Word After Word

On Friday, we don’t have class. But I want you to write. You must write. This is really the only way I will know if the class was successful.

More importantly, it’s the way you will know if the class was successful. For three hours—you have from 1-4 scheduled for this class on Friday, but you can do your three hours at the time that’s best for you—I want you to sit down, with pencil and paper, and write. On Friday. It has to be Friday. You can do this with your writing group. You can do it with your new group. You can do this by yourself. You won’t be alone. The Endeavor will support you!

And then let me know: how did you get yourself to the desk? How did you keep yourself there? What did you battle? How did you succeed? Email me. Tell me everything about it. I really want to know. I absolutely must hear from you. This is our class, it’s our last day and it’s the most important day—it’s your real writing life.

What will you write? You know what to write. And you know how.

You could K, write moon poems. Extend your town. M, maybe it’s time to write love poems to each family member’s hair. Put in some of the good, some of the bad. M2, tell the truth. Write that scene you are so afraid to write. Show it to no one. Just write it. Let it take all three hours. You can do it, I know you can. Rip off the band aid. Things are more healed than you think they are. You’ll see. Ch, write your life story in dialogue. Steer towards everything you didn’t tell us yet. Pay attention. Three hours: this could change your life! Cl, I want you to write that condo book. For three hours you could write, by hand, the book in miniature, the tiny key scenes that will anchor each braid. It’s the little developer’s model for the entire condo village, the village that is your book. I can’t wait to read it. T, write the shadow semester. By hand. Everything that happened these weeks of May that kept you from your town, that is your real town. Go slowly. Almost fall asleep. Rage is your laser. Use it to let yourself see.

For all of us, the goal isn’t to spew for three hours, but to make something, using focus, and craft, and power and what we know of beauty, and tension, energy, and leaving room for the reader.

I’ll be writing that day in my studio from 7 am that morning until 1 in the afternoon—that’s one hour, in honor of each of you, my fellow writers, Endeavor-mates, co-sailors. If we all do this writing that day, we could stir up a good wind, a wind that could be with us, behind us, for a long, long time. You must revise your life. You must write even though nothing is “due,” even though—especially because!—the teacher is not going to read it.  More than any other writing you do this semester, this is the writing that counts.

And in my studio, I will have seven candles. It’s so goofy, New Age, Catholic, and sensory and slightly dangerous, my house is wood—I love it. (K, I think you will like the candle thing… btw thanks for the beautiful prayer-card.) I will light one for each of us and imagine (image) our concentration like this light. Know that we are in this together. At 1 pm, I’ll blow out our candles and here’s my wish: that at that moment you are lighting yours. You are writing.