking lot is really the best. Something about the shadow of that Stairmaster looming inside puts the fear of God into me and the words tumble out of my pen faster than I can catch them. It's like divine inspiration; I'm totally flying. All around me, fit people lugging gym bags and toweling off their damp hair, are jumping into cars and speeding off to their next appointments, while I sit there scrawling page after page of what may someday become a short story.

New fit energetic people zoom into the parking spaces the old ones vacate, but my spot in the far back corner lot remains blissfully stable. My teal-blue '94 Geo Prism is not going anywhere.

Time's up—if I've been really successful at my writing I can skip the workout altogether and drive directly back to my house where my computer lives, waiting for me to type up a second draft. Otherwise, at some point, I have to reluctantly make a transition. Put down the journal, open the car door, face the world outside. One foot then the other foot, good, good—one has to talk oneself through these things, you know, especially if one spends a whole lot of time writing, which tends to make one a funny kind of person anyway....

Once in the gym, I give the deskperson my card, get my locker key and proceed directly to the lounge, where I drink coffee and read the paper or watch Oprah. For some strange reason, although I've belonged to the gym for years now, I haven't lost any weight—on the other hand, I haven't gained any either.

So, there you are. My foolproof method for accomplishing a lot of writing, while being neither productive nor prolific. Some people pay big bucks to get these tricks of the trade at writing seminars, but I am giving my secrets away for free. It may seem like a lot of money per month for a gym membership when my pants size has stayed exactly the same, but when you figure in all the millions you can make from poetry, it's definitely worth it.