Word After Word

My student K. wrote me all frantic and frustrated. Her writing wasn’t coming, it wasn’t good, she hated it, she was stressed. My friend L., also a writer, said the same thing last week.  “It takes me hours to revise ten pages,” she said.

We already know this is how it is. That we don’t get to a place where it’s otherwise. That the hard horrid days of doubt and distraction are part of it, and we pass through them, as illness passes through us. 

When I don’t have a cold, I can’t imagine I will ever get one again. I fear if I try to imagine feeling sick, I’ll doom myself to fever. My throat feels scratchy just writing this. I’m looking longingly at my hand sanitizer now. We push ourselves from the bad days, feeling talented, genius, righteous and cured during the good days.

It’s easy to remind L. that the work always takes way longer than we think it’s going to–cleaning out the garage or clearing out Chapter 12.  Me? My book isn’t done. It’s come out nothing like how I thought it was going to come out and I mostly loathe most parts of it. (I wrote a love letter to a sofa–I’m really proud of that passage, but in my writing group–deafening silence! and a comment: “may not need.”)

I think the days we have nothing to write, nothing to say, nothing but hatred for the work are the days God designed expressly for reading the Notebooks of Checkov, the letters of Flannery O’Connor.  Or memoirs by Abigail Thomas.  She always makes me feel happy and strong and proud of all my weaknesses.