Mattress Run

Absent lackluster hotel rooms, I don’t know that I ever would have finished writing a book.

Things I love about cities: endless walking. Lunches alone and quick snacks. Museums and architecture. Endless exploring. But also: quiet rooms in hotels, chambers that could be anywhere except for when you look out the window and maybe if you’re lucky you glimpse something that anchors you in a specific place — at least until you turn back to the room and see that print that you’ve seen in so many other hotel rooms. Today I’m in a room in an industrial park in south Tempe. It’s near where I work, and near where I live, but I am at this hotel today on a writer’s retreat. I need to finish two projects. And also, I am only one night way from renewing my status with Marriott, and for $87 at a Fairfield Inn at an industrial park, that guarantee of 4 PM check-outs for another year seems like a bargain.

So, I’ve spent the day writing. A hotel room that could be anywhere helps with focus: there is no dog to invite me to another walk, no snacks calling from another part of the house or building, no distractions of the bookcase or the outdoors, just a room with blue carpet and taupe walls to engender a focus that seems to propel the words from me.

In my current life I spend most of my day at an office. I am fond of the place, it has been good to me, and I like the people I work with, but I am always on. The creativity that silence breeds can be elusive. Finding time and motive to write is challenging. But not today. I am on a mattress run become a writer’s retreat, and I’ve never appreciated an industrial park hotel room so much.