That Smell? Oh, That's Just the Hyperbole

Here's a little something from the February, 1999 issue of The Leaky Pen.

I hesitated posting this because of all the hyperbole. It's what happens when you don't have another set of eyes looking over your work (even editors need editors). But I saw a few grains among all the chaff, so here it is.

Desire

All I want to do is write. I'm sure that's because I have a full-time job doing something else.

I want to write so bad tears are just below the surface. Passion is riding the winds inside me. There's a tsunami inside and it won't—come—out. My pen seems too little to let such a storm flow through it. What wants to come out? What is my purpose? I feel it is only to find those right words.

No, that's not right. It's not finding the right words. What if I found them tonight? Like the Lost Chord? Would that mean that I would never need to write again?

The purpose of my life as a writer is to embark on the journey, new, every day. There are only right words for this day. This moment. And these are the ones for today. The words of quiet. The quiet place where the pages hold still as I try to channel the storm and give it form.

The Foundation of Writing

Do you practice your craft of writing every day? For those of you who play a musical instrument, you put in practice for one performance. And if you don't practice, your performance stinks, right? Why would your writing be any different?

Writing practice is the foundation of all writing. It is the air I breathe, the water I drink. The process of keeping my hand moving for a specific amount of time (10 minutes, for instance) unlocks those places inside that contain the important things I need to say as a writer.

After 12 years of writing practice, I'm only recently discovering the things I have to say, my deep reasons. The experiences in my life that have been composting for all these years are now yielding rich fruit as I daily put pen to paper, turning and turning, keeping my hand moving.

In Wild Mind, by Natalie Goldberg, she points out the obvious, and at the same time, not so obvious. "Reading a book about writing is different from actually getting down and doing writing."

The Leaky Pen,  From the Editor, February 1999

Re-Thinking Natalie

I did something this morning I haven't done for years. I blew the dust off my fountain pen, put a new ink cartridge in, opened a notebook (the paper kind) and wrote.

June 23, 2013

Words are nothing really. I mean you can't see them when they're spoken. Remember the last time you heard people nearby speaking in a foreign language? Those are words, floating around with no meaning. But when we write them down we give them shape. In some way they take form, give form to our thoughts.

I remember buying Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" from a book club back in the '80s. Holding it in my hands, the answers. Here's a way to write, a way to get those tangly words out of my head and onto paper. That's all I was looking for. At least now 30 years later, that's what I think I was looking for. For many years I treated that [book] like the gospel for writers. Good news, yes. Truth crystalized and given form. I could hold it. Read it. And every time I read it, opened it, it told me the same things. It became a comfort.

Then I heard a recorded version of it. Natalie was reading her book. I could hear the same words I was familiar with. But then unexpectedly at the end of the chapters she had some new things to say. Things that have given me much to think on ever since. For example, she had said to buy a fast-writing pen. She said she uses a cheap Shaeffer fountain pen, the kind you can buy at a corner drugstore. So that's where I went, and that's what I bought. In fact, that's what I'm using to write these words with right now. Buy a college-ruled notebook, cheap, so you're not afraid to write stupid, crappy words, whatever comes to mind. I did that. I've got a box full of those notebooks.

Then the surprise came on the tape. She said she doesn't use fountain pens now. At least not exclusively. Just use whatever. As long as it's fast. I laughed. One of those times when your perspective shifts. And you see things sharper, clearer. Things about yourself. I realized what a trap the written word can be. The fact that it's tangible gives it importance. It's more important than any thoughts or words that I've ever thought or written. Because nothing I've ever written exists in as exquisitely tangible a shape as a book. If it's in a book it automatically has weight, in both senses of the word.

She talked about that. Lighten up people. Nobody has all the answers for you. Only you do. And the way you find out what those answers are for you is to put the pen on paper. Of course I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember what she said exactly. But I do remember how my own perspective on writing shifted. One day I cleaned my pen, put it in a cup on my desk with some other pens, and didn't touch it for thirteen years. I guess I needed some time to figure out if I had anything worth writing about.