Where I Write: With Ricky Tucker
Where I Write, a series of short interviews with current students, faculty, and alumni of the Creative Writing Program. It is a discussion of place in writing. What our writing spaces look like can be as varied as the physical spaces that exist (or don’t!) in New York and beyond, and as varied as the mental and psychic spaces we occupy while we write. Riggio alum (’14) and debut author Ricky Tucker discusses future space, the forensics of The Golden Girls and Designing Women, owning the lazy ledge, and writing as an act of faith.
Where do you write?
The answer to this has changed so much over time and space when it used to be such a fixed thing. In reverse chronological order: I’ve written in my shoebox-sized bedroom in Crown Heights, at my desk on the 17th floor of 79 Fifth Avenue as Senior Writer for The New School, and in the basement of Lang–that space lined with computers and couches–to the back room of the Creative Writing Program. But, since April, I’ve been floating around to multiple residencies and friend’s apartments, so now “where” I write is just the familiar, impressionistic, dismantled jazz soundscape and space that I’ve put on since I was a Riggio student, a ritual now reminding me of those places. Playing First Thought, Best Thought by Arthur Russell, I could write in the middle of 5 o’clock traffic and still be able to make it happen.
Stand, sit or other?
Sit. Walking and dancing are part of my pregame practice, so by the time I’m ready to start writing, I’ve stood quite enough already.
What is your writing practice?
Meditating. Walking/dancing/sweating. Hovering and landing. Hovering and landing. Hovering and landing. Emails, emails. Hovering and lunch. Watching a video. Pretending to write till dinner. Rinsing and repeating.
What are your favorite procrastinations?
I try not to set writerly activities into a hierarchical framework, or at least a working/not working binary, especially because a HUGE part of my writing practice is rewatching media as if I’m working on a forensics case. Old vogue performances on YouTube. Literally scouring back-to-back episodes of Golden Girls and Designing Women for a recent essay. Endlessly returning to the queer metropolitan breakthrough that is HBO’s Search Party. From a particular point of view, that could all be seen as just sitting around watching reruns, so lately, I’ve had to talk myself down from the you’re being lazy ledge. In fact, from that standpoint, if I really owned it, as a fairly efficient writer when I am actually physically writing, that brand of “being lazy” is where I make the most impact. It’s where the money’s at. But, ya know, writing is a ritualistic act of faith, and if you keep showing up in whatever increments, something’s gonna happen. Sitting around and scratching your butt is an undervalued aspect of that sacrificial act.
We live in interesting times, which book/author keeps you sane/grounded?
I’ve said it a million times, but Erasure by Percival has been the book of my life and a meditation I return to to feel sane in my seemingly singular understanding that I am never actually safe—but at least not alone. Also, Fox 8 by George Saunders is a funnier way to scratch a similar itch. I guess that means it’s a tickle.
What is your new skill learned during the shutdowns of the Pandemic
During the pandemic, I made chicken and biscuits from scratch from a NYT recipe, and with part of my book advance, I bought the world’s most accurate home planetarium system that projects actual Hubble space images. Technically, I always knew how to make biscuits, and I didn’t handmake the planetarium, but the combination of the two makes me a stellar host to future guests (pun fully intended). Both sound investments.
What is your dream writing space?
This space is, to me, where all information seems to live. And if so, all you have to do is grab it.
Ricky Tucker is a writer, educator, and art critic based in Brooklyn. His work explores the imprints of art and memory on narrative and the absurdity of most fleeting moments. He has written for the Paris Review, the Tenth Magazine, and Public Seminar, among others, and has performed for reading series including the Moth Grand SLAM and Sister Spit. In 2017, he was chosen as a Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Fellow for creative nonfiction. His debut book And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community is available online and in bookstores.
