YOU HAVE TO WRITE

*I read the picture book You Have To Write by Janet Wong to my students today, day 3 of writing camp (for high school students).  They had to use the title as a prompt and compose a piece using that as a starting point. Here is MY response...(please excuse any typos...this is unedited and raw.)

I have to write?!

The reason has changed over time.

I realize that I have to write

now

because I agreed

because I committed

because I signed a contract

because I have what might be called the chance of a life time,

the chance I have been waiting for

this opportunity

for my whole life

but but but why why why don’t I feel pumped and excited about that?

why can’t I sit down and write books with ease like I could before?

            before the MFA and before I signed the contract?

I have to write because

I might blow it

I might sabotage myself

I might f- it up

I might not want to

but I have to and I

have to for reasons that

are not the same as

before

Before

I have to write I say when I am 9 and have my writing studio in our half basement next to the cat box because there’s no other quiet place with full privacy.

I have to write I say when I am in 4^th grade and the teacher is making little awards that are supposed to boast our big achievements for the year and mine just says Ambition Is To Be An Author.

I have to write I say in fifth grade when our charge is write a children’s book and I decide to write a short story instead. The teacher accuses me of not writing it by my self. It was 10 pages and called It’s Okay To Cry.

I have to write I say in 6^th grade when the Mean Girl tried to ostracize me and my revenge is to write my first full novel. I call it Rivals.

I have to write I say when I am in 8^th grade. I’ve moved on to poetry inspired by a boyfriend who kissed me under a tree by the beach.

I have to write I say because when I start high school the changes in my life are so awful and the sadness is so huge the only thing I can do with it that is remotely positive is write and write and write.

I have to write I say when I am 15 and have a chance to study with some of the best at a creative arts camp. I write the first 80 pages of what will eventually be my first novel.

I have to write I say when I am 16 going to Harvard’s summer writing program with teachers like the editor of Boston Magazine and a well-known, award-winning fiction writer.

I have to write I say and I am in college minoring in writing and majoring in English.

I have to write I say and I am 24, getting married. I have to write because time is running out and I haven’t finished that book I started when I was 15.

I have to write I say and I am 28 and pregnant with my first child and I have to write because that finished book has been sitting in my computer now for 4 years and I’m going to publish it.

I have to write I say and I am 33 and committed to an MFA program and writing short story after short story for my thesis.

I have to write I say because I am 35 and starting a literary magazine and I have to write and write and write and edit and edit and edit…

Have. To. Write. Now.

GO!

Writing Through The Block: Avoidance, Fatigue, Parenting, & Yoga

Below are my random thoughts on this week, a week of sick children and husband, a week of exhaustion, a week of low creativity.

***

Avoidance

I’m avoiding the homework. Not homework for school but for the adult writing class I teach every week at the East Bay Chamber of Commerce in Warren, RI. So, I'm sitting here until something comes up–even if it's garbage or rambling. So bear with me.

OCD

Because I have to keep my blogging commitment and because I am OCD about my writing commitments, I am using this for my blog. This both motivates and blocks me.  Other people will read this, and, therefore, some holding back and censoring will happen.  Not in the first draft, but in the draft you all are reading now.

Tired

I am tired. My oldest daughter was sick all week,  my baby is teething and the suckers won’t pop through.  For four days she has been swollen, unable to suck her pacey or drink her bottle. She clings to me, her sister, her daddy, and her nanny like a baby koala.  Her grip is desperate. She laughs when we distract her, but it’s like she’s trying really hard to keep it together and then by about 3 pm, she can’t.

Peace?

You go to another place when your children are ill. Pleading, desperate, scared, anxious, and then kind of numb, autopilot.  Today, though, Viv (the baby) napped, my husband now has a sinus infection so we put him down for a nap too. My oldest, Chels, is all better, so she and I hung out on the porch and enjoyed the silence, well the no-crying silence.  The wind blew the leaves and also the pages of the magazine we shared.  But it was a moment to let my shoulders down.  It was peaceful.  It gave me a moment to be grateful that although I am tired, although I haven’t had ANY moment alone this week, the kids and hubby are all okay, nothing serious.

Exhaustion and Letting Her Help

But dealing with your children is a kind of exhausting that is indescribable. You become angry, irritable, resentful but then in an instant, you look at their faces, or, in my case, watch your daughters take a bath together (because everything else has failed to soothe the baby). Chels washes her sister, lovingly and gently, crooning, “It’s okay, Vivi, I’ll make it better.”  Then she turns to me and says, "Mama, her skin is so soft.  I never touched her belly like this.  It's so soft!" The baby turns and notices her sister has joined her,  and her beautiful cheeks and lips smile and dimple and then she claps. It's her way of saying, "Yay!  Good idea, big sis!" The bubbles spray, and this makes her giggle harder, and then it makes my oldest giggle, and so they are giggling and spraying bubbles.  I watch how my older daughter steps in at those moments that I really can’t do one more thing.  “Mom, I’ll play with Viv, it’s okay.” And off she will go, holding her baby sister’s hand, into the living room, to stack blocks or read a book together. Chelsea has made getting through these last three days, possible.  As soon as she felt better, she stepped in and said, “Mom, let me help.”  As guilty as I felt for possibly putting this burden on her, I let it happen. 

My Daughter's Gift

Saturday morning because of Viv being so uncomfortable, I couldn’t go to yoga as I usually do.  The Saturday routine is I go to yoga, Mike drops Chels off at her yoga class, and I meet her when I am done and wait in the nearby café and write. I live for this every week. This week I really needed it, but as it happened, I couldn’t get there that morning. So I take  Chels to yoga and fifteen minutes before her class ends, an adult class begins. Having long since missed my own regular class, I desparately wanted to join and jokingly told the teacher that just before she went inside to teach. She said, "Come on in!"  I told her she made my day.  I went in, not really prepared with a towel or my yogi toees or a mat or water, but the spontinity and the love of my teacher inviting me in was healing. It gave to the parts of me that did all the giving this week and the parts that cried out that they needed to be nurtured.

Feel The Guilt But Do It Anyway

Amazingly as the fifteen minutes ended, I turned and saw Chels, who had just finished her class, looking through the window at me, she smiled and waved. I hurriedly got out of my pose and went to her but she said, "Mommy go back,  it’s okay. I’ll be fine” and her teacher chimed in to say she could stay with her while I finished. The class was just an hour total and had another 35 minutes or so left. 

I wish I could say that I went back in and had this blissful experience, but I didn’t I was clogged with guilt and though I was and even confessed to the teacher I felt that, I stayed until almost the very end, and I was really glad I did.

Here's What I Don't Want To Write About

I don’t really want to write about the struggle of motherhood. The guilt of motherhood. The feeling like I’m complaining, bitching, or nagging. I have so much to be grateful for, and when I write about this struggle, it feels wrong. Who am I to complain? Maybe it’s not complaining about the struggle that I want to do. It’s something else. To capture the indescribable.

This week I felt moments of intense emotional pressure and squeezing, and I felt this sharp and clear inability to meet my own expectation of good mothering. I snapped at my older daughter when I shouldn’t have, I begged and cursed at the baby during the 100^th hour of crying. I snapped, bitched, and nagged at my husband when I shouldn’t have. I am infallibly human and unable to be the calm, serene, do-it-all mom I want to be.

And yet...

I resent...myself?  Society?  The media? For my wanting to be this do-it-all serene mother. 

I don’t want to write about that so…

I don’t want to write about this, and, yet, I must blog. I don’t want to write about my writing or work for school this week. I don’t want to write about the stuck feeling I have– not a block, not a huge wall in front of me.  Just kind of inability to move my feet quickly, to push through the fatigue.  Yep. I am tired, and I long to take a break in the routine of writng, working, mothering…I long to go for a long walk with a girlfriend and talk about anything, even about the writing, working, and mothering. But I want to take a break from the treadmill of it.  I’m tired of doing, of not being able to slow down.  Of being sooo in the very moment. Of just trying to survive it all this week.

Ready To Do Homework

So now, having written what I didn't want to, having written about the tough parts of the week, my creative block is moved. Now I'm ready to get to that homework assignment. If you'd like to read what it was, click on the link below. 

http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddwr3rgq_75hfqgkmfz

Denial, Truth, Writing, and Listening to My 5 year old.

Here’s what’s happening when I write this week.  So I go along, click, clack, writing/typing away and then, suddenly I’m not sure what happens. When I first start, I feel myself inside the story, the plot and characters are just unfolding in front of me; each key stroke flashes a light on the darkness. The darkness is the story–it’s plot, characters, theme.  Writing is this long walk in the dark, and my creating is the light in this darkness. So, I create, the light is in front of me, the way it is when you drive at night and you look ahead and see the light on the road. But you know how when you look way ahead and all you see are the dots and beams of light far in front, and you kind of lose sight of the road? That’s what happens to me while I write.  I start off focused on what’s right in front of me, but, then– I don’t know what happens exactly.  Sometimes, I feel like the story is slipping away from me, so I hurry and look ahead, but all I see is this wall, and I can’t stop my approach to the wall. It’s inevitable. And, the closer I get, the slower my fingers are on the keyboard, until the wall is inches from me and my fingers stop completely.

This isn’t going anywhere…

What are you doing? More vapid, melodramatic, reality show bullshit?

Can you only write first person present tense?

This story is dumb. Really what the hell is it about?

Isn’t this the same story you have written 900 times…

Does the main character always have to reject sex and alcohol because she reads a lot of self help books and/or has a friend who acts as her shrink?

You are a one tricky pony my friend and that trick is up. 

So, then I take a breath, and stop and look around, talk to my daughter–yes, she is with me today as I write at Starbucks, and let me tell you, she is a prolific story teller.  She sits with her My Littlest Pet Shop figures and makes up elaborate stories about pets getting famous or two pets getting married. The greatest thing about her, though, is this total ability to being telling one story, get a little bored or off track of it and just switch it to another story. She is just having a good time. When I just stopped to take a break, I said to her, “I'm just not getting this story.”  She looked at me with her enormous chocolate eyes and patted me on the shoulder, “So just stop, Mom. Do something else.” I know.  I know she is right. Five year olds usually have this whole life thing down much better than grown ups.

“Just stop.  Do something else.”

I finally did. But the story…no, not the story, I’m not sure I give a shit about this particular story, the idea that I can’t GET IT, that’s nagging me.  I keep thinking I can get this…I just have to go back and try harder…

Really?  I don’t know. I worry now that I will do what I did last semester, spend all this time, the whole semester actually rewriting one story to the point where I HATED IT. That story from last semester–I haven’t looked at it since June and have no plans to ever look at it again.

How do I know if that’s what’s happening here?  I don’t hate this story, but since I started to revise it with my mentor’s feedback…I just feel like…See, I can’t even articulate what’s wrong.  I’m at the wall.  Looking at it as I write this. It’s a brick wall. You can’t post anything on it because nothing will stick. You can’t knock it down, and it’s tall. I can’t see the top, so I can’t go around it.

Hello, wall.

The wall doesn’t talk because– hello– it’s a wall. I want it to talk.  I want it to tell me WTF has happened to me since I started school.  Why does everything I have written or that I write feel sucky…? I feel disconnected from my writing.  I feel like I’ve lost whatever I thought I had.  Whatever connection to teenage years and the teenage mind. I feel old. I feel tired. I look back at my writing, and the only thing I really like and feel connected to is Maddie. I am so excited by the new book by the idea of going back and working on the ones that haven’t been published yet. That excites me. I feel connected to that. This short story stuff…I suck at it. More importantly, I am feeling connected to it.

I think I went to school to become the writer I thought I should be because the one I was wasn’t able to get a book contract. Maybe I thought back then, I am not literary enough. I don’t write deep beautiful books about swimming with dolphins or fantastical worlds. And I can’t seem to get the teen chic lit thing down either. My work is not enough…not enough of anything out there now. So I figured maybe I could change. I am a good student, and maybe someone can teach me how to be a real writer.

Aren’t I already a real writer?

That was kind of a major thing to write. I have never written that Truth down. Isn’t that reason–let me go to school so I can learn how to write in a way that gets me a contract–isn’t that kind of a completely unrealistic expectation– a kind of fantasy?  It’s magical thinking. It’s like saying there is a certain formula that leads to publication by a major publisher and that formula can be taught in an MFA program.

I can say this with full confidence: You get an MFA because you take your writing seriously and want to push yourself to grow. 

I don’t know.  Now I need to sit with this realization that I have been writing since January in the hopes that I will become changed into a literary writer who might have a shot at a book deal.  And I have to confront this realization too…that hope, that wish just isn’t coming true.  And, I have to look at the reality of the writer I am and the writer I want to be.

*After reading Joanne's comment I realize that I left something out of this blog.  I might have hoped for a possible shot at a book contract (what MFA student doesn't) but I did go into the program with the desire to grow as a writer and to add that professional credit as a writer and teacher.

Letting go

Funny how in one week, for me at least, my moods and feelings about my writing can fluctuate so much. I guess this is the life of a tortured artist…In my case, however, the torturing is all self induced. The thing is, unlike my teenage years, I am pretty happy in my life. I have an awesome family–my husband, kids, family, my work, and friends. I guess I struggle only in my head because there’s no other struggle really to be had! You know what? I think struggle is overrated and unnecessary. I bet can write better without all the self-induced b.s.

I attempted to write a story that dug deeply into a very painful part/time period in my life. My parents divorce.

And the verdict is…

I failed.

Yep.

I wrote about 22 pages of…blips, fits and starts, with maybe one actual scene…I ended this week feeling like complete and utter crap, too. By Thursday I was ready, yet again, to call it quits with school (my MFA program) and just hang up my proverbial pen–call it a day with the whole writing thing. I had trouble sleeping all week–yes, the heat is really bad and yes, I have a 13 month old…but I also have air conditioning and a baby who is a good sleeper. Suffice it to say, I am my own problem.

Speaking of, so what was my problem with writing this story?

I don’t know, exactly, but here’s what I learned:

You can’t write the story closest to your heart if every time you sit down to work on it, you want to throw your lap top across Starbucks and then stomp on it while screaming obscenities.

This is what I wrote in my journal on Friday:

The words don’t come. There’s not flow. I am blocked. I can’t write the story that’s in my head. It’s not fun. Maybe I am not cut out for this. I feel like I can’t quit. Not pride. Logistically. Quitting means losing a crap load of money, means I won’t get to study with all the fabulous, amazing courageous people at Solstice. But I am failing, and I don’t feel angry. I feel sad. I am in my own way, no one else. Frankly, this IS too hard and perhaps my years of resistance to getting my MFA was warranted, was instinctively right on. I don’t think I am going to make it through because I don’t have anything inside of me to write anymore. Nothing. All the ideas that come up are met with my own resistance, my own voice shaking a finger and saying, “That’s the same crap you’ve been writing. It sucks. Don’t bother. Can’t you do something better? Different? Deeper?”

I dream up stories about girls and the boys they lust/love/like. I want to write those. But when I go to do it, I feel like it’s meaningless and not beautiful, high literary quality. Vapid, Reality Show.

But the advice I keep getting is, write what you want to write. So, I guess this story about the two sisters who are in different ways deeply affected by their father and their parents impending split, which is torturous to write, I guess I have to stop. I don’t want to waste my time sitting here, day after day like I have been in the last week and a half, trying to write a story that just feels crappy inside, each time I sit down. It reminds me of when I dated this boy for a while in high school, and I absolutely didn’t like him romantically, but I kept telling myself I should. He was a “good” guy. We wound up breaking up. I’m not good at faking it.

So I give up this story that I don’t want to write.

Writing was an escape and love for decades for me, and now it’s torture. It feels like I was placed in a Math class, like Calculus, and I never took the prerequisites. The standard I’m holding myself to right now is impossible. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for the 24k run…


This morning, I had a nice, long, figure-out-my-struggle talk with my best friend (and husband). We took a long walk along the water where we live, our baby sleeping in the stroller and our older daughter with my mother. We just walked and talked–without interruption, without losing our train of discussion, and in so doing, I found the space and peace inside my head that just whispered, “Let go” and so…I did. I am letting go of the struggle with this story. In the case of this artist, struggle is not creating beauty. Therefore, I let go of struggle. But I am not giving up on writing. Never.

***Another version of this blog is featured on 5awesomeyafans.com.