4/5/04 is a nonsmoking milestone

Yesterday got past me without due appreciation of the milestone that date represents: the anniversary of my quitting smoking. My last cigarette was snuffed out in mid-burn on April 5, 1988. I remember worrying that quitting would harm my writing process. It may not have improved the writing, but it certainly didn't undermine process!

Many years ago in the classroom, I used to ask my writing students to describe their writing habits (where, when, in what position, with what kind of ambiance, alone or in a crowd, last-minute or steady, etc). As inexperienced writers, of course, their habits were understandably undeveloped. But it was a good exercise in getting them to focus on process and how it contributes to one's thinking and feeling.

I remember smoking up to two packs of Camel non-filters a day at one point in my life, usually while seated at the typewriter or with a book. But I wasn't the Perry White kind of writer, with the fag perpetually clinched between my teeth while I pounded away at the keyboard. I typically would light a Camel, take a good drag, then place it on the edge of the ashtray . . . where it proceeded to burn itself out as I wandered through another line or simile. At most, I was a victim of my own second-hand smoke! Of course, the cost-pleasure ratio was entirely out of balance.

Anyway, I've overcome that particular writer's habit only to acquire others. For example, I write poetry most often when I have a deadline looming for some other kind of writing. Poetry is a kind of theft of the world's time. I often write poems on airplanes and commuter buses when the seated-with-your-seatbelt-on time is more than 90 minutes. William Carlos Williams used to do it between patient visits. Frank O'Hara on his lunch break. Richard Long at an all-night Hardee's.