Writers Gotta Write

Yes, we do.

But we also have to not die.  At least until we are published.

I have not blogged in ten days, and it has been a difficult ten days.  Writing is constantly on my mind.  I am always writing.  In fact, before I went on my hiatus from writing I had at least four separate blogs running through mind at different times, sometimes blending, separating, blending separating, like entwined branches of a twisted old tree.  Katy Perry's lyrics will spark a topic in my mind and I will not be able to stop myself from writing in my head.  When I was in college, I would write while doing the dishes, laundry, dusting, while I was out running, or driving to school or work.  I can see the words unfolding on the page.  I imagine the delete key, backing up, nope, can't say that, uh uh, don't really mean that, and so on until I finally get in front of the keyboard and begin spilling my thoughts onto the page.

The problem is that in my life now, it can be a great distance from my mind to the keyboard.  In terms of immediate need, Baby takes top priority, then Work, then Self, then Husband, then Brother.  And by immediate need I mean that Celaya will not sit idly by while I write; I cannot write from work; I cannot write unless I know I'll sleep at least 6 hours that night (I typically write at night); Carlos deserves my attention; and by the time Teno comes out to talk to me about whatever show he is watching, or insist that we finally watch The Conjuring after weeks of him waiting, I simply cannot turn him away so that I can write.

When my life is normal, I have no problem saying, "no, I have to write."

But life has not been normal lately.  My perfect balance has been pushed to its limits and it has taken everything I have as a thirty five year old woman well versed in what happens when life loses its balance to maintain my balance.

So I've slept.  I've spent time with my husband.  I've walked-wandered-strolled-stopped to look at butterflies with my toddler.  We all finally sat down to watch The Conjuring.  All of my Christmas shopping is done (see upcoming blog on Christmas).  In short, I have worked on getting firmly back to the Woman Wife Mama place I am so hell bent on occupying.

And I have returned to the keyboard, to talk about the very thing I have been missing so much:  writing, and why I have been missing it.

One thing I have heard much from other writers, and something I have noticed myself often, is that good writing comes from loads of reading.  So while I have not had time to sit down and focus on writing at my desk, I have done a fair amount of reading in the last few weeks, all of which has given me food for additional thought.  The easiest thing to read in order to keep reading as a busy mother and wife who works is an article, essay, or blog.  A few days ago I happened to be having a conversation with a coworker on the essays of female fiction writers.  She was recommending a local author, Rebecca Solnit, whom I have not read (she is now on my list).  I was extolling the work of Jennifer Weiner, whom she has not read.

I remembered reading a book by women artists on turning 30 when I was 30 and thinking that one of my favorite essays was by Jennifer Weiner, an author I have loved since I happened across her book, Good In Bed.  I love her voice.  I love her activism.  I love her philosophy.  I was fortunate to have a free schedule in that moment and looked her up online, only to find an incredible piece on her website specifically for people looking to get published.  I have included her link below.

http://www.jenniferweiner.com/forwriters.htm

While I am certainly not looking to get published at this point, I do think about what I would write if I were to write a novel.  Fiction?  Fictionalized memoir?  Book of essays?  Fantasy with socio-political bent?

I am not sure, which is why I have dozens of beginnings to stories and essays saved on my laptop, but I have neither truly finished nor sent anything out.

What I do have is this blog, which is, to me, my lead in.  Here, I can work through ideas of all kinds to exercise my writing muscle, without stressing too much about perfection in terms of structure, development, and organization, all the while keeping those things in mind because I simply cannot help it.  Does this post have a clear purpose?  Does that post flow well from idea to idea?  Does the beginning wind appropriately through the middle and toward the end?  All of these critical questions are in my head as I type away, cut and paste, delete, and, ultimately, post.  Too many commas?  Probably.

Most of what Weiner says in her essay for writers I had either already heard, or already intuited, but again, I enjoy her writing; it is nice to be reminded of things like:

"a writer writes. If you're going to be a writer, nothing, not even a difficult major, can stop you. You'll write poems, you'll write stories, you'll begin a novel about suicide or bisexuality or a suicidal bisexual that will forever languish in a shoebox beneath your bed, but you will write. You'll do it in your spare minutes, you'll snatch time before work or eschew prime-time TV after. You'll think of stories while you're walking the dog or driving to work. You'll do it because it's your passion and your calling, because doing it makes you happier than almost anything else, because, really, you don't have any choice."

And she's right.  I have been writing for as long as I can remember.  I journaled when I was much younger.  I created entire books full of alternate versions of my own life so convincing, it would seem, that when my younger sister found one of my journals many years later packed away in my parents' garage, she went to my mother crying.  "Mom?  Is there something you want to tell me?"  She asked through tears.  You see, I had written an entire journal as a twin girl from Mexico who had been forced to lie about my identity, dye my hair from its natural black, wear contacts over my crystal blue eyes, and be separated from my twin.  My real name was, apparently, Christina.

I have always found ways to write, fiction, non fiction, poetry.  I love typing, writing in cursive, and simply thinking about what it is I want to write.  

But, in addition to not dying, writers also have to live.  Weiner includes in her tips for writers necessities like: troubled childhood.  Check.  Miserable love life.  Been there.  And, one that really struck me, get a dog.  Okay, not for a second would I compare my daughter to a dog.  But the intention is the same.  Weiner writes about having the time to think through your thoughts as you walk your dog, and honestly, life with my dawdling toddler usually gives me a ton of time to think.  She is admiring a tiny pebble stuck in mud, and for much of the time I am admiring her admiration of this awesome object in a new situation she has never encountered before in her twenty one months on earth.  But I am also picturing words, thinking through ideas, scrapping bad ones, and so on.  

I need the moments with my daughter, the shopping excursions in San Francisco, the trips uphill to the park, the late night movie fests, to be alive as a person and do things worthy of writing about as well as to have time to reflect on the life I have lived, am living.  

Reflection.  That is probably the most important piece missing when I do not write.  Time for refection. I have been living.  I have been sleeping.  I have had no concentrated time to reflect.  Because I felt as though I had been missing valuable moments of Celaya's life in my five week crazy hustle bustle schedule, I hyperfocused on her admiration of the pebble.  I made sure to look her in the eyes more often, to listen to her words more intently, to wait through her stuttering little voice until she found the write words so her own communication could blossom.  I poured myself into my home and my family in an attempt to make up for having been gone the extra time. 

And I have, I believe made up.  After almost two weeks of radio silence from Shanna As Writer, I am here, writing once again.

I am not an avid fan of poetry, more of a distant, fondly appreciative relative, but William Wordsworth's words on reflection have stuck with me over the years since I first read them in college:

". . . Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:  it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility:  the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.  In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on . . . the mind will upon the whole be in a state of enjoyment."  ("Emotion Recollected in Tranquility")

You have powerful feelings about something that originates in your ability to have calmly reflected upon it (Katy Perry, anyone?).  You continue to reflect on those feelings until the calm transforms into contemplation.  From contemplation you begin to write.

If I am not writing, if you are missing my blog (as I most surely am) it is because one of those key ingredients is missing from the recipe for writing well.

And I will either write well, or not at all.

At least not that anyone can read.