My Favorite Writing Retreat

A Bit of Praise for Libraries

The lantern hanging in the 42nd St Library, NYC

The Writing Muse can alight upon your shoulder in the most unlikely of places - showers, commuter trains and the occasional coffee shop. But, for me, she chooses to visit most often in public libraries. This makes perfect sense, since a library is the Writing Muse’s turf…

She, and the Reading Muse, rule the library - along with the Muse of the Video CD.

Here, amongst the stacks, the muse speaks to me in dulcet tones. Her insistent impulses urge me to put aside the ‘real work’ I am doing and write the words that she speaks.

There is no time to waste when she taps me on the shoulder! The words come pouring forth, like Kerouac’s frothy stream of consciousness…they ripple across my computer screen and don’t stop until she sighs, looks away and leaves me there to edit and clean up the lovely mess in front of me.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters

The Muse and I revel in the sweetness of the musty shelves, the terrible lighting (all libraries seem to suffer from a dimness or over-brightness malady) and the enforced silence, with nary a cell phone in sight. The combination of these three features makes me almost giddy. The Muse agrees with me.

It is our mutual break from the incessant chatter of modern life; the babble of the everyday world. Here, in the public realm of bibliophilia, the words come tumbling out. And the sentences fit together, like lovers spooning, into paragraphs of delight.

Photo by Andrew Neel

And now I will go back to writing about plants, gardens and the other Muse, Nature.