I’m reading Thursday evening at SoulFood CoffeeHouse in Redmond, Washington (click on the link to find directions). The other poets are Sandra Noel, Margaret Roncone, and Koon Woon.
7 p.m. Come early. Buy coffee!
Coffee cup top view on wooden table background
“I dwell in Possibility– / A fairer House than Prose–” (F.466)
It’s August, which for me means writing a poem a day and putting it in the mail to a fellow-poet, who may be waiting in Seattle, or Bellingham, or Australia to hear from me.
Every year I begin by reading a lot of short poems. Haiku are good. And I recently picked up a book by Kay Ryan, which does an excellent job making short = depth. But depth is something that my old friend Emily Dickinson does so well, and this year I found myself sticking close to her.
Inspired by the month-long postcard meditation on peace that I did back in February, I had already decided to choose a single topic to explore. Then it occurred to me that I could choose Dickinson as my “single” (and so not singular) topic. This choice opened up all sorts of inspirations. After the first postcard, I decided that I needed some guidelines, so here are a few I cooked up:
I’m looking forward to reading the 31 postcards that wing their way to my mailbox!
Daughter #3 turns 18 today — my elf-child, the little curly-haired blondish creature who at age 4 wanted to marry her father and have me be their “little kid” — the 10-year-old who had a summer goal to swim every day until school began in September — the irrepressible 14-year-old who turned our lives upside down with her right-on-schedule adolescent antics. Eighteen!
Before I had children: 1) I had a much better memory for faces and names, and I prided myself on always knowing all of my students from the first day of class onward; and 2) I thought I had all the time in the world.
I was going to write, sure (I was born to write!). But I could do it this afternoon, or tomorrow, or sometime next week, or when this quarter was over, or when the summer or holiday break finally came. No hurry.
After my husband and I adopted twin daughters when I was 37 years old, I found myself standing in a classroom at the University of Washington campus, and declaring to my students in a slightly huffy, slightly hysterical voice:
“My children are not going to be my newest excuse to avoid writing!”
If I’m remembering it correctly, I had been attempting to explain the importance of making time for writing — something I had not been doing — and an older student, in a knowing and reassuring tone, said, “You’ll write when your kids are older.”
You don’t write because you have scads of time. You don’t write because you have a great idea to write about (of course you do!). You write because you have a habit of writing. You develop a habit of writing, by writing. And this is true for all of us, children or no.
I’ve also heard so-called experts say that if you’re a writer, then you don’t have to be encouraged to write. But I think encouragement is a fine thing, especially if your days are getting eaten up by birthday parties for ankle-biters. (I mean, cherubic darlings.)
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice. You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence”. ― Octavia E. Butler
So while you’re waiting for your big idea, for the room of your own that you think you need to write about your big idea, work right now on your habits.
Here’s how you do that:
Give up forever your dream of getting blocks of time. You do not need blocks of time, you need a few minutes there and fifteen minutes here and the occasional uninterrupted hour. On the other hand, if someone invites you to a weekend writing retreat and your spouse or some other suitable caregiver agrees, jump at the chance.
And please, please take note of this — your children will get older, but being their mom is probably not going to get easier. If you have a habit of using them as an excuse then it will soon enough be your grandchildren’s chance to take over that role.
You can download the PDF of my very short book, A Writer’s Alchemy, for more pointers about writing every day.
Most of all, write now.
Life has had me caught up in it of late, a whirlwind of activity — you know about the graduations, the party — and this week, worries about my mom and visits with my wonderful sisters and their families. More is on the way, as it’s birthday month at our house. “I haven’t written in a month,” a friend said at Writing Lab last Wednesday. Another: “I’ve got that beat — I haven’t written in years!” I suspect this is an exaggeration, but I get it: too busy to write; too many other things to do.
No matter how busy I am, I write every day. Even back in the day — when on top of everything I deal with now I was teaching full-time — writing every day kept me grounded. I did not always write anything of substance, but every day I opened my notebook and I wrote. I wrote letters to God. I wrote about my headache or my heartache. I wrote down a tantrum some charming little person had whipped up, or the adorable thing some other little person had said. I wrote about what a terrible mother I was. I wrote teen-tiny encouragements to myself. (You are not a terrible mother; wanting to be a better mother is a great goal; look at you, despite everything, writing!) 
Writing every day is what brought me out of that wilderness, and, as I know from long experience, it will lead me through this wilderness, too.
I am a great re-reader of books, and one book that I reread almost every year is Louise DeSalvo‘s Writing as a Way of Healing.
Recently I misplaced this book. I saw it in a used bookstore,
didn’t buy it (I was sure I’d find my copy soon), had to go back (to two different bookstores) and search for it. Found it, bought it. Later that day my old copy turned up. Interesting, how that works.
I suspect that it’s time to revisit the book. I open it and I find these questions, which lead me…back to my journal.
In my journal from last year — which I’ve been thumbing through because I just know I wrote down a story there — I found this scrap of poetry. Something else that shouted out loud to me.
I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain
it must sometimes make a kind of singing.
–Robert Hass, “Faint Music”