How I work

I can't work if there is any noise or distraction. I know there are people who listen to music while they work, or they sit at Starbucks or on a subway train and type away and (at least partially) un-self-consciously write 5-10 pages, no prob. That's not me. Me, I'm a monkey under those conditions. It's too much; I get frightened and nervous and distracted, turning my head this way and that with my hands up protectively in front of my chest. Who---What---Look at---Oh---. I can plop out a sentence hear or there, get an idea for an idea but I can't, you know, actually accomplish anything. That's why I wake up at 3:30-4. It's pitch black heavy silence. All I have to do is listen to whatever it is that's in my head. Around 4:45, the birds start getting their groove on, but them I can deal with.

Still. Sometimes I can listen to a song and an entire story writes itself in my head. I remember the time of day, the smells, what I wore, the helicopter, the payphone, the shoes on the stairway, the dog's tail, the sounds through the wall and then somehow it all steers back, it always does, to the guy I lived with a long time ago.

Like this one.