freewriting: recommit.

Hey my friends. Can I tell you something true? I've been staring at this screen for 30 minutes and feeling more and more like smacking my head into it. My writing comes in waves but my habits really have died. I've lost hold of the rituals that used to keep my writing engine oiled up so that, when the time came, I had something to say here. I know that, more than anything, I need to start freewriting again. I know it's the thing I need because, at this exact moment, I'm thinking up excuses for why I can't freewrite tonight. What can I say? My brain is a weird person. I am perfectly capable of forming new habits, it just takes a bit of devotion.

In the meantime, I always have things to share:

I love this letter from Harper Lee about reading as a child.

I wrote up another review for The Lit Pub on Seth Fried's, The Great Frustration. Have a look over here: Don't let your reason get the best of you today.

You'll also find one of my tweets in the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction! That's pretty cool. You can order it over here (if you like).

I heard Langhorne Slim play at the Rock & Roll Hotel last night. Give him a big old listen. He's got a new album that's a rocking good time.

And I'll tell you what I'm doing this fine evening. I'm going to close this screen, make myself some toast, and freewrite for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen! It's nothing, I can do it. You hold me accountable.

just one.

I pass a pair of sunflowers each day on my walk home. The petals are still barely yellow, but the heavy heads hang low and sad. They've been planted on a bit of sloped yard, so they tower over me as I walk by. I look up into their faces and nod. They sway and droop a bit lower.

There's enough in the world to get you down, there's no doubt.

There are enough things to do that wading through and choosing sometimes seems an impossible task.

I get these bursts, wild wild bursts of excitement, moments of complete certainty that I am meant to be writing and I have so much to say that there isn't one moment to lose. The excitement holds me for a bit, then I get a little dizzy and overwhelmed, then I try to block it all out in my head and get things organized, and then I give up. Suddenly it's 10pm and I'm sitting on the couch and someone is asking me, Have you written anything? Most likely I am snarling back in self-defense and laziness.

It's some cousin of that despair I know well, the kind that looks all around at the world, sees so much suffering and need, and feels that nothing can be done about it all. The solution is always, must always be, to break it down into what I can manage. I have no choice. If I contemplate the great suffering of the world all at once, I'll never sleep at night.

It should apply also to writing. I need to remember to carve out the bit I can manage for now and let the rest be. I must remember that just because I'm not doing everything doesn't mean I'm doing nothing. It might be one word, one sentence, one person who connects and is motivated, inspired, renewed, understood, revealed, and so on. Just one is enough, isn't it? Just one.

another one.

I turned 27 this past weekend. Some while ago, I picked up the habit of setting resolutions on my birthday, one for each year. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but I like it. I like to think about what I will do with my next year of living. 

The wonderful thing about this blog, which has been kicking around for more than a year now, is that I have a record of what I resolved to do last year. I like a list that mixes tangible resolutions with broader goals for living. And I like a list that mixes very small tasks with very large ones. It makes it less easy to measure when some have been done, but I think I've written here before about my philosophy on goals and resolutions. I love them for their way of making me consider my priorities and strive towards new things. I don't mind if they're not all checked off in a row. I just think it's lovely to think about all the things I could do, all the things I have done, and all things I still want to do. But anyway, I ramble on.

from September 22, 2011
1-knit a sweater
2-make cheese
3-go camping
4-conquer the F-chord on my guitar
5-run a 5K
6-be more honest
7-love
8-start cooking dried beans
9-make one new friend
10-write more letters
11-drink more loose leaf tea
12-open up to people
13-read one new author from the list of nobel laureates
14-visit Canada
15-start making my own bread again
16-less dairy
17-buy clothes with color
18-write often
19-tell jokes
20-make pizza in my cast iron skillet
21-apologize less
22-sew curtains
23-ride my bike in the city
24-bake a layer cake
25-paint the big canvas
26-yoga

just here.

Something I love about the essay is the way that it can wind through a million different seemingly unrelated topics, then you get to the end and there's a click in your head and it all connects into one big picture. I love that. I think it's very relevant to way we live our lives. I think it's an important way to stir up observation, which is critical to empathy, which is critical to creating the world we want to live in. But sometimes I try hard to contrive it. I try to jam the thread through the needle and the organic unfolding is lost. In fact, sometimes it paralyzes me. I lose sight of the fact that I can write about just one thing and that can be enough.

So let me tell you something about myself: I have a never-ending need for control. This causes some good things in my life: I don't miss deadlines, I pay my bills on time, I never lose my keys or my wallet. It also causes some bad things: I forget how to relax, I demand that others meet my standards and do things my way, I feel stress over things that shouldn't really matter. I have been thinking about it a lot lately. My control tendencies fire up when my life feels most overwhelming, when there are lots of changes, when I am sometimes at the mercy of others' decisions or actions. The fact is that I've been been grabbing for control left and right lately, and my controlling tendencies have gotten....out of control.

Please tell me that made you chuckle.

I'm always swimming in resolutions, too many, which is a surefire way to fail at every one of them. But I believe this one is worth some effort, because I think my hunger for control is at the root of other things I may wish to change in my life. I often take myself too seriously and lose sight of the things that matter most. This isn't confession-time, or I don't mean it to be. This is just the thing on my mind, and it's just one thing, and it's about life, and I'm writing about it.

yes, me too.

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one." - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I was thinking about that quotation today, but in my memory, it was about reading. Funny how another person's words take on their own life in our own heads. But anyway, I suppose the reader and the writer are friends of a sort, so it still holds true.

I remember several moments. They are the basis of that enduring love of an author that you cling to for life.

It was there when I first read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and understood that the monkey in my head that kept me from writing really meant that I should be writing. It was the moment I realized that real writers do the same battle in their own heads.

It was there when I first read Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, when Jayber was content to pack up all his belongings in one box and start walking, when he was content to sit in the back of an empty church to hear the silence, and when he was kept up all night to contemplate the darkness of the world. Well, I loved him for it.

And I'll never forget Annie Dillard's desire in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to sit still for hours on end to watch the insects or animals around her. I called it my sitting-quietly-time and she was doing it too.