I read Ron Carlson's Ron Carlson Writes a Story the other day. It's a quick read. Useful, too. (Is there one of these for poetry?) I have a hard time choosing books for Creative Writing courses. I appreciate the detail of this one and the fact that it doesn't pretend to be a guide. Mostly though, I liked how Carlson described his primary struggle in writing a story as the struggle to stay in the room, with the typewriter/word processor, to resist the temptation to leave the work. Stay in the room.

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How much of my day is spent in search of silence?

A lot.

Let me amend that. I'm not looking for silence exactly, perfectly, but the feeling of silence. The silence of concentration. There are times when a thought creates its own coma around my brain, and others when no matter how captivated a noise invades.

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Those in the offices adjacent must have the loudest voices ever. Those in the offices adjacent must have gone to a concert together last night every night for last four years. Those in the offices adjacent cannot communicate anything without yelling, no matter who the intended recipient must be. Those in the offices adjacent are effective communicators, a la Typhoid Mary, Mrs. O'Leary. Those in the offices adjacent will survive the coming noise war, are surviving, have created the precise pitch of voice to shrill through the most advanced insulating material. Those in the offices adjacent are cautions to snakes and to contemplation.

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I am listening for my perfect 60-cycle hum, my ear-plugging ambience, a perfect sound-recording of the feeling of familiarity. I am listening for an ear-phone friendly loop of the sound of concentration, an antitote, an inocculation. I am listening.

Is this the problem?