This is the 4th day in December and the skies of Iowa City are bifurcated by two shades of gray, one a deep slate color, the other almost a pastel gray. I'm sure in the local coffee shops, writers of all ages are eyes down on their laptops churning out word soup as fast as their pre-carpal tunnel syndrome-d fingers will let them. And that is going to happen from now into April. These conditions are conducive to good writing; well, any kind of writing, really.
Iowa City, for those who don't know this bit, is the home to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and has produced an ample number of the literary names, near-names, and no-names from the latter-half of the last century into the present. Dylan Thomas and Kurt Vonnegut once lived here. So did Flannery O'Connor. One of the Iowa City Streets is festooned by famous writer's quotes. UNESCO named Iowa City one of its Cities of Literature. It's a big damn deal. But it has always begged the question-- why?
Let us ignore the obvious answer and go back to the skies for a moment. Two additional shades of gray have heaped themselves on the low-lying stratonimbus clouds that threaten to land on the roofs of the buildings nearby. If you were given the choice to write or descend into a dark gray-induced depression, commonsense would dictate that you choose to write.
In some ways, watching writers in this town is like visiting your dad's place of work. A lot of similar attired people engaged in an activity that they do with the expressiveness of galley slaves. The newest accessory acquired for this activity is a set of sound-cancelling headphones that seem to be designed to both stop the outside world from entering their headspace, but also to keep the voices in their collective heads, contained so that they may more easily slither down into their nervous fingertips.
This workman-like effort that goes into the prose is unsettling to the viewer who wonders if this is a new form of debt collection or required community service for a outstanding parking ticket? But, it is neither of those things, but a necessary and, though their expressions might dictate otherwise, a "joyful expression of self." These writers choose this because it is what they were born to do, at least according to their parents who took on the remortgaging of homes and or signed the student loan applications. These caffeine-addled juggernauts of wordsmithing literally cannot imagine any kind of career that would meet their need to not be a slave to a clock, to be seen as important, and also, to be actively self-unaware.
And Iowa City prides itself on producing more and more of them. Literary giants producing ebooks of fantasy fiction, poets whose audiences numbers are well into the teens, and the occasional successful writer who will blow the dust off of this shitheel little town once she or he gets either an agent, sizeable advance for a series of young adult novels, or creative writing residency in any one of the maple syrup producing states.
In the meanwhile, their brows will furrow, man and woman stubble will grow, and their longing gaze out into whatever shade of gray comes next will continue--wait, a gray schnauzer shaped cloud has wedged itself into the lesser pewter-toned clouds. For now, it is eyes down, clickety-clack, a couple more hundred words to go before sunset.
Iowa City, for those who don't know this bit, is the home to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop and has produced an ample number of the literary names, near-names, and no-names from the latter-half of the last century into the present. Dylan Thomas and Kurt Vonnegut once lived here. So did Flannery O'Connor. One of the Iowa City Streets is festooned by famous writer's quotes. UNESCO named Iowa City one of its Cities of Literature. It's a big damn deal. But it has always begged the question-- why?
Let us ignore the obvious answer and go back to the skies for a moment. Two additional shades of gray have heaped themselves on the low-lying stratonimbus clouds that threaten to land on the roofs of the buildings nearby. If you were given the choice to write or descend into a dark gray-induced depression, commonsense would dictate that you choose to write.
In some ways, watching writers in this town is like visiting your dad's place of work. A lot of similar attired people engaged in an activity that they do with the expressiveness of galley slaves. The newest accessory acquired for this activity is a set of sound-cancelling headphones that seem to be designed to both stop the outside world from entering their headspace, but also to keep the voices in their collective heads, contained so that they may more easily slither down into their nervous fingertips.
This workman-like effort that goes into the prose is unsettling to the viewer who wonders if this is a new form of debt collection or required community service for a outstanding parking ticket? But, it is neither of those things, but a necessary and, though their expressions might dictate otherwise, a "joyful expression of self." These writers choose this because it is what they were born to do, at least according to their parents who took on the remortgaging of homes and or signed the student loan applications. These caffeine-addled juggernauts of wordsmithing literally cannot imagine any kind of career that would meet their need to not be a slave to a clock, to be seen as important, and also, to be actively self-unaware.
And Iowa City prides itself on producing more and more of them. Literary giants producing ebooks of fantasy fiction, poets whose audiences numbers are well into the teens, and the occasional successful writer who will blow the dust off of this shitheel little town once she or he gets either an agent, sizeable advance for a series of young adult novels, or creative writing residency in any one of the maple syrup producing states.
In the meanwhile, their brows will furrow, man and woman stubble will grow, and their longing gaze out into whatever shade of gray comes next will continue--wait, a gray schnauzer shaped cloud has wedged itself into the lesser pewter-toned clouds. For now, it is eyes down, clickety-clack, a couple more hundred words to go before sunset.
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