Congratulations to Natalie Whitfield for winning The Urban Elitist “Where the Hell Is David Going to Write for a Week?” Contest!  Natalie used the contest as an opportunity to do a little p.r. work for her hometown of Austin, Texas, and the Austin Motel in particular, which she described as being conveniently located to “great night life, great drink specials.”  I’m not sure how conducive great drink specials would have been to getting any work done, but hers was still the winning entry, despite being 1,300 miles away from my actual undisclosed location.

So where the hell was I?

Vegas, baby.

Specifically, downtown Las Vegas, Fremont Street, The Four Queens Hotel, North Tower, Room 1715, desk by the window, facing south.  Yes, despite being 2,500 miles away from my place of residence, and despite having an abundance of overpriced hotel rooms, Las Vegas, even with the cost of a flight, was the least expensive place in America for me to go and hole up in a (non-fleabag) hotel room for a week.  The Four Queens was neither flashy nor tastefully decorated, but it was clean, quiet (once I had my room moved to the non-Fremont Street side) and cheap ($39/night for most nights of my stay).  Hope you enjoy the impressionistic (i.e. blurry) cell phone photos of Fremont Street in this post.

Fremont Street appeals to me because it’s the poor man’s Vegas.  It’s angry, obese and it has a really bad haircut.  Even better, it’s surrounded by a kind of classic American skid row, with bail bondsmen, pawn shops, strip clubs and Jesus all vying for your attention.  It’s not so family-friendly, and that’s a compliment.

Did it work?  My goal was to complete the first draft of each of the three stories of the short story triptych I’ve been planning.  Like the banner said after the Iraq War ended, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.  Every day, I worked from the time I woke up until about 1:00 PM, ate a big lunch and took a walk, worked again from about 3:00 until 8:00, had a light dinner and then drank whiskey and did some crazy “brain storming”-type work until midnight or so.  It may have worked too well:  I’d wanted the three stories to be very short, but each ended up being about fifteen pages.  The editing process should take care of that.

Rarely have I ever felt so content.  Truth be told, it sucks to be back.  Strangely, I’m experiencing the sensation of having left a good friend behind.

Get back to me in a few months to see whether anything I produced was of value.

Did I gamble?  Just a little bit during my breaks, mostly on the nickel video poker machines among some very nice elderly women.  I almost never played more than a dollar at a sitting.

Did I win?  Yes, I won $145 on the quarter video poker machines after the nickel winnings had upped my play money, making the overall cost of my trip even cheaper.

Lesson learned:  being away from the day job, social obligations, chores, my cats, the internet (mostly), and Twitter (completely) helps gets shit done.

I’ll be spending the entire first week of May holed up in a hotel room somewhere in America, writing.  Guess where I’m going, leave a comment with your entry and stand a chance to win a box full of crappy but hopefully fun souvenirs from this place.

Why am I doing this?  By necessity, my normal fiction writing process is to write a little bit first thing in the morning every single day.  Recently I’ve been “freaking out” because life keeps getting in the way of making progress on this triptych of short stories I’m working on.  We might be moving soon, which will be an additional distraction, and I had nightmare visions of not finishing the first drafts of these stories until sometime next fall.

My wife, who spent January of this year at a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, recently suggested, in an attempt to calm me down, that I do something similar.  I don’t know.  Although I see it’s value, I’m not sure I’d be into the whole social aspect of that kind of thing.  Plus, the day job would not allow for a full month away.  And most importantly, I don’t want to wait.

Then, about a week and a half ago, she suggested that I just go to a hotel somewhere for a week.

I like hotel rooms.

My schedule was mostly free the first week of May.

I’m desperate.

So, willing to go just about anywhere I could get a good deal, I booked a trip.

I’ve always told myself that I’m incapable of working for long stretches of time, but it is rare that I’ve actually tried.  These stories would benefit from a sense of urgency that a burst of creativity might provide.  They’d also benefit if my brain went a little crazy from being locked in a hotel room.  I’m actually hoping for that.  Yes, this experiment may be a total bust, but I’m going to give it a shot.  My goal is to have a good first draft of all three stories by the end of the week.

Please enter the contest…

Hints:

1. From New York City, it’s cheap to get to.  It’s also cheap to stay there.  I don’t own a car.  This place is not in New York City.  My transportation costs and hotel room combined are costing me just a bit over $500.
2. I was not willing or able to stay in a total fleabag (my wife has bed bug phobia and would try to quarantine me and douse me with highly toxic pesticides when I got home (yes, I know one can get bed bugs from anywhere…believe me, I know)).
3. It had to be a place where I could go outside to walk around, get some stimulation and clear my head from time to time.  So this excludes places like the Super 8 by Exit 37 off the Jersey Turnpike, as well as probably 95% of the rest of car-dominant, non-pedestrian-friendly America.

Contest Rules:

1. Leave a comment on this post with your guess.  Whoever comes the closest to guessing where I’m staying wins a collection of mostly useless souvenirs from the mystery destination (not sure what I’ll find, but gathering souvenirs will be my one non-writing activity).  Be as specific as you dare:  state, city/town, area of that city/town, hotel name, room number.
2. Only one entry per person.
3. In the event of a tie, the person who leaves the comment first wins everything.
4. Those few people who already know where I’m going are disqualified.
5. The contest is open to all citizens of thew world (we have contempt for political borders here).  If a reader from Australia wins, I will gladly pay shipping that costs many times more than the items in the box are worth.
6. Contest ends at the stroke of midnight (EDT) on Monday, May 11, the day I’m back.
7. Void where prohibited by law (or something).

Good luck.