I Get My Best Writing Done in Parking Lots: Poets & Writers Inspiration Issue

We know lots of folks have “start writing” or “write the novel” or “write the memoir this year” on their list of resolutions for 2024. We’re also huge, huge fans of Poets & Writers — the organization and their eponymous magazine — so we’re taking an opportunity to share excerpts from P&W’s current cover story, which you can find on B&N newsstands in our stores across the country, or subscribe to electronically using a Nook device or app.

“These days I get my best writing done in parking lots. Some of this is logistical; there’s less competition for my time in parking lots. No dishes, no Legos to pick up. If I choose the right parking lot—one with no cell service—there aren’t even e-mails and texts to answer.

What I really love about parking lots, though, is that they’re in-between spaces. I feel a great expansiveness of mind and spirit in being not in one place or another but somehow between the two.

My favorite parking lot is the Wrightsville Reservoir boat launch in Vermont, where I’m sitting in my minivan as I write this. Today the water is gray, the reflected sky a mess of curdled clouds. The brambles and brush around the shore are unruffled until they suddenly break into pieces before my very eyes. Birds that look like little leaves explode upward in flight. This reservoir came into being when the Wrightsville Dam was constructed after the great flood of 1927. It’s a peaceful spot: the tree-lined, curving shore, distant kayakers dotting the silver surface, fish rising in tiny splashes and leaving rings of water once they disappear.

I’ve been coming here more and more often to write and to reflect on what it means to be a writer—or at least to ask myself what kind of writer I want to be in the world. This question is big and messy, but the answer that occurs to me is simple: I want to be teachable.”

— Miciah Bay Gault


Poets & Writers cover image for The Inspiration Issue by Tim O’Brien.