Getting Naked
[image error]Writing is so hard. I am always convinced that it must be harder for me than it is for everyone else. That I am slower, less creative, less deep than the writers I admire. That while I am sitting here laboring over a paragraph, my more talented friends are cheerfully tapping away, fully certain of what they want to say, knowing how to get it said -- brilliantly -- and get on with their day. As I type these words, I look up and see that it's already dark outside, the oatmeal box from breakfast is still on the kitchen counter, I haven't vacuumed the crumbs off the floor. The post I've been working on for most of the day isn't in any shape to publish, and now I'm out of time. There is dinner to make, house-straightening to do.
Meanwhile, I've been conversing with a gifted younger writer friend who is struggling with her own manuscript, a memoir. She is floundering, not sure how to proceed. I read her pages over the weekend and found myself hungry for more than she had been willing to offer, yet at times a bit impatient with what was actually on the page. I couldn't honestly tell her that her book is a book yet; it isn't. But such feedback is as painful to give as it is to receive. I'd much rather be her cheerleader, jumping up and down and waving pom-poms, than her critic, searching for words to explain what isn't working. And yet, most of us need both -- support and honesty; not to mention the encouragement to keep going even when the road ahead seems anything but clear.
How much easier it would be if someone could tell us exactly what to do, the way I was once taught, back in my editing days, to create a profit and loss statement for the books I wanted to acquire. If only it were as simple as: fix it like this, write about that, change this around, and you'll have it.
Writing isn't rocket science. There is no right way, no wrong way; we writers are allowed to break all the rules, to make it up as we go along, to have things our way. But the alchemy by which words on a screen or printed page become greater than the sum of their parts, missives aimed right at the heart of some unknown reader, is not easily understood. If there were a manual that explained how to do this -- how to craft a compelling story, how to grab a perfect stranger's attention and hold it, how to take the stuff of our own everyday lives and make it interesting to the rest of the world, well, a lot more of us would be doing it.
I'm not sure if I wasted the the last four hours, or if the post that I'm not posting will ever see the light. But it's time now to go see what's in the refrigerator, to let the day's work be what it was (at least the e-mails got answered!), and to take some comfort in the fact that, although writing is hard for me, it's probably almost as hard for everybody else, too. And it's worth it. There is no manual, but in lieu of the how-to book, I go back again and again to the words of May Sarton. She can't tell me how to be a writer, but she sure does tell me what's required.
"I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with our personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human beings and as artists, we have to know all we can about each other and we have to be willing to go naked."
