A random picture of the Provencal countryside, with some potential symbolism related to Jumping off Cliffs or Keeping One’s Eye on the Far Horizon.
As you may have noticed, I don’t post very often. In the early, heady days of my blog I kept to a weekly schedule, spending my Sundays in isolation in front of my computer (not much different than any other day, in fact) writing and editing and re-editing until I started to feel like a hamster in a wheel. Round about midnight I’d finally post my latest effort and head to bed in happy anticipation of what I’d find in the morning. I should be embarrassed to admit how thrilling it was to see those comments rolling in, but there are others out there who understand this very well.
I had lots to say in the beginning. The folder of half-finished, semi-started essays that had languished for years on my hard drive began to expand and even took on a new name - Completed Blog Posts. My motivation was high and my commitment consistent. The phrase I am a writer began to seem like it could be true, and I practiced saying it under my breath and without the self-deprecating grimace that used to go along with I’m a full-time mom. Then somebody at a party asked me what I did, and the words came out all by themselves, as smooth as you please. It felt fabulous to say them in public and in front of witnesses and my left eyebrow didn’t even move. Writing was, after all, a substantial part of my daily occupation, and people actually read and liked what I had to say. Thanks to you, I wasn’t even afraid of Have you published anything? After a few months of nice reviews and some more out-loud practice, my new professional status felt pretty natural. I am a writer rolled off my tongue, although deep in the truth-telling part of my brain a few rebel cells muttered in protest.
Every writer gives up energy to doubts about the authenticity of their calling and the measure of their work. Fortunately, every single writer I read has decided to press ahead regardless of their hesitation, and without them, I know not what I’d do. Let me give you an example. Loving the quirks and complexities of the English language as I do, I was happy to discover The Inky Fool, a collaborative blog staffed, in the main, by the highly entertaining, deeply knowledgeable and dangerously habit-forming Dogberry. Fortunately he is also prolific and reliably supplies his readers with a daily fix – occasionally more. The other day he wrote a wonderful piece called ‘Prepositions The End of Sentences At’, the general theme of which was that all kinds of supposed rules of written English usage are not rules at all, but snobberies. The idea that I could start a sentence with And but not feel bad about it filled me with joy, and momentarily held the tantalizing prospect of morphing into motivation to write. And so it did, although with a considerable delay. (See? I used ‘And’ right at the beginning, as I often do, the difference being that now I don’t feel like I’m a lesser writer because of it.)
But as I read Dogberry’s post, I was also conscious that while good writing pleases and often exhilarates me, it also intimidates. A skilled writer (along with a capable editor) leaves the reader with the impression that there was no hard slog behind the prose – that it flowed from imagination to page as effortlessly and continuously as it does in the other direction for the reader. Perhaps this is actually true for some writers, but we know how disingenuous it is to think that an adequately-equipped toolbox of literary devices is sufficient for success as a writer. But then I go and read Jocelyn at O Mighty Crisis and am convinced anew that she and Dogberry both know something I don’t about the secret to writing with effortless, fabulous, and often hilarious ease.
So despite my hard-won smarts about some things, I can still fool myself into thinking that my appreciation for and intense enjoyment of good prose should somehow magically transform the uphill-struggle nature of my writing into something much easier and better. Before you think that I’m fishing for compliments, I should say that I know I’m not a dud. When I spend enough time and have enough patience to edit, I’m reasonably satisfied with what comes out, but the point is not what I produce, but how much and how difficult it is.
It occurs to me that the title of my blog is apt in a different way than I originally intended. Words tempt me, definitely, but often that’s all they do. They beckon, they tease, they make me want to go out and play, but I don’t or won’t push aside the mundane and non-essential things that fill up my time and clog my attention. In more than one analysis of why writers find it so hard to write, it has been suggested that fear of success is to blame. I can hardly believe that. If you knew that success was waiting in the wings at the end of the performance, would you just shut it down and walk offstage? Not me. Fear of not being accomplished enough, organized enough, disciplined enough, connected enough, motivated enough – that’s more likely. How about fear of not having anything worthwhile to say? Years ago, after reading the loveliness that is Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ , I decided that the world didn’t need less-talented writers to dilute the excellence that had been her contribution to English literature. Comparing yourself to others isn’t productive unless you’re learning from the analysis, but in that case I felt that Roy’s novel was so sublime that my time would be better spent worshipping at the altar of her accomplishment than producing any work of my own. Nowhere in my personality is there any hint of perfectionism except when it comes to writing, and the critic in my head stays plenty busy.
Writing is not for the lazy and undisciplined. In my case it demands a marshalling of all my attention and the pushing away of a need to do something more stimulating, more active and less cerebral – something with greater potential for immediate results. I’m a sucker for immediate gratification and writing rarely gives me that. The pleasant anticipation that surrounds the thought of getting down to writing evaporates when the words don’t come fast enough, or when I have to reach for the synonym finder too often. What kind of a writer has to search for words? Is my changing mid-life brain to blame? Is this an early warning sign of the disease that shredded up my mother’s once-sharp mind? I continue to hope that my wordlessness is a temporary situation, and that the fog will lift eventually. Meanwhile, I’m vigilant about proof-reading my comments and disturbingly often find ‘hear’ instead of ‘here’ or letters in wacky order. Sometimes I suspect that I’m working in the wrong department altogether and would do better in appliance repair.
When the kids were small, I read all the articles and listened to the discussions that exhorted women to shuffle the needs and demands of others off to one side to make their own desires and accomplishments a priority. I wasn’t good at it back then, and haven’t improved much over the years. Selflessness isn’t the problem, but more a willingness to be distracted by anything else that moves. Back in a situation where I am in close contact with my children, the need to be needed takes priority, and I get a lot of satisfaction from being useful and maybe even indispensable. It’s a temporary, two-month situation and would probably drive me nuts if it weren’t. In another month they will fend for themselves as they so capably do and I will be back in my undemanding, quiet French environment looking for other excuses not to write. It feels a lot like I’m letting somebody down, and that somebody is me and the people who believe in what I said I would do, which was to write. I want to do it, and I think about it a lot.
The biggest problem is that I want the act of writing to be easier, and it isn’t. Practice, you say! Well yes, that would help, but so would turning off the thinking part that interferes with the doing. The man I love is a sometime tennis player, and was explaining to me yesterday how frustrated he is by the inconsistency of his game. He finds that putting too much thought into his play overrides his instincts, and the outcome isn’t usually good. Playing tennis is not so different from playing the piano or any other kinaesthetic activity, and too much cerebral input gets in the way. Perhaps the same is true of writing. I don’t put a lot of thought into the writing of un-serious things; my email style gets so many compliments that I’ve considered pretending that everything I write has a ‘To’ field. Meanwhile my novel is heading into its fourth year as an incomplete and very rough draft.
It’s been a few days since I started this, and Obsessive-Compulsive Editing Disorder has stopped me from posting it sooner. Tomorrow my favourite Belgian arrives after a month-long separation and I will have yet another wonderful excuse not to write. If I don’t post this now, it will sit for another couple of weeks and I’ve already spent too much energy trying to ignore that familiar, niggling feeling that I’m not doing what I’m meant to do.
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