Word After Word

First, I am so happy to see Robin Black’s book prominently recommended in the new issue of O! I love lovelove her work and her teaching.

 

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I keep thinking about the writing every day thing. I just sent this Way Too Long document to my editor. I have a weird fear demon. The you are saying too much demon. I come from a house where Not Saying Anything Ever was the only way, really, to survive. So, I’m okay with my writing a lot—I’m okay with my writing, like my hair, taking up A Lot Of Space. But, I’m aware, when I say to my clients and friends and students Write Every Day that there’s a collective demon operating here. The “Why Bring All This Verbage into the World? What’s the Point?”

 

I’d like to dance with that guy a little bit today.

 

When I sent my editor all those pages (she wanted one or two pages and I sent twenty-three, single spaced! I know!) I felt really good about it. These things I said, I like saying them. She didn’t really like or need these things. She wanted other short things. I could feel awful about this. But I don’t.

 

All this writing. It’s echolocation. We’re sending out signals and I believe at some point the signal reaches its intended recipient. I don’t think a person can really be wrong in echolocation. It’s important to a) keep refining your sense of your own coordinates and b) keep sending out words. You do not always know who they are for and you do not need to know.

 

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I keep thinking about my dear writing partner, Dee, and how she sits down some mornings, writes a line, erases it, writes a line, erases. How to help her. How to help all of us who are trying to something vaguely meaningful with our time, our words, our wonder.

 

When I was terribly stuck as a writer, an artist, Julie Fiedler, gave me a book that changed my life. Eric Maisel’s Fearless Creating.  For the first time in my life, I didn’t just read the exercises. I did the exercises.  It was the potato on the floor one. It absolutely changed how I work.

 

I wrote two terrible novels and one that is maybe ….interesting? in parts? (My exhusband loves it.) I wrote every day. I wrote at night. I switched my default from living my life with a desire to write over to writing my life with a desire to live in it.

 

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What works by way of a writing life is probably different for each of us. What I think is important is noticing what works for you, what doesn’t.

 

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At this moment, I just glanced up from my desk, looked out the window, at the park across my street. What do I see? A girl in black shorts, and a pink top, holding up what looks like sheets of white paper in her hands. Up over her head! She’s running, her ponytail swinging, she’s going all out.

 

That’s all I need.

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