HONK!
No matter what nickname you have for New York, I think I'll always refer to it as "The Land of Honk Honk HONK!" We had a great condo in SoHo, nine floors above the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, and damn, people did not like it if you let half a second go by when the light turned green. Pretty sure they have a honking law but no one follows it. Honking takes a small break at 2am then starts again at 5am. I couldn't hear myself think. And the ambulance sirens seem to be slightly louder in NYC than they do in Chicago. It's like they turned them up to 11.
Still, I loved New York. We spent most of our time in the lower half of Manhattan, took a couple trips to Brooklyn, and spent a day near Central Park. So we will definitely go back to see how the Upper East and West siders live another time. There was a lot to do but we didn't kill ourselves doing everything. We picked our battles.
I didn't write, blog or think about my current writing projects once. My brain needed a break. I was getting sick of the revisions. I had other stories brewing that I needed to silence for the time being. I came back home with one final day off to catch up on emails, write the blog and maybe release the demon (story) onto my laptop for a few hours before getting back to reality.
I find sometimes I get an idea and even if it means taking time away from current (and more important) projects, I have to get it out. Not sure if I am afraid I'll lose the idea or I am just so excited to switch gears, create new people, new stories. I compulsively look for a new notebook to write in, I open a new Scrivener project, I start researching plot points and hours later here I am already two thousand words into a new novel called "Beyond Belief."
The thing about NYC, even though I wasn't forcing myself to be creative, allowing myself the vacation from my mind, I was surrounded by creativity in various forms. There was the Guggenheim, then there was Broadway, then there was Washington Square filled with buskers (that's a word I learned, thank you Glen Hansard). There are so many people who come from New York that have shaped my life personally. Writers, actors, and the like.
The third day in, we went to see "Once" and it was glorious. The music, the atmosphere of the stage, the voices of the singers. One of the key elements of the story was the main characters desire to get to New York. Over the weekend we saw "Oblivion" with Tom Cruise which shows quite a few New York landmarks after the destruction of Earth. Incidentally, before we left for our trip, the hubby and I watch "Escape from New York" with Kurt Russell.
I'd like to go back. Maybe spend a day in Central Park with a notebook. Just less honking please.
