Writing Is My Drink (30 page)

the real work of a relationship, in this case my relationship with

the reality of my ordinary divorced mom/writing life.

So my Walter Mitty thinking looks something like this: If

only I could be in a certain hippie place under certain groovy

conditions, I would once again get that groovy, hippie writing

feeling and effortlessly fill pages with authentic and seamless

prose.

The thing is I
have
had these Super Writing Days a few times, and unfortunately these certain stunning locales and bohemian

conditions do seem to have inspired them, which leads me to

this fantasy that if I could just return to one of those places, I

would have another Super Writing Day.

My Super Writing Days have come reliably in semirural

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settings where urban hippie types have transported themselves

with good coffee and a certain sensibility for art and music in

tow. On more than one occasion I’ve had Super Writing Days at

the Teahouse on Canyon Road in Santa Fe—yes, that’s right, a

mere 1,500 miles from my Seattle home.

The Teahouse is nestled (real y, nestled; people say “nestled”

when they mean “near,” but this real y is a case of big-“N” Nes-

tled) in the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains up a long,

sometimes dusty road of art galleries. The Teahouse is an old

adobe house of several rooms of cool white wal s and pris-

tine hardwood floors. Outside The Teahouse, it is perpetual y

80 degrees and inside it is perpetual y 70 degrees with a subtle

cross breeze flowing between the two opposing screen doors.

Although I would not normal y listen to Bob Marley, in the

Teahouse his music seems just right and is perpetual y playing

(sometimes alternating with songs that evoke nostalgia for the

best parts of youth and yet promise a sort of sophisticated life

that can only be purchased with a post-youth salary, such as

Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” covered by Miles Davis). This

music plays at a perfect volume, which allows you to be moved

by the music when you choose to be aware of it and also to forget

it’s playing when you fall into concentration. You are being qui-

etly indoctrinated into a world where getting to the beach or the

bistro is the tallest order of the day. Or maybe just working in a

perfect flow state on that involving but not overly taxing writ-

ing project. Sandaled and slightly reverential but not fawning

androgynous waiters bring coffee and then, later, a lunch menu.

They do not care that you will seemingly be staying for the rest

of time at Table 12. They believe in you and your work and do

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not resent you because they are not working on their one-man

shows or large abstract canvases at this moment. Is there Wi-Fi?

you ask. Yes, there is, but that’s of little consequence to you now as you fill page after page. You have your hippie writing groove

on now, and your only thought for the future is how you will

return here tomorrow.

The Teahouse is a place where the need to lol , lounge, and

loaf is understood. It’s a place where wasted time is time well

spent, but there’s the irony. In the Teahouse, the need for the loll is not so pressing because the teahouse environment provides

the loll state of mind for me. Surrounded by the lackadaisical, I

no longer need to create a buffer zone between the bustle-bustle

of life and my writing world.

The longer I go without a good writing day, the more sus-

ceptible I am to the Teahouse Fantasy. If only I could get to the

Teahouse or another similarly groovy location, then I would

write without struggle and false starts, I am sure of it. But let’s say I did go there and I did have those Super Writing Days; I

would still come home again. Home of orthodontist appoint-

ments (so many appointments) and teens texting about forgot-

ten lunches and rides needed. Home of my cluttered desk and

long to-do list. And home—no matter what might happen on

fantasy junkets—is where most of a book must be written. And

so here I am at home, showing up for my slow-thinking mind

and pages of false starts. But after enough slow thoughts and

false starts, the pace will quicken; it always does. And then it

won’t matter where I am.

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Try This

1. Write for ten minutes about wasting time. What’s your fam-

ily’s view on wasting time? In most cases, it’s pretty grim, but

most people are wasting much more time than they’re willing

to admit and not even getting to creative activities. How wil -

ing are you to waste time? To spend a day thinking, or dream-

ing? Scary stuff.

2. Set aside a day when nothing can be scheduled. A secular

Sabbath. A day when you can do whatever you want that.

Some of you are thinking: Big deal, I do that all the time. But

many others have not had a completely unscheduled day for

as long as they can remember. If this is you, you may find this

unnerving. But I think it’s a worthwhile challenge. By clear-

ing space in our schedules, we allow a type of thinking that

doesn’t occur in short spaces; we allow our minds to stretch

out into a wide open landscape.

3. Challenge: Schedule a day when nothing can be scheduled

that is also an Internet holiday. That’s right: your time and

your thoughts to yourself all day.

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17

Words, Fail Me not

Just as there is no way to become a published writer without

having been a rejected writer, there is no way to write anything

good without having written stuff that is truly bad. And that’s

just one of the many things about writing that always scares me

witless—scares me enough to keep me away.

It’s a trick, this continual talking myself down, this per-

suading myself back to the page. Somehow I do it, but the

monsters never go away for good. What I’ve learned, though,

is that almost every writer seems to have a set of demons of his

own.

It seems there’s no banishing the demons, so then we’re left

living with them. Naming them seems to help me. So I will call

my demons out from under the bed and introduce you to them.

Maybe you’ll know a few.

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#1 The Platonic Ideal

I squandered much of my youth half learning a lot of important

ideas, and this has gotten me into trouble. Sometimes, a couple

of half-learned ideas will get snagged in my mind, whirl around

in there, and gel into the shape of a potent tormentor. One of

these tormentors was born when I was introduced to the Pla-

tonic ideal in Philosophy 101. This is the idea—as I half learned

it—that the things that inhabit this earth are mere shadowy rep-

resentations of their ideal forms, which exist . . . somewhere. I

think in a cave. Like I said, I half learned it. And while I don’t

claim to understand it, somehow this sliver of knowledge stayed

in my mind. By itself it’s not that dangerous, just a whisper of a

poorly comprehended piece of philosophy. But then, within a

few years, my brain’s version of the Platonic ideal crossed paths

with a quote. And when those two came together, a nuclear

meltdown occurred that still radiates damage decades later.

The quote is from Michelangelo: “In every block of marble

I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and

perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough

wal s that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

You can probably see where this is headed. Sometime right

after the cold fusion of these two bits of knowledge, I came up this tormented belief: For any story—short story, article, novel, memoir, what have you—there is an Ideal Story, a perfect way to tel

that story. And my task is to uncover that story, to write it the way it was
meant to be told
. Yes, that’s right, apparently there’s a divine order of storytelling, and stories are meant to be told one ideal

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way. A writer’s job is simply to “hew away the rough wal s” and

release this ideal story as Michelangelo released his sculptures: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

So what does this belief in that Platonic ideal of the Story

mean for me? The first symptom is that I am very apprehensive to

begin a writing project—even a very small one, an essay, a chap-

ter (yes, even the chapter you’re reading now)—for fear of botch-

ing the start. Because, a botched start must surely be the starting point of missing the mark for the ideal. Couldn’t you just start

over? you ask. In theory, yes, but once the botched start is under

way, you’ve created a motion that was intended to carry you to the

end of the story, chapter, or what have you. And according to my

partial y learned Newton: Once that motion has begun, it takes on

a life and existence of its own. It has a destiny as a story that wil forever be in conflict with the destiny of what would have been.

It’s the genie that won’t pop back into the bottle.

So, yes, you can imagine how eager I am to start new writing

projects! I love believing that if I blow the beginning, the project will be destroyed beyond repair, even if I ball up the paper, tear

it up, or wipe out all evidence of that missed-mark start with the

delete key.

But even when I start out okay and it doesn’t feel like a botch,

there are still a million missteps I can take, right? So the worry

hangs out on my shoulder as I proceed.

The good news: Once I’m past a certain point—usual y mid-

way—I often become convinced myself that somehow I have

stumbled onto the story As It Was Meant to Be Told.

Why is this total y messed up? The thinking here is so flawed,

it’s hard to know where to begin, but first let’s say this: The joy in 2 3 9

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writing is the adventure of finding where the story will take you.

If there were some static ideal it was my job to unearth, I think

I’d have little interest in being the digger. Writing is smarter than all of us. The way a story will evolve is wildly unpredictable, and it’s in that unpredictability that most of us find something that’s actual y good (meaning it speaks to others). There is no ideal.

We are not chipping away to the angel underneath. Instead, we

are meeting the angel on the road and wrestling like Jacob. If we

come out alive, we have a story.

When I was a kid, I was petrified of clowns. And once, when

JoJo took me to a parade, I gasped when I remembered about

the clowns and looked over at her in the driver’s seat and asked,

“What about the clowns?”

“Just keep telling yourself ‘Clowns can’t hurt me’ when they

walk by.”

And that’s exactly what I did: I sat there on the curb mutter-

ing “Clowns can’t hurt me” over and over, and I got through—

even perhaps enjoyed—the parade.

So now I have to tell myself—and maybe you do, too—that

false starts can’t hurt me. False starts can’t hurt me. False starts can’t hurt me. Because, real y, they can’t.

So that’s our first demon.

#2: I Will Die All Alone Here and No One Will Find My Body

in This Sealed Tomb Known As Writing

For me, starting to work is a bit like diving into cold water. I

can hover over the edge of the pool all day, and I can’t make

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myself fall into a dive. It might as well be a pit of snakes. For me, work feels binary. Either you’re in—in the deep end, swimming

madly—or you’re on the couch. Or playing Scrabble online. And

no matter how many times I’ve learned the lesson that I real y

do like writing, working, swimming, I still feel this aversion to

starting. I feel like I’m giving up free wil . Once I’m in, I’ll be buried alive and unable to make contact with the outside world.

Just that. Just buried alive. No biggie.

So natural y, when you’re facing the prospect of being bur-

ied alive, the warm-up time can be long. Another cup of coffee.

Checking e-mail one more time. Maybe just run out and check

the mail. Start dinner? Go to the store? And sometimes, I actu-

al y never start writing that day, and my brain remembers those

days, and because it can remember, my brain is ful y aware of the

escape hatch, and the devil within strokes his goatee and says,

“You know, this doesn’t always end in writing. I’m not sure this