Tag: writing

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Here Comes the Judge

“Can you do me a favor?”

My ears pricked up. These six words may be the most dangerous in the English language. Typically, they precede one of the following:

  1. A request to help somebody move (doubled in likelihood if you own a pickup truck)
  2. Yardwork or cleaning that will take more than four hours to complete
  3. Locating something that has been lost beyond the ken of man, angels or the Webb telescope

This one proved to be a rare exception, a request from a Kansas friend and former co-worker. Not a short task but certainly a delightful one.   

Namely, she wanted me to help judge a high-school journalism contest.

Like a lot of creative professions, journalism has its share of competitions. You can always tell when awards time has come around because editors and reporters start digging through the archives like never before, trying to find that one perfect feature that appeared on page C9 of the Sunday edition. If the contest requires a hard copy sample, you can count on adding several layers of dust from digging through a year’s worth of barely-touched newsprint.

You squint at the categories, you fill out the forms, you send it all off … wondering the whole time what will suit the fancy of those mysterious, unseen, usually out-of-state judges.

Now it was my turn to be on the other end. A virtual stack of 30 opinion pieces awaited my scoring and comments.

Easy? No. In many ways, it reminded me of being a director at auditions, where half a dozen great choices present themselves but only one can get the part. That’s always agony.

But at the other end, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my time. I mean, I had a chance to share what I know, with teens eager to learn the craft and improve. That’s exciting.

After all, good teaching moments always benefit both sides. And that’s not always easy to come by in writing.

It’s an odd craft. Some arts give you the chance to constantly bump up against others: acting, music, dancing. You work with others, you see what they do, and (in the best cases) you each come away the better for it.

Writing, by its nature, is a little more solitary. Both the creating and the learning tend to come when you’re reading and writing on your own. And unless you’re deliberately pushing yourself, a lot of it tends to fall into the comfort zone: we read what we like to read, and we see and learn the same things.

So having to evaluate a beginner in the craft forces you to think. You consider topics and approaches that aren’t your own, you see basic things that you haven’t thought of for ages. And in making yourself notice and call out details – whether to praise or correct – you reinforce that in your own mind too.

That’s valuable. And it goes beyond writing.

Whatever we do, whatever we’re proud of, we’re never so good that we can’t learn more, and a student can be the best teacher of all. We can always lift up someone else by sharing what we’ve gained … and often, find ourselves rising at the same time, buoyed by reflection, enthusiasm and the freshness of something new.

We teach someone to build. And in the process, we gain new materials of our own. Everyone wins.

So as the world opens up a little more (I hope), take the opportunity. Share something you love, whether it’s fishing or guitar or fixing the sink. Watch a rookie and remember what it was like to be there yourself.

I suspect you’ll enjoy it.

It may even do both of you a favor.

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The Next Chapter

These days, Labor Day weekend feels a little novel. If the novel were written by George R.R. Martin, anyway.

Maybe I should explain.

This is the time of year when I usually spend a lot of time looking forward and looking back. The looking forward is one that I share with millions of Americans as I try to stare into a crystal ball and put together two viable fantasy football teams. It’s an exercise in trying to predict greatness, injury, and whether you can scramble to the fridge for another Dr Pepper before the next Draft Day round pops up on your computer screen.

The looking back? That involves Missy. As I’ve sometimes mentioned here, September is when my wife Heather and I have to put together our annual guardian’s report on Missy, combing through receipts, bank statements and memories by the score. It’s time-consuming but oddly rewarding as well as we reaffirm another wonderful year together.

It’s a well-worn routine. In any other year, it’d be utter reflex.

Any other year isn’t 2020.

This is the year when football prognostication means guessing whether there’ll be a full season at all – not exactly a guarantee when the team stats may include points against, yards allowed and positivity rate.

It’s the year when most of Missy’s usual activities and expectations were turned upside down. No bowling. No softball. No hugs with her favorite band (Face) after a great show – kind of hard when you’re crowding the monitor for a livestream performance.

In many ways, life has become month-to-month, if not week-to-week. Grand plans for the future? These days, if we can figure out what’s available at the grocery store, we’re probably doing well.

It’s a little like living in a Paul Simon song: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

Even more, it’s like living in a novel.

Not reading one. Writing one.

Readers, after all, have the benefit of knowing how much of the book is left before major plot points have to be resolved. (Assuming the absence of a sequel, anyway.) They can cheat, skip ahead, look up a review on Amazon.

Writers don’t necessarily have that luxury. Oh, some laboriously outline everything – and still get surprised. Others go in with a starting point, a destination, and a loose idea of how to get there, discovering the path as they go. The reader is almost guaranteed to be surprised by the next chapter because … well, so was the writer.

As E.L. Doctorow put it (and many others have quoted), it’s like driving at night. All you can see is what’s in front of your headlights. But you can make the entire trip that way.

That’s our life at the best of times. 2020 just made it obvious.

The good news is, some truly epic journeys have been made that way.

It’s how J.R.R. Tolkien picked his way across the landscape of the Lord of the Rings, discovering each new bend as he came to it.

It’s how Stephen King walked every step of “The Green Mile,” staying just barely ahead of his readers as he wrote each new installment.

And it’s how we’ve survived crisis after crisis, both as individuals and as a nation.

That’s not saying foresight and planning are useless. When you hit a crisis, your preparation shows, as anyone knows who’s ever plunged the depths of a blizzard-bound grocery store in search of milk and bread. But however well we’ve trained our reflexes, we’re still living life at one second per second. We can only see so far ahead. And we may be wrong about that.

But as long as we’re staying aware – of ourselves, of the moment, of each other – we have a chance of building a story worth remembering.

Maybe we’ll even get a decent quarterback out of it.

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The Doctor and the Professor

In some ways, the Doctor and the Professor couldn’t seem more different.

The Doctor looked toward a fantastic future, built among the stars and shared with a race of mechanical men. The Professor looked toward a mythical past, sheltered amidst the trees and hills and shared with beings older than mankind.

One wrote at high speed in a utilitarian style that kept the stories coming and coming. The other labored over each word, considering the history of every drop of color and whisper of wind.

And for fans of the fantastic like myself, the New Year hasn’t really started without them. Dr. Isaac Asimov, one of the biggest names in science fiction, born January 2. Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, the godfather of modern fantasy, born January 3.

Am I geeking out here? Maybe just a little. But it really is just that cool.

Part of it, of course, is memory. My love for Tolkien was born in elementary school, reinforced by many hobbit-filled reading nights with my dad where we delighted in every new character and voice. (I still envy Dad’s booming Treebeard, just as I think he always appreciated my attempts at the hardworking Sam Gamgee’s accent.) Asimov’s work I met a little later, encouraged in part by a science teacher who felt that no robotics club was complete without the Good Doctor.

Obviously, I’ve got a lot of company – including the Doctor and the Professor themselves, as it turned out. Asimov was one of the few “modern” writers that Tolkien genuinely enjoyed reading; Asimov, for his part, once mentioned that he’d read The Lord of the Rings five times and was genuinely surprised when his own Foundation series beat it out for a Hugo award. But it’s more than pleasure and nostalgia.

The truth is, there couldn’t be a better way to start the year. Because in doing so, we look toward the truly human.

I know that sounds strange. Asimov solidified robots in the modern imagination, while Tolkien introduced us to hobbits and all their kin. But both writers, even in their most epic tales, built everything on the most simple and basic of human qualities.

In Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, the problems of the world aren’t solved by mighty armies and powerful leaders. Instead, it comes from the compassion and determination of simple folk, knowing they’re not up to the job, but doing their best for as long as they can.

In Asimov’s worlds of the future, the answers don’t come from vast armadas and epic battles – in fact, violence is mocked by one character as “the last resort of the incompetent.” Instead, the key is to use your reason to understand the world and the people around you, knowing that if you can see what the problem actually is, the solution may be simpler than you think.

Heart. Mind. An awareness that other people matter – whatever their origin –  and a disdain for the pride and hatred that often sets them apart.

We still need all of that today. Maybe now more than ever.

And if we let it be nothing more than a fantasy, then we’re writing ourselves a very dark tale, indeed.

So go ahead. Look to the promise of the future. Take heart in the legends of the past. And use the tales of both to see our present moment more clearly. That’s what will give us the humanity to reach beyond the threats and fear that haunt our times – to build a world together rather than destroy it apart.

It’s a vital lesson.

And it’s one the Doctor and the Professor are still waiting to teach.

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Speaking Volumes

Each year, there’s something truly amazing about Banned Books Week.

OK, that probably marks me as a certified Grade-A geek. No big deal. Considering that my personal mountain range of books is about as extensive as Smaug’s dragon-hoard of gold (and about as poorly organized), it might be just a wee bit obvious that the printed word is important to me. And the electronic word. And sometimes the barely-legible handwritten word as well.

And so, when it comes time to remember the Battles of the Library Shelves I pay attention. And when the annual observance is over and … well, in the books for another year, I always have to shake my head in wonder.

Dragons don’t understand burglars. And bookworms don’t understand the effort to ban.

First of  all, there’s the sheer audacity of the idea. Ever since childhood, I’ve been able to spend entire ages of human history in a library, trying to decide what I should be reading. The idea that someone who’s never met me could make that choice for me – in the negative – is laughable. Parents, OK, but strangers?

Then, there’s the unintended comedy that often arises. Among the many well-known challenged books (Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Harry Potter series) is the extremely innocuous picture book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Why? Because the author, Bill Martin, happened to have the same name as the writer of a book on Marxism and the challengers couldn’t tell the difference. Two Bill Martins – what are the odds?

Let’s add a dash of futility to the mix. I mean, how many people argue with a librarian and live to tell the tale?

But finally – and a little sadly – I sometimes wonder if the book challengers are trying to capture an unoccupied hill.

If a book isn’t read, it barely matters whether it’s challenged or not.

Right now, the average American reads for pleasure for about 16 minutes a day. That’s a number to dim the fire of any dragon. And it’s one that baffles me just a little.

It could be because of how busy we keep ourselves – except that many of us regularly devote a three-hour stretch of time to the week’s football game.

It could be because reading requires active concentration on an extended narrative – but if anything, Americans have proven they can passionately absorb and debate lengthy story arcs across the latest streaming TV series or movie franchise.

We could blame those darned kids and their need to see everything on a screen – but according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, it’s mostly seniors who have been spending more time watching TV, movies or streaming video, while younger age groups have either stayed about the same or fallen.

Whatever the reason, it’s time to turn the page.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here. (You ARE reading this, right?) But reading is possibly the greatest pastime we’ve ever created. With a moment’s effort, you’ve established a telepathic bond, experiencing the thoughts of an author who may be separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years. You can step inside the head of another person in a way that other media still struggle to recreate, experiencing walks of life vastly different from your own – or finding someone who’s walked your path, understands your struggles, and can reassure you that you’re not alone.

It might be a paperback close to hand. It might be an entire library on a tablet. Heck, my dad devoured bookcases worth of audiobooks on his daily drive to and from Golden for 40 years. The form doesn’t matter – the power is the same.

And if you’re one of the ones struggling to find even a few minutes of reading time– take heart.  With a book, every little bit adds up. Sixteen minutes a day can often finish a book in a month, aside from the real doorstoppers. (And as we’ve seen with Harry Potter, the doorstoppers sometimes get finished faster.)

So yes, the situation could be better. But the treasures still await. The battles are still worth fighting. The power to read remains precious.

Precious enough for some people to try to limit it.

Don’t let anyone do that.

Including yourself.

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Shooting for the Moon

Fifty years ago today, the surface of the Moon was still quiet.

The Eagle had not yet landed. The world was not yet watching the arrival of three men in hope and wonder and anxiety. Mankind’s first words on an alien surface had not yet been spoken – and screwed up ever so slightly. (Sorry, Neil.)

So much had been planned. So much had been prepared. But nothing was certain. Astronauts had been lost before. It could happen again.

Anything could be in the future. Wonder. Disaster. Chaos.

Anything at all.

***

This column was born from a slight mental glitch.

I am a space geek going way back. And so, like all the other fans of the final frontier, I’ve been excited about the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. By any standard, the date of July 20, 1969 deserves to stand out in human history.

Which is why I have no excuse for momentarily remembering it as June 20 when I started to plan my column.

All right, I’m laughing, too.  Brain cells do amazing things – such as the first President Bush declaring September 7 as the “day of infamy” or President Obama momentarily gifting the U.S. with 57 states – so at the very least, I’m in illustrious company.

But the more I thought about it, the more the idea intrigued me. And not just because I was up against a deadline again.

Consider, for a moment, the world of 1969.

A lot had been happening in this country. And unless you were a New York Mets fan, most of it didn’t feel like champagne and roses. John Lennon may have been singing “Give Peace a Chance,” but for the first half of the year, the headlines didn’t seem to hold much of it. War in Vietnam. Protests. Riots. Even a major oil spill and a spring training boycott.

Sure, preparation for the moon mission was there, too. But unless you were part of the not-so-small army laying the groundwork, it was probably one more item among many, and not an especially loud one. Not yet.

Not with about a month left to go.

Not with crisis so loud and the future not yet known.

***

We’re good at focusing on crisis. It’s one of the things that’s helped us survive as a species. But when we have the ability to be aware of crisis across the country – heck, around the world – it gets overwhelming. Too many alarms, all of them screaming “NOW!”

It’s easy to drown. Easier to surrender.

And easiest of all to forget that even at our worst, we’re still capable of our best.

It doesn’t just happen, any more than winning lottery tickets just happen to show up in our mail box. It takes work and hope and maybe even a little craziness. Just enough crazy to decide that what we do can matter, that a little light can be kindled in the smoke.

That we can do something that matters.

Apollo 11 was the culmination of seven years of effort (and built on what had come before). Right down to the end, nothing was certain. President Nixon had a speech in his pocket in case of fatal disaster. The Eagle overshot the intended landing site, forcing Armstrong to guide the craft to safety and touch down with 23 seconds of fuel left. So much could have happened.

But what did happen captured the eyes of the world.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

What are we a month away from now, maybe?

What future could we be building among the chaos of today if we refuse to quit? To stop hoping?

I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to it.

Especially if it includes one more column finished on deadline for this space case.

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Behind the Words

Every once in a while, someone who’s new to this column will ask me what it’s about. My usual response is “It’s about 600 words, give or take.”

Ba-dum-bum.

OK, it’s a wiseguy answer. But not a wrong one. Over the years, this column has dealt with puns and politics, sports and sorrow, news of the weird and news from home. Many of the most popular have been about family – my wife Heather, our disabled ward Missy, our cousins and nieces and nephews and pets.

If there’s been one consistent theme, though – aside from my beating my forehead against the monitor until the words come pouring out – it’s that this column is about all of you.

Allow me to explain.

Long ago, I dwelt in a fabled land known as southwest Kansas, where the distances are vast and the people few. Within this land, there dwelt a sage known as Ava Betz, copy editor for The Garden City Telegram. And after I wrote my first weekly column ever as a newspaper reporter – a light piece on the beauty of words – it was Ava who came up to me to compliment me and pass on a bit of advice.

“You can write anything you want,” she told me, “but no navel gazing. Got it?”

“Got it.” And I did.

Writers spend a lot of time in their own head. It can be very tempting to not come out again – to cut out the rest of the world and make it all about ME, spending paragraph after paragraph on the beauty of your own belly button lint (figuratively speaking) without a thought to why anyone else in the world should care about your deathless prose.

But other people matter.

And “why should anyone care?” is the most vital question any writer can ask.

Let me revise that. It’s the most vital question any human being can ask.

Writers need readers. And writers who never give a moment’s thought to the readers’ world haven’t created a story. At best, they’ve created a still life, objects without motion, references without resonance. At worst, they’re posing in a mirror.

People need people. And people who never give a moment’s though to the other lives around them pass through an empty world – or worse, create one. Neighbors without empathy are just folks who happen to live nearby. Leadership without reflection is just preening, or maybe even bullying. Failing to recognize someone else’s pain is to not truly understand your own.

That’s one of the secrets that shouldn’t be so secret. We learn ourselves better when we see others more clearly. When we reach out, something also reaches in.

And together, we create a story worth telling.

It sounds easy. It isn’t. It means taking time to consider other perspectives and other hearts, and maybe having your own broken a few times. C.S. Lewis once wrote that “To love at all is to be vulnerable,” and when you try to find the things that tie your soul to another’s, you are committing an act of love. Leaving yourself vulnerable.

But you’re also making the world just a little closer. And yourself a little more alive.

In acting, a performer is sometimes derided as “only playing himself.” Actors know the truth – that every actor plays themselves, but the most limited ones don’t have enough self to play. You stretch yourself by breaking out of familiar patterns and experiencing those around you. By caring.

This is a space where we come to care. This column. This community. This world.

That’s what it’s about.

And if it’s also about 600 words – well, that’s a bonus.

You bet your belly button.

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Another Story

Everyone leaves, sooner or later. But I’d always kind of hoped William Goldman would be an exception.

If you watched movies at all, you know who William Goldman is. Heck, you’ve probably quoted him a hundred times without thinking about it.

If you’ve ever read about an investigation of political corruption and thought “Follow the money,” you’re quoting Goldman.

If you’re a Wild West fan who’s ever seen characters in a desperate situation and remembered “The fall’ll probably kill ya!”, you’re quoting Goldman.

And of course, if you’ve ever seen the actor Mandy Patinkin anywhere – on stage, on screen, in an airport – and immediately felt yourself saying “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die,” you’re quoting Goldman. (And you’re in a very long line.)

His words and ideas gave life to a hundred stories. He put a crack in the myth that the screenwriter is the most powerless person in Hollywood – something that gives heart to every writer out there, including me –  while also enduring his own frustrations with the movie machine, such as the 14 years it took to bring his favorite of his novels, The Princess Bride, to the screen. And then he made it awesome anyway.

In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m a fan. In fact, Missy and I had just read The Princess Bride as our bedtime book a few weeks ago. So when Goldman died on Friday, it was a little like losing a favorite teacher.

And his best lesson was that there is always a story behind the story.

Plenty of writers create a compelling story. The best  create stories where the characters have depth, where they’re more than just a pair of steely eyes, a favorite weapon, and a cunning quip.

But where Goldman excelled was in looking at the assumptions of a story itself, and then pulling back the screen.

A master swordsman who’s quested 20 years in pursuit of his father’s killer? Great! But he’s also working for a boss he hates to pay the bills, because revenge isn’t a terribly marketable skill.

A pair of Western outlaws staying one step ahead of the authorities with fast draws and faster minds? Sure, we know that one – or we think we do, until we see that they’re in a West that’s going away, too late to stay frontier outlaws and too soon to be gangsters.

Hard-nosed reporters on the trail of the cover-up of the century? Sure, it’s faithfully told – including the fact that no one showed Woodward and Bernstein the script in advance, so that they have to listen to what isn’t said, stumble through trying to call a Spanish-language source, and even manage to screw up their big story on the front page on the way to nailing everything down.

It’s a good lesson, in writing and in life. Look at the assumptions. Consider the real-life consequences. Ask why you’ve seen a particular story a hundred times before, and you’ll see what gives it its power. And then see how to truly make it your own.

And if you still get in the killer quip , so much the better.

Stories are powerful. Stories frame how we see the world, even as the stories we tell – whether on the page or in our lives – influence the thinking of others. The more conscious we are of that, and the more we think about the unexpected turns those stories might take, the more we can make it a story worth living for all of us.

So thank you, Mr. Goldman. For the lessons in writing. And the lessons in life.

Wherever you are, “Have fun storming the castle.”

And if you’re also giving someone a peek at what lies behind the drawbridge, I won’t be surprised at all.

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Letter Be

By the time this appears in print, Gil’s letter should be almost ready to arrive.

Gil is my stunningly brilliant 6-year-old nephew. (No, it’s not short for Gilbert, and yes, my sister is an Anne of Green Gables fan.) He’s a budding student of the sciences, who once casually pointed out landmarks on the moon and Mars to me during an imaginary space odyssey. His busy hands have built long, elaborate marble runs, followed by long painstaking videos depicting the “races” between the marbles as they swerve and roll.

And now Mister Gil has discovered the epistolary art.

“Dear Anut Heathr/Uncle Scott/Missy,” he opened in carefully handwritten crayon, with animal and robot stickers decorating each line. “Wut things are you doing? And wut book are you reading? How is the weather? Please wriet back.”

My own response is finally ready for him. I say “finally” because … well, this is an admission that doesn’t come easily to a professional writer. This is between you, me, and a few thousand other readers, OK?

The fact is, I’m terrible at personal letters.

I know, it doesn’t make much sense. I’ve been a columnist for years. I can write news stories and PR pieces easily. And I’m quick to jump on emails, social media, and all the other communications tools of the 21st century. Easy.

But good old-fashioned mail? Too often, my brain resembles a kindergarten playground, trying to get everyone to line up properly and get back to class. “Oh, yeah, I need to send that reply out … oh, wait, we’re out of envelopes, I’ll pick some up at the store tomorrow … huh, the old envelope got recycled, I’d better email Carey for the address … OK, I know I have stamps around here somewhere …. “

If this all took place in one sitting, it might not be so bad. But each gets punctuated with occasions of Life Happening and soon “Scott’s Correspondence” has become the next long-running miniseries, complete with episodic cliffhangers. (“Will Scott and his envelope make it to the post office in the same trip?”)

Nonetheless … we’re doing this. Because it’s important to Gil. And therefore it’s important to us.

He’s learning. And all of us in the family want to encourage that. So we write. We click on his YouTube videos. We keep an eye out for books and toys that’ll fuel his interests even further. And we smile as he constantly finds more for us to encourage.

After all, when you reward behavior, you tend to see more of it.

That’s true for most people, whether we’re talking 6-year-olds or congressmen. Oh, granted, the 6-year-olds usually aren’t as stubborn and willful as the politicians (I blame a lack of regular naps and the occasional time-out), but the principles are the same. Communicate. Show up. Be clear. Encourage. Don’t stop. Packing a town hall or filling up a voice mail box may not be as cute as attending a school program, but it’s part of the same idea.

Smart politicians know this. The ones that forget sometimes become unemployed politicians.

And the best part is, it shapes you too. It makes you a better voter. A better relative. Maybe even a better letter-writer.

What you touch, touches you. And both can be better for the experience.

If you’re lucky, you’ll even get some cool robot stickers out of the deal.

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The Daily Pay-Per

Forget the lemonade stands and the car washes. If you want to make a quick few bucks, social media may just be your cash cow. Or at least a very small calf.

For those who missed it, the Associated Press reported the other day on two social networks that will pay for your posts. Bubblews starts at a penny per like, view or comment for posts of a certain length (though the full formula gets a little more involved) while Bonzo Me pays its most popular posts a percentage of its ad revenue.

It ain’t much. But it’s something.

“No one should come to our site in anticipation of being able to quit their day job,” Bubblews CEO Arvind Dixit told the AP. “But we are trying to be fair with our users.”

Strangely enough, I’ve got mixed feelings on this one.

On the one hand, my writer brain is ecstatic that someone finally gets it. People go online for the content: to read stories, see pictures, watch videos, keep up with people and things they know and love. And for the most part, the bloggers, posters, video-makers, lovers, dreamers and other members of the Rainbow Connection do it for free.

That’s one thing when you’re putting up a note to friends that Aunt Ginny just got out of the hospital. But when it’s something that takes time and labor … well, as the old sermon goes, the workman is worthy of his hire. In particular, a lot of news agencies (he said modestly) have put a lot of content on the social networks; it’d be kind of nice to see even a modest return.

But – and yeah, you knew there’d be a but – there’s a potential tradeoff. He who pays, says.

I brought this up years ago when I jokingly suggested a federal bailout of the newspaper industry. While I don’t know a newspaper alive that wouldn’t cheer at a new funding source, I know plenty who would be hesitant to go on the government payroll. The reason is obvious: part of the job of the press is to challenge government when necessary, and that’s hard to do when it’s their money sitting in your bank account.

This situation is a little less blatant. And it could be argued that the social networks already have all the control they need. After all, we’re users of a free service, not customers; the Facebooks and Twitters and all the rest pay for the space and set the rules.

But given that, is it wise to offer one more leash?

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it’s a good thing to make every poster a freelancer-in-waiting. If the control’s going to be there anyway, might as well cash in on it, right? Heaven knows most of us could use it.

But every time we’ve thought the social networks couldn’t possibly go farther, they’ve found a way. (Psychological experimentation, anyone?) And so I hate to open one more door, even if it’s one that holds a small paycheck.

It’s one thing to be a guest. Another to be an employee. For better and worse.

How will it all play out?

I’ll keep you posted.

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Train of Thought

Ever since the news, my inner Arlo Guthrie hasn’t stopped singing.

Writin’ on The City of New Orleans,

Simon & Schuster, Monday-morning rail,

It’s got 15 cars of would-be J.K. Rowlings,

Three pot-boilers, 25 plots so frail …

The occasion, of course, is Amtrak’s decision to begin a “writer’s residency” program aboard its trains. As in take a seat, hit the keys and type the miles away.

No charge.

It’s a rolling dream for a lot of writers, and not just because it’s free, though that word does hold a lot of power for the Order of the Smoking Word Processor. Anyone in the press knows that the best way to draw reporters isn’t to issue a release, it’s to serve free food — an observation that has broadened both coverage and waistlines.

But while a free train ride might hold some attractions by itself, the real draw is in what the train can bestow. Separation. Focus. Time.

Time, maybe most of all.

Every writer has their own idiosyncracies. Lewis Carroll wrote standing up, Truman Capote lying down. Mark Twain needed yellow paper, Rudyard Kipling demanded black ink, and Roald Dahl had to have his Dixon-Ticonderoga pencils. Isaac Asimov didn’t seem to need more than oxygen, and if he could have made his prose literally breathless, he’d probably be writing still.

But the one thing we all have to have, the one indispensable, is time.

Not time to write. That’s actually the easy part. Anyone who can spend three hours a day looking at cat pictures on the Internet can find a way to write a page or two. The time spent watching the last Super Bowl could have produced several anthologies — and arguably would have been more productively spent, especially for Manning and Co.

No, the hard part is the time to germinate. To let ideas lie fallow. To let your brain absent-mindedly chew on a thought, a thought that mingles with others and evolves like the monster in a B-movie, suddenly alive and demanding attention.

It’s important. And these days, it’s difficult. The absent mind has a plethora of things racing to fill it, from headline news to bacon jokes. We live in a sea of stimulus and interaction — great things for starting an idea, but not always so for nurturing it.

It’s like trying to plant a flower garden on the interstate. And daylilies versus Peterbilts was never a fair match.

And so — separation.

The retreat is an old idea, especially in religious tradition; to step away from the world for a while in order to refocus your mind and soul on what matters. Like most things, that deliberate loneliness gets more valuable as it gets harder to find. Not just for writers, either; who couldn’t use even 20 minutes to get away and let the mind be a field instead of an engine?

The Amtrak idea, of course, promises a lot more than 20 minutes. (Well, so long as the WiFi is turned off, anyway.) But while that’s attractive — OK, downright seductive — it doesn’t have to be that extreme. It can be an hour at night after everyone else has gone to bed. Or a weekend away. Or even an uneventful drive on a boring road, one of my favorite spots for musing on columns, fiction and intractable problems.

If you’ve ever been behind me in traffic, by the way, I do apologize. And I swear, that light was yellow when I entered the intersection.

Time set apart. Mind set apart. A chance to be quiet, even bored. That’s where souls are refreshed and ideas are born.

That’s priceless.

In fact, it’s worth volumes.