Muddling

Dear Karen -

I am thinking of Luisa’s letter to us. In particular that last paragraph about her grandfather making the stew that would feed the family. “I know how this is done,” she wrote. Lately Luisa has been posting pictures on Facebook of homemade bread and pizza. There are some people who dislike pictures of people’s dinners. I am not one of these people. I like it a lot. I think the value of domesticity is given short shrift in this society, and food is one thing that ties us all together.

I love to cook. Cooking my own food is taking care of myself. On book tour, living in hotel rooms and eating restaurant food, I can feel my body changing. I can feel the energy of commerce entering my gut. I not only miss food that is healthier, but I also miss the act of preparing it. Cooking for me is as close to instant gratification as I am likely to get, and an artist needs some sort of daily I.G. dose, because art can take a very long time to produce. I work for years on a book.

A fiction writer must always invent the next story. If the writer is like me, the character inhabits her. She is swept into the story. She lives two lives. She takes out the trash, brings home the groceries, cooks the food and serves it and eats it, but just that morning she might have been sobbing at her desk over the death of one of her “people.” During the writing of my last novel I sobbed at the death of one of my “people.” Even though I knew from the beginning that this character would die, I hadn’t yet gotten to know him, and after I did I felt like I’d lost a great friend. I’d certainly lost one of my favorite characters. To this day I cannot read that scene without crying. No wonder I want to fix dinner. One would hope that dinner is not so emotional.

But the hardest part of writing for me is not the writing, not the obsession, not the living in two worlds; it is moving from one work to the next. I mourn the end of work on a book, and the loss of characters who have intensely inhabited me. I don’t feel like myself anymore, and the only thing that will make me feel like myself is a new story to write, and new characters, but they don’t just show up. I have to wait for them. Eventually I have to go looking for them. Eventually I may have to stalk them. I hate stalking characters. I wish they’d just knock on my door.

I am reading The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes. I remember the first time I read this book, what an eye-opener it was for me to realize that other writers also had fear and self-doubt. In fact famous writers had/have it. I didn’t know that. I thought I was the only writer who ever felt so anxious and shaky.

From the book: “When Paris Review wanted to interview him (E.B. White) for its Writers at Work series, White said he’s be better qualified for one on Writers Not at Work.”

That’s E.B. White – not working! But what exactly is “working?”

Currently I am both not at work and at work. I feel guilty when I am not putting words on paper. I call this not being at work, and I feel that it proves I am not a writer. Why do I put this on myself? I don’t understand it. It’s not as though I am under contract (I hated that). It’s not as though I have a clock to punch. It’s not as though I don’t know, in my heart of hearts, that “muddling” as Brenda Ueland calls it in her book If You Want to Write is a part of the job description. It’s just that I have not figured out when I am muddling and when I am procrastinating. How do other writers know the difference?

Much love – Nancy