writing isn’t spontaneous
This is me waking up early to write for 15 minutes. I hear it’s good to show your face.
If you’re peddling any sort of ware, you’re supposed to be posting. You’re supposed to be sharing your face and your thoughts.
“This is my new creative insight…this is my new favorite PSL…this is my new app…this is my new routine…these are my thoughts, these are my thoughts, these are my thoughts….[silent scream slowly builds to actual scream]!”
While I rarely struggle to come up with new ideas for a class, I almost always struggle to do these type of “it’s meeeee” posts. I often dream of deleting all manner of apps, including my website, and sending people handwritten letters instead. Would that this were efficient. I would so much rather send one person a greeting card with a small chickadee on the cover than publish a personal post and hope that five people read it.
Maybe it’s an energy thing. While I find boundless energy and ideas via collaboration—meeting writers prior to a season of Creative Commitment, for example—it’s tough to see how my own process is any different or interesting. It’s like Ursula K. Le Guin writes in The Dispossessed…
“If you can see a thing whole, it seems that it’s always beautiful…But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you loose the pattern.”
The eligible bachelor in my novel is the adventurous type. Obnoxiously so.
Maybe I’d rather not write about my dirt and rocks these days.
Or maybe it has more to do with something one of my own characters says in my horror novel. While on a date with a man she can’t see, (a reality show bachelor with plenty of thrilling tales of his adventurous life, including kite-surfing), my character reflects on how her own author life is the opposite of interesting. She says:
Writing isn’t spontaneous. It’s the opposite of fleeing an interview for the wild surf. It’s sitting down to the same shit, over and over.
I try to sit down and write every day, often for just 10-15 minutes, lately by hand because I’ve read it’s good for your brain. I enjoy this time, but it doesn’t feel new necessarily. Often I write weird lines of gibberish. Or if I’m lucky enough to be in public, random things I notice in others’ behavior. A recent writing session in a hotel lobby included the following line:
He did not greet her when she reached out her hand.
Oooh, now hold on a minute.
That’s good. That feels new. This feels like magic. Observing others feels like collaboration, even though the strangers who offered me their moment will never know or care that they did. Sometimes I need reminding that the newness is outside of myself and can take the form of something extraordinary [scribbles reminder to pen my next post about some life-changing modern dance I enjoyed recently], or something quite ordinary—seeing how two people meet, noticing how one person orders their coffee, listening to the way a parent laughs with their child.
Maybe you’d like to try something similar this week? If you’d like to give it a go because you need a new perspective on your own dirt and rocks, here it is. Let me know how it goes.
Waiting for something to change can allow for wonder.
In the Liminal, Observe + Expand
This is something I’ve encouraged writers to do when writing dialogue, but this is a bit less specific in terms of prompt and a bit freer in terms of product.
While waiting this coming week—in line for coffee, at the dentist, sitting blissfully in your backyard—observe something outside of yourself and make note of it.
This could be a child tying their shoe or a small coyote crossing the street or a woman reading the label on the mouthwash or a barista making small talk with a customer.
The next time you can write by hand, which may be in that very moment, jot down what you witnessed without judging it or interpreting it. As in, He did not greet her when she reached out her hand. Maybe you go on to describe her sweater or his boots. Maybe you muse on the light falling through the picture window.
Write by hand, expanding on this singular moment, for as long as you have time. Depends on the brand of your dirt and rocks that day. Maybe you’ve got 25 minutes. Maybe you’ve got 5.
Enjoy the writing.
When you look up from the page, take a deep breath.
Move on to making dinner, making money, pulling weeds. Thank yourself for weaving magic into the everyday.