A thought or two from away
A thought or two from away
small brave thing #184
Hello beautiful human,
So I’ve been a little bit away from this Space as I poem again. Or maybe it’s more accurate simply to write, I’ve been a little bit away. “Away” feels accurate to what poeming is, for me.
As I wrote on Monday, writing isn’t that exciting to see from the outside. It’s not actually that exciting on the inside either, many days. I pull out my current drafts. I read over one and feel for any small tugs or sparks. Nothing? Move on to the next. And the next. Some days one draft gets all my attention as I deep dive, crossing out, revising, adding in. Other days I meander through the pile tweaking here and noting there. As Oscar Wilde once said, I spent a morning placing a comma. Then in the afternoon I took it out. Occasionally when nothing in my drafts file speaks to me I page through my recent journal entries looking for phrases, moments to lift up and extract into possibility.
Does it sound boring? It really sort of is.
As Annie Dillard wrote, it’s important to find the kind of creative work where you can enjoy the boring parts. Because mostly making any kind of a thing, it’s boring and—unlike the videos we all watch of cooking and painting and all kinds of making— the boring parts can’t be skipped or sped over. Boredom is essential to creativity on every level.
If we aren’t bored out of our minds in a big way occasionally we won’t create anything really interesting. Sometimes we’re bored because we can’t figure out a next step and sometimes we’re bored because, well, painting ten thousand brush strokes or putting commas here or there and taking them out again is…boring.
This is why AI is such a mistaken approach to creative work. The repetitive parts—and the knotty places—are crucial. We aren’t trying to find shortcuts through.
But that’s a digression. My point is: there is a LOT of work behind the scenes for any writer. Drafts, whole chapters, novels, plays, volumes of poetry that never, ever see daylight.
And… there’s another reason I don’t video myself writing and share it with you all. Besides being boring, it’s…exciting. The wild privacy of the writing desk is enticing and even feels a little taboo, to insist on hours to myself, to prioritize such “unproductive” time, to disappear. To go away. My friend Laurel calls her daily writing time her “date” and in a way it is.
There has to be a certain level of self-forgetfulness to make anything. That’s the bliss of flow state. We’re no longer self-aware or self-conscious. We stop being nouns and become sheer verb. It’s exhilarating.
I love writing to you, here at An Inviting Space, with all the awareness I bring of audience and reader connection. This connection brings me joy every day and I’m grateful, always, for your presence.
And I will still always make time for my “away” and occasionally draw the curtains of silence around my desk. At home, I literally shut the door to “Mom’s Writing Room” as the kids call it. In the year 2024, drawing the blinds, closing the door, turning off the insta and fb and all the social media posts for a time feels counter-cultural and even risky. Will anyone be here when I show up again? There’s a small frisson of fear, for sure.
It also feels delicious.
xoS
September has aged like a good wine. The days are mellowing out and evening comes just a tad earlier each day. A monarch butterfly flutters past as I write this, surely getting ready for the big trip to Mexico. I’m looking forward to a conversation with a good friend this afternoon and then I’ll be headed north to visit the younger back at school, to take a few necessary and requested items and spend a few hours running errands and no doubt going out for dinner. I don’t want to miss a minute of it. At this point in my life I’m realizing I can’t do all the things—and while that is a difficult thing to come to terms with, there’s also the very real gift that I get to be so much more present for the things I do choose to do and spend my time with.
Today’s invitation: what flutters by in your view today?
Your attention and time are the true gifts. Thank you. xoS
I loved this post so much (and can really relate). The way you describe the writing process was fascinating in that my process is similar - and I do enjoy the boring of it. Sometimes the boring parts are my favorites.