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.

quite right.

I know, it's been awhile. Actually, it's been awhile for awhile. I would like to apologize, but I would also like to say that it's been necessary, or at least I think so. Things here were feeling stale to me. I've grown tired of saying the same thing same thing same thing. It's started feeling a bit whiny, at least in my own ears.

So for these two weeks, I have been running my brain over and over the whole lot and searching for something - a new direction, a new sense of purpose, a new "why" as in why I am writing here and why you might be reading here. No matter the gaps and the absences, I came here as a way to hold myself accountable. And for the most part, it has worked. It would be quite a shame to give up now. I believe, somewhere in me, that I have reached the giving-up-moment, that is the moment when everyone wants to quit. And I believe that the difference between success and failure is getting through this moment and to the other side.

I still don't know quite where to take things, but can I ask you to stick it out?

I have been writing this post for days because I don't know what to say. I don't think anything has resolved itself in my head. I think I might be a fool sometimes for hoping to resolve my thoughts and my purpose and myself. In fact, that might be the thing that paralyzes me most.

Have you ever had a big, stretching, yawning weekend with nothing to do but make a pot of soup and write and somehow all you did was make the pot of soup and didn't write, not one single word? I have. But enough of that.

plugging in.

This night, I have cleaned the kitchen, done two loads of laundry, made a large pot of curry split pea soup, killed time looking at apartment listings, and eaten an embarrassing dinner of crackers, spreadable cheese and pickles. But I have managed to fight through anyway and get down to work. Other things seem more important. Suddenly I suspect I should make a loaf of bread. I feel the need to clean out my closet.

You might be tired of hearing about this procrastinating and putting off and distracting myself. Trust me, you're not as sick of it as I am. But I mention it only to give proof that I'm continuing to slog through it and make progress in the way that I do.

There are many reasons I know I should write. One is this: sometimes I read a book, a page, even a sentence, and while I'm thinking of its beauty and appreciating it and reveling in it, I'm also thinking: I wish I had written that. So I keep on taking things in, out in the creative world, and these things mash around my head and I hope for the best. I hope that my own style will come out of it. You keep taking it in and taking it in and taking it in and something will come out. That's physics, I think. Action and reaction.

I read a chapter of a book today. I sat very still and got tingly feelings in my fingers. Shallow breath and eyes that blurred around the rims from intense focus, from lack of blinking. These things happened. I got the restless-leg-syndrome feeling in my arms and clenched my fists over and over to soothe it. This is what my creative impulse feels like. It is the highest high I know. Seeing something brilliant and wanting to make something else while wishing you had made this awesome thing you're looking at now. It is this single moment when I forget fear, inhibition, failure, rejection, propriety, even life itself. The world is suddenly so big, so full of things for me to see and write and tell and I realize I am staring at this screen with my eyes jacked wide open like it's all unfolding before me now. I'll open them wide enough to take it all in.

satisfied mind.

I am feeling very stubborn. I don't want to write and I definitely don't want to write anything particularly beautiful or inspiring. I want my fingers to do their thing, somewhat removed from my brain and beating heart. I want some words to spill out of me and be cut off. I want to cast them out.

For my sake, I've told myself that I can write anything tonight. I can write anything as long as it's something. No order no structure no meaning no censor just write write write. My pride resists being told what to do, it resists criticism and even encouragement. But someone very wise said to me last night, "Write about it, write about it, write about it." I dropped my eyes and mumbled, "Ok. But maybe I don't want to write about it, maybe I just want to talk about it."

But he knew that really, I wanted to write about it. Or needed to. Whatever.

I feel angry sometimes. Angry over injustice in the world, over the suffering that is ignored, over the hurt and pain caused in the name of money or religion. I feel sad sometimes. Sad because people die and life is sometimes dull and we can never accomplish all that we hope. I feel discouraged sometimes. I cry when I shouldn't, I procrastinate when I should work, I read books by writers who are not very good but seem to be making a lot of money. People that I love dearly are unhappy sometimes, they work too hard, they don't have the things that they want, they feel dissatisfied and incomplete. There are other people that I want to love, but I don't try hard enough. The man at the corner rattling the cup for change. The neighbor who never says hello. And others, just the people all around. We should be loving them all. I don't always do it.

doing.

Just about one month ago, I wrote about urge to stop and why you shouldn't. I ended with the reasons why I write, which are all changing and always different.

Two days ago, I had a conversation in a very loud Tex-Mex restaurant. It was a conversation about art, the reasons for art, the meaning to be found in life, the definition of truth. And how the rice was sort of bad.

These are things I think about often, perhaps even too much.

I was spurred on this last weekend because I read a comment somewhere, of course I don't remember where, arguing that the end goal of any piece of writing is to get at truth. In nonfiction, this is clear. And even fiction, or poetry, or any other writing - they are all trying to get at truth in their own ways. This is actually a way of thinking that, in the past, I very much ascribed to. Lately, I'm having some trouble getting myself there.

I have been hung up on this for sometime, but I'll say it yet again: I don't think I know what truth is. There is reality. As someone put it to me recently, there is the location and action of each atom at each moment. But perspective, human memory, awareness, imagination, all of it creates a world that is lots of gray and not much black and white. So what is this thing that we are trying to get at?

I question my motivations for writing. I don't mean that I question their validity, only that I question what they are. With each day, even each slow ticking hour, they change.

creative energy.

For the first time that I can remember, I have insomnia. I can't sleep. I don't just mean tonight, this night that I'm scribbling away at 3am. For the past few weeks, maybe even a month, I find myself hitting the lights and staring up at the black ceiling.

If you know me at all, you understand that this is strange. If you don't know me, let me tell you something about myself: I love to sleep. I wait until the last humanly possible moment to get out of bed in the morning. My roommates are well acquainted with my 10-minute morning dash from bathroomtokitchentofrontdoor. I'm also the person who unabashedly suggests that we go out at 6pm Friday night so that we can have dinner and some drinks and still be in bed by 11pm. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't do sleep.

I can guess at the causes of this insomnia. One reason might be anxiety, usually in the form of What if I don't have a job? or What if I don't have enough money?

Another reason might be that, at certain points in life, you become very aware of changes as they happen. You can feel the rush of life passing. It isn't sadness or loss, just an acute sensation of yourself living your life. I get that sensation sometimes. Such moments I usually start narrating my own life in my head, which I think a character in one of Wendell Berry's novels also does, though I can't remember which one. She walked down the sidewalk. It had been another long day at work. She stepped on a leaf. You get the idea.

at the beach.

Three years ago, I parked my car at Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown and stared out over the water. I was taking my lunch break. I was writing in a notebook. It was February. At that time, things in my life had taken a sharp turn. A plan had been shattered. Trust had been broken hard. Everything felt, in a word, bleak.

I sat at the steering wheel of my parked car. I gripped the wheel, shivered a bit, let the sound of waves fill my head. I remember looking out over the expanse of the bay and thinking, The ocean and the sky are the same color. I don’t know why, but it felt very profound. It was everything I felt. Life was covered with a thick gray blanket.

The ocean always has a way of pushing my thoughts out of my brain, in whatever form they’ll take. Something about the waves, something about repetition, something about the rhythm of introspection. Maybe this is why I couldn’t really be a writer until I came to know the ocean. And sometimes it is bleak. Sometimes it’s stormy. But peace doesn’t come from feeling peaceful, it comes from feeling everything as each thing passes.

This past weekend, I drove out to the Cape for a day. I just had such a craving. I needed to be hit in the face with salt air. I needed to see the familiar things that trigger the home feeling inside of me. Saturday morning, I picked up a croissant at the Boulangerie and drove to White Crest Beach. I parked and sat in my car. The sun was very bright and the wind was blowing hard. I saw a handful of whales surface - just the spouts blending with rolling waves. I wrote there for two hours in my notebook. Sand was pelting the windows of my car and it was rocking a bit in the gusts of wind. I wrote until it hurt my hand to grip the pen. I mean, I was gripping it hard. I drank an espresso out of a Dixie cup.

lessons.

Many years ago, I read Wendell Berry's novel, Hannah Coulter. There was a lot to the story and a lot I don't remember. I do remember the title character reflecting on some lesson that someone in her life had taught her. And from there on, I began to note what lessons there were in my life, who was teaching them to me and whether or not I was hanging on to them.

Write about that.

Someone who loves me has been saying those words to me, and often. I have resisted them. I have resisted. I mean, I'm resisting them right now. I can't tell you why, or maybe I can. There are a lot of things that can make you freeze. Fear and doubt are two things.

And what is there to be afraid of? Someone asks me. And I answer, but the answer said out loud is much less believable. So maybe there is nothing at all. Nothing to be afraid of. No reason to resist. No more excuses. No more.

forget.

Just start. I say it in my head often.

You think it’s no big deal. Just taking a break, just waiting a bit longer, you’ll do it later, and later, and later. And then you’re staring at the paper, staring at the screen and your fingers won’t move. They just won’t. You’re trying to form some thoughts in your head, but the attempt at awareness destroys every thought that was there.

A good practice is to write things and then forget about them. Just write it, write something, and don’t read it again. Save it in a file, in an email draft, in Google docs, in a notebook hidden on a shelf. Don’t read it again for a week, a month, a year. I think I learned this from Natalie Goldberg. It takes some of the pressure off. You might write something horrible, but you know what? You don’t even have to read it. You just write it down and tuck it away for some other time.

The beautiful thing that happens is sometimes you discover some magic in what you’ve written that, at first glance, you didn’t know was there. It might be sort of better than you first thought. You might sound a bit more inspired than you felt. But most beautiful of all is when you read something your hands wrote, but you don’t remember writing it. Suddenly you can look at your writing with some objective criticism, but also objective compassion. The words exist separate from yourself.

thank you, john d'agata.

I was more or less born a reader, if one can say such a thing. What I mean is that, from the moment I learned to read, I did it voraciously. I read quickly and eagerly. I always loved language. I was not likewise born a writer. I mean, I understood grammar. I could write clear sentences and well-organized paragraphs. But the idea of writing creatively never crossed my mind.

My final year of college, I decided to turn my English minor into a major and, subsequently, I crammed a lot of credits into two semesters. I had more or less covered the literature courses I needed, but not the writing. So I took what was my first real creative writing class. I'm going to risk one great big cliche by saying: it changed my life. I read Brenda Miller's A Braided Heart in the anthology Writing Creative Nonfiction. I heard the term "lyric essay" and I instantly fell in love. I can't tell you why exactly, but it made my heart pound. So, in a wave of impulse, instead of using my senior thesis to analyze a literary work, I used it to study the lyric essay and create my own.

I'm having all this nostalgic reflection because, during this past week, John D'Agata has ignited some controversy surrounding his forthcoming book, The Lifespan of a Fact. Those many years ago when I began to explore creative writing, John D'Agata was something of an idol to me. Not because I knew him, or really anything about him. I had his collection, The Next American Essay, which I thought was very cool. And I had the original issue of the Seneca Review that began to advertise and publish what was called the lyric essay.

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.

a writer.

I am often giving advice and encouraging people here (and in life). If I believed in a calling, I might say that was mine. Friends have told me that I am like a compass always pointed in the right direction. I've been told that I have my head on straight. When I was a supervisor, my evaluations often told of my calm and confident personality.

I am going to tell you that I offer up advice, I write here and I encourage everyone else because I need to hear it myself. I write here about my method and my commitment because I need to believe it's possible and I need to believe it's real. I need to believe I can do it. One thing I have learned over time is that you should never ever ever question a creative spirit, even a creative urge. Don't ask for motivation and don't ask for a product. Foster it and nurture it and believe in it. And just wait.

I read this post last week and, while I can appreciate the overall idea, I was still horrified by what I read.

If you consistently find ways to avoid writing then perhaps you need to ask yourself if you really want to be a writer. You can’t really call yourself a writer if you don’t actually write, and if you’re not doing it then maybe your heart just isn’t in it. [...] If you’re doing it for fame, or money, then forcing yourself is never going to work. If you’re doing it because you love writing, then you probably don’t need to read this post.

push along.

It is a true thing: sometimes it doesn't really get easier. There are things that tug and pull at you, your emotions, your thoughts, and they just aren't going to go away. Do you know what I mean?

For me, it's smoking. I am slowly and calmly (sort of) trying to accept the fact that I will always want to smoke. Just over six months in the clear, but I still get the jealous, violent pang each time I see someone smoking. I will get better at ignoring the voices in my head, the ones that scream, It's raining, I'm tired, I have a headache, I feel emotional and I need to smoke.

And I will get better at pushing myself along. Towards goals, towards creative growth, towards greater empathy and love. One of the amazing and accidental purposes that this blog now has is this: on the days like today, when I'd rather gnaw off my own fingers than write, I can still say to myself, Just write something for the blog. As soon as I get that out, the spark is alive again and I can keep going. Thank you, internet gods, for that.

the notebook, continued.

Here's the deal:
Two months ago, I said I was going to finish the notebook. I only had seven pages left. More or less the moment I said those words, it became impossible for me to do it. I still wrote, finished two pieces, blogged, wrote in other notebooks. But something in me resisted finishing this notebook. I don't understand it so I can't explain it. I kind of lied a little, mostly to myself, and said it was done. Well, it wasn't.

I know this might seem insignificant - maybe it is insignificant. But it matters to me.

So today, holed up in Starbucks on my lunch break with an Earl Gray tea, I wrote the last seven pages. There, it's done. I want to throw it away something fierce, but I will not.

The notebook ended on this:

And now I'm staring at these last pages gripped with fear, fear of the beautiful words and the ugly words and myself. Just another face in another Starbucks scribbling things that seem so important. Well what is it? I will not throw it away. Keep on keep on. Stand in the long line and creep forward with each moment and word, stare out the window, look back and blink. 

***

on the non-form form: the lyric essay.

It’s about time I introduce my love affair with a so-called sub-genre of nonfiction, that is the lyric essay. I studied the lyric essay my last year of college in an attempt to understand and write in this style. Even now, it is vague and undefined. You can find any number of descriptions and definitions floating around, but when put on the spot, I always answered by explaining that it is non-linear. It is somewhere between the land of the essay and the ocean of the poem.

I have spent the day reading critiques of the lyric essay. Blog posts arguing that it only produces a sort of shallow writing or it was formed from the anti-narrative movement of poets coming out of Iowa’s Workshop in the late 90s.  I have somewhat idealized this writing form in my mind. I can be honest - I’m naive. I come from an English program at a extremely small, intensely religious Midwestern school. When I stumbled across that issue of the Seneca Review that introduced the lyric essay, I became intoxicated with writing in a way that was experimental, unexpected. I jumped at the opportunity to push the bounds among my classmates and in the department.

I have continued to make attempts at writing in this “form” and have hit my fair share of walls. It’s loose and undefined. There’s a very fine line between work that is nonsense and work that is contrived, at least for me. So I’m going to try something new, an experiment in how I think of writing in my own head. I’m going to toss the idea of the lyric essay, at least for now. Just to try it out and see what happens.

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.

the notebook (not the movie).

This week I'm finishing a notebook. I've never finished one before.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is.  Every notebook I've written in has either been abandoned or thrown away.  I've never written from the first page to the last.  But I'm finishing a notebook this week, it's happening, and I'm not throwing it away.  The urge to keep things hidden is still strong. I have often been unable to stand the vulnerability of sharing what I write. It's a habit and a way of thinking that I'm trying very hard to shake.

I've been writing in this particular notebook since last December.  I bought it in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport when I was stranded after Christmas.  It's not a big notebook, so really, it should have been finished months ago.  But I have a hard time keeping my writing all in one place.  I have three different notebooks right now, all in different stages of being written in.  I also write on scraps of paper and hide the scraps in books I'm reading, in my purse, in my pockets.  I write into Gmail drafts.  I write into Word documents.  I write here.

It used to drive me crazy that I couldn't just write in one place, back when I thought the only purpose of writing was producing.  But it's just as much the process as the product, and I've come to terms with the fact that I write randomly.  It's ok -- it's my process.  And there's some magic in discovering a random note on scrap of paper, hidden in a coat pocket months ago, that you can't even remember writing down.

I haven't been terribly productive the last few days.  I tell myself that I'm letting some things rest and letting myself think.  I guess I am, but let's get real: I am just that good at distracting myself from the work I know I want to do.  As a compromise, I made a deal with myself.  Finish the notebook.  There are 7 pages left.  So finish it.

Pick up the pen.

***

This is what today feels like. 

Check out these paintings by Philipp Haager.

there is time.

For the past two weeks I've been working on something.  Yesterday I crossed the start line. I'm not sure what a finish line even looks like, but I know the feeling of starting. Moving past an idea and randomness in the brain to something real, words sentences paragraphs pages.

I don't even care what happens to it. I don't care if I file it away forever. It's been a very long time since I've worked on something that I can actually call a piece. More than rambling, journaling, freewriting, etc. I needed to remember how to do it.

I've been writing on dark things. Back to the light. People, laughing, cold air, cribbage, hot drinks, oysters. Just life really. Just living hard is all.

I've been reading through some of the collected letters of Anton Chekhov thanks to a recommendation from this blog. I'm feeling startled by how much his words are resonating with me right now. I am reminded again -- yes, sometimes writing hurts. But even now, even still, there is time.

I am writing and wondering how many times tonight my whole body will be racked with pain for my presumption in daring to be a writer. - Anton Chekhov, letter to Alexander Chekhov, 8 November 1882

Some days I stare at the page or the screen and type word after word about nothing. I write about the color of the sky and the way the concrete feels beneath my bare feet and feeling sleepy and hot. Some days I sit down with the weight of the world right behind me. Yesterday:

I am going to write today about religion and feeling alone and feeling lonely and speaking up and remembering and making peace with your thoughts and being healed. And sin and guilt and fear.

I still don't understand the process, I don't know how or when or why or if I can create something. I just keep on.

All my hopes are on the future. I am still only twenty-six. It may be that one day I shall manage to achieve something, although time is rushing by quickly. - Anton Chekhov, letter to Dmitry Grigorovich, 28 March 1886

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