The Plight of a Writer

When I first started writing I didn’t understand the plight of a writer.  I thought it was just me.  Writer’s block.  Hell ya.  Who do you think you are writing?  Nobody wants to read your shit.  Writers have one thing in common. They don’t write. Many of us give up before we let that happen.  Before we even start we’ve packed it in. Martha Graham wrote “we are never satisfied with our work.  Creative work is a queer divine dissatisfaction that keeps us marching and more alive than the others.”  This speaks right to me.  There is no satisfaction at anytime even after you’ve arrived and I’m strangely comforted by this.

Anne Lamott teaches us to write short assignments shitty first drafts and look through 1 inch picture frames.  We do that for awhile and it seems to settle us down a bit until the next storm hits.  

“How’s the writing” someone says so innocently.   I hesitate to call myself a writer because it sounds so pretentious.  So Ernest Hemingway ish......sitting in a coffee shop all day; so arrived.   But we never feel that way inside so to saying it just brings up the imposter in us.  

It’s a pleasure but it’s also painful and hard because we have to constantly convince ourselves we are good enough to write.  Good enough.

I took a writing class once.  It was more about how to get published and the very first day, the instructor said.  If you’re writing a book to get published and make a lot of money you are writing for the wrong reason.  That might happen but it probably won’t so we have convince ourselves to write anyway.   It has to be okay.   Perhaps you’re writing will inspire others to write.  Many of my favourite Authors have granted me permission slips.  They’ve let me show up late and leave early and write shitty first drafts and beautiful short and long stories.  Authors that stay connected have enormous benefits.   This “me too” is so comforting and sacred.  It’s like group therapy.  Yes, we understand.  We go through that too.  Here’s what I did.  You could try this or I get it and I don’t know what to do either.  

Suggestions, improvements, adjustments, tweaks are all part of the never ending quest to darken the page.  Routines, rituals and structure are paramount to achieving any level of success with writing.   You must hold the flow with reverence. Don’t fuck with the flow.  

Resistance is a mysterious force that keeps you from doing the work.  I’ll go and eat a crumpet, then some cheese, more coffee perhaps some watermelon; no blueberries.  I munch on a bowl of left over buttered popcorn.   Perhaps I should do a load of laundry or take something out for dinner.  What’s for dinner?  I go out and water the flowers or call the vet or as Anne Lamott writes “check my teeth in the mirror”  Resistance-- It prevents us from doing the only work that matters.   It matters too much or not enough.  That’s why we hate it and love it at the same time. Writers have gone insane by writing and not writing.  It’s worth it.  It’s a compulsion and an obsession.  Its divine rapture and torture all at the same time.  

What’s great about writing is that you know yourself so damn well that you can’t pull the wool over your own eyes.   It’s not this person fault or that person’s lack of approval or the family’s behaviour or the friend’s words.  It’s YOU.   It’s YOU.  You are the sum of what’s happening or not happening to you.   You can spend the rest of your life dancing around pretending it’s not you but it’s YOU.   Truth telling and seeing things for what they are or how you perceive them is what I love most about writing. Writers pay attention to the world marvelling at the smallest of details and carefully orchestrating them onto a page.   I think I’m recovering from all the years of denying my creativity.  Years spent numbing my desire to lead a richer more inspired brilliant creative stirred enthused existence that sometimes I get overwhelmed by how expansive it all feels.   At 54 I’m finally ready to explore what it means to be free. I needed to be free in order to explore.  I needed the move.  I needed the addiction.  I needed the loss of love and friendship.  I needed pain and dysfunctional people in my life to show me my own pain and dysfunction.  I needed forgiveness in order to forgive.  I need to write in order to think.  I needed to think in order to feel.   I’ve found a way of looking at things differently.  More truthful; more authentic. Writing,   ah my sweet friend always there for me.