Lately I’ve been thinking about buying one of those large rolls of brown packing paper, the kind of paper we always used to mail our Christmas gifts to out of town relatives when I was growing up in Ct... I love that brown paper. Years ago, when I was organizing the poetry manuscript  for The Lucky Spot Dance,  -before it became a play - I put a long piece of  brown paper on the floor - the length of my living room in my Baltimore apartment - and tacked the edges down with masking tape. I literally knelt beside it, bent over like a supplicant, a black marker in my hand, and let the marker do the work, while I watched and listened as the story spun out in front of me onto the paper. I remember how exhilarating it was, (and also how exhausting), to simply let go and write, word after word, and up and down arrows and exclamations points, underline’s, the whole bit.  After what seemed like hours, I finally stood up. I remember I had a glass of red wine, and later took a picture of the paper.

I know all writers do what they must to bring whatever is inside of them out into the world. I have my own tricks and tic’s as every writer does, and I know I’ll be getting another big round of brown packing paper soon. I’m trying to get to my next play: Been There all the Time: The Story of Grace. The brown paper is my path to illumination, to the light, to the answering of questions, concerns, to throwing my anxiety out there -  to find what the arc is, to understand Grace, to her her singing, starting way back in her church days. The back story for Tasha, and the man in the black vest who shows up at all hours.  Seeing the images up close: A baby carriage. A blue children’s book. An old man in a rocking chair on the porch. Trains. Men working on the railroads tracks.  A woman’s infirmary. A stack of letters tied with string. A pearl sided revolver in a evening bag. I can run my hands over the paper, put my fingers on it  like I’m blind, and if I’m patient – if I have the courage, I’ll feel something. I’ll hear something. There’s an energy calling to me, and – on a good day - I’m responding, I’m answering, with a single black marker in my hand, writing stuff down as fast as I hear it - - and by the time I get to the end of the paer, it’s ticking away, and I’m hurrying while it’s still light out, writing it down, writing it down……, 

Edgar Silex, one of my writing teachers in Baltimore, used to tell us:  “just remember – you don’t own your poems. They were just a great moment going through you.” I’ve always remembered that comment.  I have these notebooks of poems in my writing studio, but somehow I never feel that they’re my possessions, like my checking  account, or my driver’s license….
 When my friend Lucy and I went to the publisher’s office to collect boxes of my second book, Imagining the World, Lucky looked at the boxes, and said, “These are dreams, Sandra, these are dreams.”’ That night I stacked them by my bed, and I kept waking up to check on them – I guess I thought they’d disappear - … I really believe that comment about not owning your poems, but it was so strange to see them in a physical book, laid out on the page, with numbers and fonts – it took me a while to take it in.  Maybe all writers feel this way the first time they see their books…here it is – this living thing, this  moment, and somehow you had the grace and bravery  to get it down on the page… 

I think all writers pick out a special place where they can write. Sometimes they have to sit at the desk and look out the window, at the trees, or the ocean, or just the street in front of them. Some need absolute silence before they can get a word down on the page.  I’ve always needed a lot of noise and commotion going on around me. I think it’s all the sounds, the rhythm, and that particular concert of motion that just gets me going. I love writing on the subway for example, and also on Amtrak.   . .. For some reason, I also love writing at construction sites – it’s all that heaped up earth, and pipes and concrete and banging around... One of my very favorite poems was written at a construction site at 11th and Spruce Street in Philadelphia.  My thinking is – no matter where you write,  just choose  a spot where that creative energy can really pick  you up and send you someplace … …l….
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