Walking

Walking and writing are inextricable from each other for me. When I'm writing, I need to walk to develop important plot points or understand character drive and motivation. I'm a slack-jawed snack-obsessed gold-bricker at my desk, unable to generate fresh ideas or think of what comes next. I have to move. And when I'm walking, my brain wants to turn to whatever I'm writing.

I've lived in the same neighborhood for six of the seven years I've been working on this book. My routine is monotonous: Walk north through the towering trees and grand, slightly surreal houses to Prospect Park.

I take the path past the playground and up the rickety stone staircase, down the dip where families picnic and play soccer on summer weekends, past the gingko trees that spatter the asphalt with foul-smelling fruit in the fall, into the little grove of pine and oak where the acorns can lie like ball-bearings on the path, waiting to get underfoot and send me scurrying the last few feet to the top of the park, then down again. Sometimes I just wander around the grid of hundred year old houses.

Every inch is familiar, which plays a key part in my writing process.

Once I'm back at my too-small desk, I can sit down and take the walk again in my head. I can think of the question that I set out with from my doorstep, and unspool the inspirations that hit me along the way. I can remember a particular turn of phrase that seemed so good as I was at the garden with all the lilac, and the plot twist that ties parts two and three together at the corner with the bodega.

Brooklyn is a long way from the island I imagined, but I can visit my book with every step I take.