When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.Early risers, midnight writers. The charcoal hours. The deep eddy. The driftwood. The light inside the refrigerator. It’s inky, still, the quiet click. All over the world, crickets are singing. Word, line, paragraph, page. Accrual like paint. This is a long, slow process. The hundreds of days, the one thing you forget on a shopping list, an insult from more than a decade ago. What you wish you would have said and then the world and all its false starts and sad endings might have turned out.
When do you write?
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Betsy Lerner 
“When do you write?”
Is this not writing, this? No, but it does not count. Real writing it is not. Is that not right?
I’ve been tippling at the Shakespeare again. It f**ks me up, tosses my manner backwards in time.
Most days, I write — the “real” writing we real writers cherish, at whose altar we sacrifice much — early in the morning or late in the evening, or both. Never for what I would gauge a sufficient time or in a sufficient amount, but I do it, drip drip drip …
Early morning before the day fucks me up
Early morning – but in reality, all day, and most every day, otherwise, I feel guilty.
I write around the edges.
Early, late, and if I am blessed then in blocks fit in-between all the other stuff that pushes itself to the head of the line.
Betsy,
I love these short, powerful missives.
Early morning.
This morning, a pond near a church — appropriately named Church Pond — had mist rising from the warm surface into the cool air. I could have kept driving, but I had a little time before having to be at work at a post office on a college campus. So I stopped. And I could have been on time for work after a short woods stroll, except I decided to write. Nothing much, just a thought that came to mind about something unrelated to my morning walk, but I’d have missed it if I just drove on by the pond by a church.
At the post office, my first customer arrived shortly after I got there, a young woman on crutches who paid 20 cents postage due on a letter from a loved one. She hobbled away and she was happy, my timing not so bad after all.
I rise freakishly early on the weekends (2:30) and write in the quiet of the house. I can usually get three or four hours of productive work done this way. (Naps later ensue.)
Such as this morning, for example. It’s 2:34 a.m. by my computer’s clock and my writing day begins. But first a visit here.
What time do you go to bed?
8:00 or 9:00