[Village Voice window, NYC 1984]
About Writer in the Window
Since 1984, I've been sitting in bookstore windows, answering questions from curious passers-by, in New York, Oregon, California, Washington, Colorado and New Mexico. It all began in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I lived for the past 16 years. I'd spend the previous five years in the solitary authoring of two journalistic books about prison life in New Mexico. One was about a miscarriage of justice that sent four California bikers to death row for a crime someone later confessed to; and the other was a grisly account of the 1980 riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico. The first was purchased but never published. The second, The Hate Factory was published but feebly publicized. Ironically, though now out of print, it is popular enough to sell thru used-booksellers for $35-75 a copy. In May 2004, the screen rights were purchased and I updated the original manuscript. The updated second edition of The Hate Factory was published October 2005 by iUniverse, and is now available from all online booksellers, as well as Borders bookstores in New Mexico. You can read more about it at The Hate Factory right here on this website. So, by 1984, my writing muse wanted revivifying. I needed a demand to inspire the words to flow. An idea I'd had a decade before flashed in my mind: write in a public window. Writers seldom know instant response to their work, seldom get accolades at the peak moments of performance the way actors, dancers, singers and musicians do: applause for the writer is delayed, sometimes till after death. Writing in a storefront window appealed to the performer in me. At the time, Santa Fe had an active, well-funded arts council which was selecting artists for a summer festival called Santa Fe City Streets. The council thought writing in a storefront window was an innovative idea and gave me the go-ahead to do it. Thanks to them, and to a creatively minded store owner who thought the idea charming, Writer In The Window became a reality in the summer of 1984, at The Gamut, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From the day I put up my Help Cure My Writer's Block sign, the questions poured in. I'd not only discovered a unique way of practicing the art of writing, I'd tapped into people's need to talk about the big questions, what I call "why is the sky blue" ponderings, for which there was no forum in popular media; nor is there now. Except Writer in the Window. Eight years of window writing also netted me great psychological healing: applause is excellent medicine. In the first two years, I got double my allotted 15 minutes of fame. Magazines and newspapers wrote about the unusual Writer in the Window -- People, Harper's, Us, New York, Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday. Good Morning America did a segment right in my window at Shakespeare & Company Booksellers, on upper Broadway in Manhattan . And finally, nine years after the window-writing began, Penguin Books published a volume of selected questions and answers -- Dear Writer in the Window. In August 2000 it was republished by the online publisher iUniverse. You can order it online either from Amazon or Booksamillion. The questions and answers on my Front Page and in the More section are from that book, as well as the book tour (in 1992) and more recent windows in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. My experience with publishers has convinced me to stay away from them. So hurray for the internet, and hence this web site, which I hope you, dear reader, will use to help clear both our blocks: my writer's, your thinker's. And vice-versa! As for me personally, I moved to Santa Fe in 1971, from New York City, where I lived from age 6 to 35. I loved living in Santa Fe. It allowed me to find and do my right livelihood, and to see beauty constantly, for Santa Fe is most soothing to the eye and soul. In August 2000, however, I moved down to Albuquerque -- the rents were half what they'd grown to in Santa Fe, which has gotten ever so poshy, and the creative energy was more pulsing. I'm well into my personhood, having passed thru menopause into a time of reflection and synthesis. My great love has been my tiny parrot, Pocket the Feathered Emerald, with whom I lived for 17 years. He left earth life Christmas Eve morning, 2002. In March 2003, I met a new feathered friend, a conure named Kismet. He's not Pocket, but he is a stroke of good fate, which is what Kismet means. I love entertaining myself by reading science fiction, creating miniature worlds/dioramas, and plying the arts of astrology and tarot. Georgelle IMPROVE REALITY
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