always fears, you know.

Yesterday, in my empty kitchen, staring at I-don't-remember-what on my computer, I felt it with a rush: something I need to write about. I postponed for a few moments, made an omelette, dusted my bedroom, cleaned the toilet. And it was lost. Even now, more than twenty-four hours later, I can't remember what I was so longing to write about. There was a time I would have mourned such a loss, but not so much these days. I lost hold of an idea, but the brain that thought it up is still in my head. That idea or something like it or something better will come along again. It's much like Annie Dillard says, we shouldn't be afraid to use up good ideas as they come. We don't need to save them up, because more will come.

Stories build empathy and empathy build connection. Do you realize this? Do you know the power of a story? It isn't a luxury.

I have been thinking about stories quite a bit lately, thinking about the ways they weave all through our lives. Not just in a book or on a stage or flashing through a TV screen. But we live our lives as stories, we organize our thoughts and feelings as such, and our very way of thinking is driven by it. Why? I am ticking off books-to-read on the subject, and so longer grows my books-to-read list, as it has been doing since forever.

I am a writer tonight. A few good things have come along to remind me. Good words.

I feel sad sometimes that writing is less the form of common communication that it used to be. It's a sort of default for me, and often so much easier than talking straight from my mouth. I have been known to hang up a phone without saying anything I meant to, followed by an email or letter that says all the rest.

there is still this.

In January, instead of averaging three posts a week, I barely averaged one. I don't have a particularly good excuse for this. I've been around, mostly. I have time. I have been writing, although rather loosely. Actually, I've even written several posts that just never made their way out here. I certainly have plenty of good emotion to work with, which is oftentimes the only spark I need to get moving.

Well, whatever it is, it happened and that's that. I am inclined to hate myself for my failure and to be paralyzed by what I perceive as lack of talent, ability, commitment, and the like. If you do this sort of thing, you know exactly what I mean. If you don't...well, you lucky bastard. You're probably much more at peace with yourself than I am.

It's happened often in the past, especially in my journals and notebooks. One week without writing will stretch into two weeks, then a month, then suddenly I'm looking at writing that is months ago and I don't even know where to begin.

I hate this fear, this feeling of being frozen in some mess of personal standards and emotions I don't understand. So listen, I'll try to be better, as I always do. But this time I'm not going to berate myself for mistakes made and failing to live up to my own expectations. I will just start again.

big things.

I long to create something big.  I don't mean momentous or earth-shattering - I mean physically big.  For some reason, I love things that make me feel small.  I want to stand in the shadows of giant trees and mountains, wade knee-deep into an ocean that stretches for eternity beyond me, scream into a canyon while I'm toeing the line before the fall.

I want to make sculptures like these:

Patrick Dougherty

Or these:

Theo Jansen

I made a to do list in my notebook today:
-freewriting, one hour
-expand the essay, one hour
-think about a novel, one hour

Instead, I thought about a novel (or fiction in general) for three hours. I have always resisted it. I have always told myself that I can't do fiction and, honestly, I haven't really tried. I focused on nonfiction in college, so there was never a need. I vaguely remember writing a flash experimental play during a final exam for a creative writing class, but I don't think it was good. I'd remember if it was.

I've just been mulling it over lately -- the idea of fiction as a way to tell some hard truths without having to say, This is the truth of my life. Some of what I've been reading lately has spurred me on. And November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo).  I signed up with the website awhile ago, but I didn't try it last year. I still don't know if I'll try it this year, but I'm thinking about it. Thinking it might be a way to dive hard into fiction and try it out. No pressure to be good, only to produce something. I do well with a goal to work towards.

I have one particular idea that I've been thinking and thinking over, researching, reading. Slowly, very slowly, it's turning into a character (maybe). I struggle with character development and I don't know why. But it would be good for me to practice. I have the time. I am particularly lucky there. I don't know when I will ever be able to say that again. So maybe. I might start an outline (just in case). I might do some freewriting on this character. Who knows where it will lead? Maybe it's just more essay material. But maybe writing some fiction will eventually give me the material for a better essay.

We'll see.

re: the gap.

I heard this yesterday and it was so much what I needed to hear.  It's important to be reminded that we are capable.  Remind yourself.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one story. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.

- Ira Glass

on beginnings.

Just start.

Beginning is hard. I will never understand why my brain feels near bursting with inspiration but completely frozen in terror at putting the pen to the paper, or in this case, fingers to the keys. I long for freedom, but structured freedom. I long for schedules but often want to break them. I demand plans but crave spontaneity. What is this? An old friend put it once, "You are a freaking paradox."

So maybe I am.

I am always waiting for a beginning to happen to me. Couldn't it just happen? Couldn't my genius suddenly begin to flow? Couldn't life suddenly start?

So maybe it will. Or maybe it already has. In the meantime, here's my attempt to hold myself accountable and confront the demons in my own mind. I know, in the deepest part of my being, that there are things I need to write. I know what some of those things are, others I am waiting to discover. For much of my adult life, I've attempted to write around these things. There are things I have beaten to death in my writing, but these things are still very much the surface. Add to this evasion my strange and neurotic urges to destroy everything I write. I don't mean hide it - I mean destroy it. I have started a number of blogs in my day and they have all been deleted, entire contents deleted. I have known myself to tear entire pages out of my notebooks and throw them away. Ok. I actually do that a lot. Writing makes us vulnerable and it's hard to just let it be.*

Natalie Goldberg says to write through the crap. (She puts it somewhat more delicately). There is no beginning. Just write and maybe the beginning is a couple of paragraphs after you start, maybe a couple of pages, maybe a couple of chapters. It doesn't matter, you'll find it eventually. Just write your way there. I believe her, but it doesn't come easy.

There is much in this world that I love, much that inspires me, much that urges me onward. There is much that hurts, much that has changed me, much that has destroyed me and brought me back again. I have long-standing love/hate relationships with a number of things, not limited to: people, cheese and words. But I read something recently that rekindled my inspiration and made me think, Maybe I'm ok. I might have something to say still. Maybe I can make myself say it.

My goal is small.  Really, only this: I intend to hold myself accountable. I will write or I will go mad. So I will choose to write. I will write. I will write now. I will write here. After all:

"In my experience, art is not to be awaited; it is to be chased down, cornered, and beaten into submission with a stick." - Michael Perry

I find myself in a new chapter of life, with a startling number of changes, a newly distinct separation of work and life and what seems to me ungodly amounts of free time. So the topics here may vary as widely as you can imagine, from philosophy to food. I tend to be overly introspective, but frankly, some days my deepest thoughts involve new ways I can eat a can of beans. But the point, the sharp pointy point, is the words. I hope that I can at least see that through. I just want to write and I've got to find my way to do it. Here I am.

*I also have the skill of finding a dozen other satisfying things to do when writing presents itself to me. So I'll mention here that, in anticipation of sitting down to write this, I promptly took a nap, hung up some pictures and cleaned the kitchen. Two hours of productive procrastination later...