On Writing Denver

There is no reason why I should think about Denver. I lived in Denver a few different times and for not real long periods. I would say from 1992 until 2010, a mere 18 years, I lived in Denver four different times for no longer than four years at a shot. Denver was just a place I went in and came out of, I don't know why. And the end of my time in Denver really was in 2010 when Janice and I went to Oregon.

Denver is only 30 miles down the road. I still have friends in Denver. I never get there and when I do, I marvel at all the changes, the changes to the town and to me. I don't really like visiting the place. Denver today is a much bigger, much more crowded place than it was years ago, and this is true of just about everywhere on Earth. As for my friends, I talk with them only very seldom despite how much I love them and value them and the times we had when we were all young and drunk and without families.

But I write a lot about Denver. Or rather, I set many stories in Denver. I do the same with Portland, but that's more permissible only because I really felt free in Portland. I never felt free in Denver. I often felt oppressed when I lived in Denver. For many years I felt like a poseur in Denver. My relationship with Portland is pure, but my relationship with Denver is real.

After Camp NaNoWriMo came to an end, I was really thinking deeply about Denver. The novel I wrote in July for NaNo was set in Denver. It was set in 1993 Denver, because it was a complete reworking of another story that I wrote in Denver in 1993. I enjoyed the novel and the process.

A few days after NaNo ended, I started to write what I thought might be a short story. I wrote about a guy who went to a Congress Park coffeehouse to wait out the hot summer drinking coffee. As I wrote I thought I would have him meet a young woman who eventually let him know that they had met years before. I thought I could write a story with revenge and all.

But as it was happening, I realized that it was not going to be a story like that at all. Then I realized it was going to be a novel. I had just spent three weeks writing Exile for NaNoWriMo and now, I was thinking I was about the write a new novel. As Go Home Go Home started to flesh out a little, I realized that I was really writing a Gothic novel something I never thought I would be able to do. I wrote a Denver Gothic.

The whole story takes place over a few block area on Denver's central east side. As the novel goes on, it becomes a much smaller area until it is completely contained in the main character's apartment on 14^th and Josephine.

I like writing Denver because it is a foreign city in many ways. It's a place I was once very intimate with and now I only have a vague memory of it's inner workings but I still know the geography. But as I roll over the place in my mind, I know the order of the streets from Broadway to Colorado Blvd. I know how long it takes to walk from Cheesmen Park to Auraria campus. I know what the patterns of the streets look like when the rest of Denver leaves downtown. I know locations of bus stops and I know the number of the bus lines.

I lived in Denver on a number of different occasions and each time was something new, something great. I learned how to see the world in Denver. I learned how to live when I lived in Denver. I had a whole lot of life filled with massive experiences. To write Denver now, is to relive who I was, how I felt and see the world the way I did.