processing & stereotypes.

I haven't been writing a lot lately. I have no excuses. When life is slow, no problem: I write. When life is fast, everything else feels more important. But all day, I have been telling myself, The things you spend your time on are the things you care about. So if I care about writing, I spend the time. It's important to me. So make the choice.

It's the old love-hate relationship with writing which means, usually, even when I want to write I don't really want to write. There's always some coercion that involves talking in my head and saying things like, Please just shut up and do it. And like anything, the longer I let it slip the harder it is to get back.

So I am catching up today. I will do freewriting tonight. I will devote at least half an hour to working on the essay I've drafted. But I will say this: even when my fingers get hung up, I keep on with the inspiration and the thoughts and my mind is still writing, even when my body isn't. I tell myself, over and over, that this is how I know I need to write. I can't turn any of it off: imagining stories about the people I see, absorbing every weird detail, sitting for stretches and thinking about big things, little things, anything. Getting wild and giddy and frantic over a beautiful word or a beautiful sentence. Reading a story out loud and getting tears in the corners of my eyes, not because I'm emotional, just because I'm overwhelmed with the language.

And I am often overwhelmed by my senses. A profound or distinct experience floors me, I feel dizzy with details and feelings and making sense of them all. I have had some of these experiences lately and, whether it's true or not, I tell myself that I need some processing time before I can hit the paper hard again.

I read an interview today with Dinty W. Moore, editor of Brevity and a creative nonfiction champion. He speaks to the writing process.

First and foremost, I believe in endless revision. My first drafts are undeniably lousy, muddled, weak attempts to approximate what I want the essay or book to eventually address and, more often than not, it isn’t until the third or fifth draft that I even know what questions I am asking on the page. To put it another way, for me the best writing is an act of discovery. For the writer that means you explore moments in your life, aspects of human nature, cultural ideas or objects, because there is something about them that you truly do not understand, something that refuses to resolve. The essay is the exploration, through ideas, through images, through memory, through observation. Knowing the “point I want to make” to me is a deadly way to begin, and usually results in straightforward, static writing. When it all works well, the writer is on a journey of discovery and invites the reader along.

I know these things, I swear I know them. But I forget. I need to be told again. I know that sitting down to write something and knowing exactly what I want to say will kill it. I know this for a fact, I've experienced it. Maybe it isn't true for everyone, but it's true for me. Contrivance is fatal. And so the piece that I started awhile ago that has been in a state of frozen waiting - I already know what it's about. I mean, it's in the first tatters of a draft and I think I know the point. That's why I'm stuck and I know it. I need to tear it all apart and start it again and let it happen the way it wants to happen and accept that maybe the point of the whole thing is completely different and unexpected and maybe everything I've written so far is going to be thrown out and new words will be better. The point is that I need to just let it happen the way it will. Loosen control and be open to the possibility of great art that is still unimagined.

I spent a day last week at a site visit for work. I spent the day witnessing the destruction of stereotypes I have been fed my entire life. Stereotypes such as: Kids drop out of school because they have no ambition. People on welfare have no work ethic. Every day I am reminded to stay open, positive, to embrace people for just being people.

I wrote a reprimand to myself last week, that I had started writing here partly to confront difficult subjects and things that I need to write about. In reality, this has become a place for me to encourage myself, to kick off my writing and to push myself on. On the same note, I have very specific things I want to write about when it comes to God. Or the lack thereof. I made a mile-long list of topics I wanted to write on and still could think of more. Several nights in a row, I woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep until I wrote some things down.

If you're interested in following this train of thought and seeing the writing it will lead to, head over here. Yes, I'm double-blogging now which feels wrong and sounds dirty. We'll see what happens.