The Rare Book Room in Strand books, south of Union Square, New York City, is not a place I ever imagined entering as a student at my age. Nonetheless, I plodded into the woodsy book room with the wide-eyed look of a kid who’d stumbled into a hidden room of a toy store. I couldn’t help but notice everyone else was chatting, settling in, and looking quite clearly like they knew what they were doing. I felt as awkward and excited as that hazy day in the eighties when I tried on my first bra. My bag knocked into tables, my outfit was neither hip nor academic looking, and I wasn’t even sure I had brought a pencil. This was to be my first writing class as an adult. Every part of me was reacting to a keen sense of NOT belonging, like a day-old gummy worm in a bag smarties. In case anyone mistook my clumsy entrance for the hallmark of a nutty, seasoned writer from NY, my jewel toned shiny shirt, clicky shoes and nervous sweat communicated otherwise. I could hear every creaking floorboard under me and was absolutely certain the spines of all those rare books stood a little taller and turned away from me as I sat. Eighteen miles of books in this historic store and I struggled to make it to an empty seat before blinding myself with nervous sweat. Tonight I was taking a class on writing from personal experience with Nancy Davidoff Kelton, writer and memoirist. All I wanted to do was forget my age, forget that I was a tourist, forget that I had not read most of the books in this room and just write. But first, I’d have to calm the hell down.

I’m in New York for spring break with my family. I should be studying a wine list and sitting one hors d’oeuvre away from spoiling my dinner right now. Instead, I am playing Sylvia Plath with a room full of writers, New Yorkers albeit. Let me just acknowledge the mistakes I know I made when presented with this opportunity. First of all, I was dressed for theatre since I had just come from a play with my son - hence the shiny shirt and clicky shoes. I’d already had a glass (or two) of wine since that’s what you do after a Broadway matinee, have a drink and discuss. And, I had not planned on taking a class while on vacation so all I had with me was my Ipad mini with a few episodes of Grace and Frankie on it. No paper. No pencils. No inspiration. No forethought. This is how genius happens right? I can only hope there was no toilet paper trailing from my shoe. At least it would have been completely awesome New York toilet paper.

New York has always been one of our favourite places to go. Not because of water parks, cheap shopping and themed restaurants but for the sheer scale of cultural opportunity and endless scope of places to eat, drink and experience the world’s best something-or-other. The entertainment of exploring the boroughs and watching an incredible breed of frighteningly driven city dwellers survive and thrive makes you wonder what these people are really running on, ‘cause it’s gotta be more than Dunkin Donuts. The artists, the musicians, the writers, the business people, the designers, the chefs, the bartenders and the throng of workers in the under belly of this immense island metropolis make me want to wander the streets and meet with everyone to find out how they got here, how they get through a day, and ponder whether I could do it too. Just standing on an average street corner can make you feel slow and insignificant. Much more fun than a water slide.

Lucky for me, my kids can handle it and even crave the insanity. They have their favourite places and they know what to expect. We do it as best we can on a Sloan budget so we can stay as long as possible. Did I mention we drive? Did I mention we drive a minivan with Ontario plates into Manhattan? Did I mention we sneak five people into a room meant for four? Did I mention we don’t care? Wake up kids, we’re here!

On our third or fourth day in the Big Apple, we venture down to the East Village to enjoy what feels like an eternity to me in Flight Club - an athletic shoe-gasmy store with expensive trainers. Rows and rows of sneakers in what looks like sandwich wrap, neatly displayed on tiny individual shelves with very un-tiny individual price tags. Thankfully, Strand books is nearby. The disheveled but organized piles of books, the bustle, and the array of people in the book store are all I need right now. Do I see the sandwich board out front advertising the class? Nope. But my family does and after denying that I want to go but would rather spend the evening with them, they force me into it, the way you force a child to make his Christmas wish list - not at all.

The Rare Book room is cool, the people in it even cooler. Young writers, NYU kids, some older seemingly more established creatives and of course, no evening class anywhere in the world would be complete without a few middle-aged people looking to take back their youth and finally do what they’ve always wanted to do but never had the courage to do. While I fit smartly into the latter category, I just as easily do not fit the ‘cool’ label. There’s always gotta be one kid that shows up in rubber boots on a sunny day and it might as well be me. I was giddy, a bit buzzed and chuckled out loud at the free pencil they gave us “Write drunk. Edit sober”. Ok. Not a problem.

Nancy. Nancy Davidoff Kelton. I hadn’t read any of her stuff before, at least not knowingly and didn’t know what to expect. As soon as she said her latest book was being adapted into a play, I knew I was going to be hooked. To write, make things, be creative and live to teach about it? She held the secret to the universe and I wasn’t going to miss a thing. The church of Nancy had a new member.

She stood behind her table for only a moment, then stepped out front to talk to us. Not to discourage us, not to boast about her own success and not to belabor all the reasons we will fail. She also didn’t acknowledge the age gap amongst the present students. Thank gawd. We were all just there to learn, absorb and practice. Write. I can write tonight. Did I mention wine gives me hot flashes? It was a little warm in the room as well. My shirt was not meant to absorb perspiration discreetly. Picture shiny, flowing chartreuse with ever growing sweat stains, tired bloodshot eyes from the wine and a stupid smile on my face meant to distract myself and others from the sweat collecting on my forehead and not-forehead. Just write. And edit sober. And listen. To Nancy. She could unlock your genius. Sit up.

What happened next was beautiful. Really beautiful. Nancy shared her life, her tips and did not spend her breath weaving a magical story of how to be inspired and craft an exhilarating, life-altering sentence. She was funny, candid and had amazingly practical advice. I’m not giving away all her secrets but want to share a few things I will try to remember:

your story has gotta come from the gut, from the heart.
get right into your piece by making a statement or already being in the scene.
when you are writing, don’t say you were ‘ in a car’. Say you were in a ‘57 Buick’. Don’t say you ate your lunch. Say you ate “tuna salad with veggies on the side”.
when you are writing dialogue, you cannot mistake one person’s dialogue for another.
by the time we are five, there has been hunger, sadness, betrayal, yearning and love.

And my two favourites:

write with urgency. Write what you need to write if you were going to turn to dust tomorrow.
write to find out how you felt when things happened. It is the difference between self-absorption and self revelation.

But best of all:

write like you have just pulled the curtain up on your life. What do you see?

Couple all of that with Stephen Kings’ “the road to hell is paved with adverbs”, and I should be ready to write something pretty decent!

Forgetting all that has happened to me before the age of five I consider this one family trip to New York. I felt hunger. Hunger for more. More time to learn. I felt sadness. Sadness at having to leave this moment in time. The moment when I got to be a mother with experience and wisdom but still feel childish and awkward at the newness of sitting in a class alone again. Betrayal. The betrayal of my own evil sweat glands and intolerance for white wine. Yearning. A yearning to write more and rescue my memories. And love. The love for a city and the even deeper love for a family that will cut me loose and push me to be a more fulfilled version of myself and let me try something different. And try again.

I’d like to say I have the bones of my War and Peace done, but I don’t. I’d like to say that Nancy and I are besties now - she signed my copy of her “Finding Mr. Rightstein”, but no doubt I may never see her again. And I’d like to say I will be back for more classes in New York City very soon, but it’s unlikely. I think we need a new van and this one can’t take another trip. What I can say is that I lifted the curtain on my life, on many parts of my life, and I am starting to write it down. Not for everyone to see but for me to practice, to become the writer Nancy Kelton tried to help me become that one evening in a room filled with genius writers on the shelves and possibly in the seats.

And needless to say, I have calmed the hell down and gotten to work.

By Carol Sloan

Note: For a truly fun and very frank story about finding love, read Finding Mr. Rightstein by Nancy Davidoff Kelton. Being single is one thing. Divorced, parenting and dating in Manhattan is another. Can’t wait for the play!

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Lift The Curtain