More Imperatives for Establishing a Writing Practice

Imperative #6: Notice how free you are when you write and celebrate it.

When you write, you get to make hundreds, maybe thousands of judgment calls a day.  You’re the boss. When I was a kindergartner my teacher checked the box on my report card that said, Works best alone. That was true then and it’s true now. Be glad you have been called to a job that allows you to be free.

 Imperative #7: Know that you are not alone. If you have been silenced for a long time, parenting or working at another profession, know that you are not alone.  Imagine a circle or ripples of women working at what they love.

Imperative #8: Affirm what you need to believe. Beginnings are not only for the young.  If you are starting in mid-life, every day tell yourself:  I’m in a good position to be a beginner at writing.  You have life experience that someone in her twenties couldn’t possibly have amassed. And this, too, can help: The discipline you needed on those other paths will serve you now that you are writing. This sort of self-talk – call it what you will, affirmations or positive thinking – can be important all along the way in the writing process. Sometimes with writer’s block you might need to repeat to yourself whatever works: “I’ve done this before, I can do it again.” Or: “Writing is a joyous process on the sentence level.”  Of course, remember what the poet William Stafford said about “writer’s block” – LOWER YOUR STANDARDS.  So another good affirmation might be: It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.

What's Up & Coming Besides Daffodils

The past week I have been in a tunnel of work. I signed on to write an essay about the town where I go when I say, "I'm going to town," a hard task. I live six miles from town and I might as well be twenty miles from town or fifty miles from town when I'm out here. It's not unusual for me to stay home four days in a row, except for walking the dogs. So that's where I've been. I went to town. I interviewed people. I heard about the old days when a red neon rocking chair was the very thing kids looked forward to when their parents drove down Main Street. I hauled home a huge Midwestern encyclopedia from the library. I read a book of essays by other Indiana writers. I took 20 pages of notes to write a 1500 word essay. Done now. 

Traffic on the blog has diminished. I hope everyone comes back. Soon we will begin posting short book reviews. And a kind soul at school says he will help me set up a system whereby you can subscribe to receive an email anytime there's a new post. I am trying to entice some of my favorite women poets to give me craft talks or essays to post.

Stay tuned.  

Establishing a Writing Practice/Imperative #5

Imperative #5: Approach establishing a writing practice the way you would getting in physical shape. If you’ve been a couch potato for decades, you wouldn’t suddenly run ten miles or bench press your own weight. Little by little, you’ll gain mastery in writing and the long hours of loneliness will become a solitude you crave the way people who work out crave the gym or the running trail. 

Carolyn See, novelist, memoirist, critic, and teacher, writes this in her wonderful book, Making a Literary Life: 

"I read somewhere that it was a good idea to write a thousand words a day. Virginia Woolf said it, and Kay Boyle." So that's what Carolyn See does. If a thousand words (4 double-spaced pages) sounds too scary, start with fewer words as your goal. Agree to write a page a day and work your way to one thousand.

First 20 sit-ups, then 100. Just do it.  

Interview with Stephanie Dickinson

Please check out the mini-interview I did with short story writer Stephanie Dickinson. Go to Interviews in the column to the right. I loved Stephanie's story in the recent Glimmer Train.  She has two beautiful cats and sent a photo of them, which I will post soon, along with her photo. 

Teaching & Writing: Holding Down Two Jobs

This is about the time in the semester when it hurts to give up writing time, but I usually do, in order to be prepared to teach my classes. This morning I was up around five, but instead of writing, I made my high-test Italian roast coffee, returned to bed, and opened up Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Interpreter of Maladies," the story my undergrads were assigned. My house was quiet. A cat came up to my lap. The coffee was heavenly. And I read, pencil in hand, and the story naturally presented me many avenues in, avenues I hoped would give my undergrad students permissions in their own work. I thought at that moment how lucky I am to have such a job: in bed with a cat, reading an excellent story. 

But I do miss those novel characters who were left hanging. A prom set fire. My protagonist called back to Mississippi from a tryst with an old boyfriend. Soon, soon.