I live in two places. For most of the year, I live (in Colorado) essentially in a forest (Routt National Forest) at an elevation of just about nine thousand feet. 45 acres, mostly forest. Our nearest neighbors live half a mile away. To get to our log cabin house we need to go three-quarters of a mile on a dirt road. The road is very steep.
We are also surrounded by mountains. There is Iron Mountain, Hahns Peak, and Sand Mountain. That said I can look down the Elk River Valley and see the Flat Tops Wilderness Area, sixty-five miles away.
If I want to buy food, it’s a (round trip) drive of sixty miles. To get mail (no home delivery) it’s a (round trip) thirty-mile drive.
As I write this, the first week of October, I know that in three weeks the snow will start to fall. We often get seven hundred inches of snow. If our three-quarter-mile driveway is not plowed, we are not going anywhere.
By way of contrast—to escape that snow—we have a two-room 630 square foot row house in Denver. We are usually there from January 1 to May 1. If you look out the front window you will see an apartment house. If you look out the rear window you see an alley, parked cars, and a few trees. If I want to buy food, it’s a ten-minute walk. Ditto, restaurants. Post office. Anywhere I go, look, I see people, young and old.
The question of the day is, do I write differently in these two contrasting places?
The answer is no.
Because where I am at my best, really, is in my head. And one of the best ways I know how to get there is by putting on a sound-canceling headset. Twenty-one bucks at Home Depot. It removes all sound—that is, all distractions—so that my attention, my complete attention, is on my screen, which is to say, the world I am trying to create.
So, for me, my favorite place to write is in my head, deep in a silent nowhere.
2 thoughts on “The Best Place to Write”
I see Mckinley in the first photo by the house, do you think you would ever write a sequel to “The Good Dog”? It might be a nice way to pay tribute and homage to Mckinley.
Something along the lines of The Bad Dog? Maybe.
Avi