On Isabel Allende's Promotion of Her New Memoir at Barnes & Noble, June 4, 2003

l had wanted to ask her a question. But I didn't. And I didn't. I didn't because I didn't know how to word it, exactly, because words had been failing me for weeks or months. Because not speaking when I wanted to speak had been a habit of mine--one I was slowly learning to change, just as I was simultaneously learning to change the opposite habit, as well, which was my long-existing habit of speaking when I didn't want to.

I wanted to ask her if she has moments when she loses her desire to write--when the writing seems meaningless and she just wants to stop. And, if she did have such moments or days or weeks, what she thought it meant and, further, what she did, in those moments or hours or years, to regain her inspiration.

But I couldn't figure out how to word it just right. And it wasn't the kind of question she could answer to my satisfaction in the 30 seconds allotted at the end of her reading. I wanted to have coffee with her and I wanted to talk to her--really talk to her. So I didn't ask.

And so I was left wondering, speculating; what would she have said?

What did she say?

She said she writes from a sense of nostalgia--the intense longing for people, events, places of the past. She said that writing, as a craft, has gotten easier for her over the years, as anything practiced does.

But, her imagination, her willingness to take risks, her boldness, has decreased. I find this hard to believe.

This woman is quick-witted and irreverent. She is a sixty-year-old woman who looks no older than thirty-five; she is sharp-tongued, fiery, and vulnerable. She is educated, intelligent, and introspective. She is aware.

And I realize, as she stands on the podium, that she is a woman like so many creative, powerful, inspiring women I have known, who make me stare myself in the face and realize:

There is nothing MAGIC here. These women don't have something I don't--I have the capacity to be on that podium, as well.

So I ask myself, what is it that inspires me?

No, no. I prefer to consider what inspires her. What would she say? Would she know what inspires her? Would she be honest? With me? With herself? Would she make stuff up? Would she tell me that there are times when nothing inspires her, and she sinks into darkness and despair and just waits until something she wasn't expecting to happen just happens, and she feels this desperate longing to write it down, but finds herself without paper and pen, in the middle of Union Square, at Isabel Allende's reading, never having suspected at all that, suddenly, after so many weeks of no inspiration, she would feel compelled to write?

And so, I bought a notebook right there at Barnes & Noble, but they had no pens.

So I went out to the street corner and tried to think where I might find a pen.

I went into the corner convenience store, where the middle-aged, mustached man behind the counter could have been Arab or Indian.

I glanced around quickly and confirmed that the man sold no pens.

I said to him, "Do you have a pen?"

Of course he had a pen. He held it up so I could see.

"Can I have it?" I asked.

He pulled the pen closer to his chest.

"You want to use it?" he asked.

"Yeah, but I want to use it for a couple of hours," I said.

He looked at me. Then he looked at a box that was on the counter to his left, a box that had a single pen in it. I could tell by the way he sort of half-smiled at me that he was trying to figure out whether or not to give me the last pen in his box.

"Do you want to buy it?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. "Buy it or borrow it. Do you want me to bring it back to you when I'm finished with it? Because I totally would."

"Fifty cents," he said.

"Fifty cents is perfect," I told him.

And now I had a pen.

I felt inspired.

Inspired by the man who sold me a pen for fifty cents in the convenience store that was across the street from the Barnes & Noble in Union Square.

The man I wanted to ask, "Are you Arab? Or Indian?" But I didn't ask because, well, I just didn't.

He's the one who inspires my stories.