Someone told me a story today, about how they found a new beginning for their novel in an old journal, in a workshop exercise from several years ago. The written passage might change everything that follows, or it might not. All she knows right now is what she wrote back then has found its home.
Someone told me today that they had just finished reading On Writing (Stephen King) and it changes how they are approaching the novel they have been wanting to write for years, and now they are writing it. The approach might be the magical missing ingredient, or it might not. All he knows right now is that he is writing.
Someone told me today that I can write – that I can take a couple of paragraphs and say something relatable. I would have called it a poem rather than a couple of paragraphs but if they could ‘relate’ to it, that is all that matters right now. It means I am writing.
These seem as good a point as any to start writing this week, because I feel as though I have nothing much to say, and yet I still want to say it.
Such is the nature of being a writer. We think, we overthink, we underthink, we think around and in-&-out and backwards-forwards, which would be all very well, because everyone does all of that, all of the time, but then we (who call ourselves writers) insist on putting it on the page.
I walked home from the Sportspark, under the trees, looking at puddles and mud and wildflowers. I heard echoes of old songs and music I’m not familiar with but want to be. I smelt the earth. I acknowledged the oak “beautiful one, child of the earth and the sun”. And I thought about writing.
I have been completely uninspired this week. Calm, comfortable, but with a blank mind. This is what comes of living a quiet life.
I asked for a quiet life when I quit the stresses of the corporate one. Living more quietly, more creatively, maybe…I said. And I am beyond grateful for it.
Except: there are times – when quiet feeds so little into creative.
At least, it feeds less into the creativity that we’re told most people want to read. People want drama and trauma and post-trauma and recovery and reclamation and triumph. They don’t really want, don’t want to read about, the ordinary lives, the quiet ones, the ones lived with reasonably good fortune and sufficient (but not over done) hard work. Ordinariness doesn’t make for a book. It doesn’t even make for a story.
But you know what? I think it makes for a life worth living.
I think that I would opt to keep my quiet life even if it meant that my Morning Pages were forevermore filled with “I have nothing left to say”.
I would enjoy the peace, the quiet, the contentment. And I would still pick up my pen every morning.
I would write that the robin sings and the foxgloves are in flower. I would write my thanks for quiet neighbours, and buses, and trains, and the few afternoons when it does not rain.
I would welcome phone calls and try not to lament their absence.
I would write about the things in my house and why I keep them, or why I don’t.
I would write about the blueness, greyness, blackness, bleakness of the sky – or the myriad colours of green and how the early sun gilds the leaves after rain.
I would write about sleeping soundly, and waking slowly, and judging the hour purely by the quality of the strips of light between the blind slats. Maybe I would write about why I do not have curtains.
I would write from memory, from wishes, from frivolity. I might even write about what I’m planning to eat today…or what I would have, could have, should have, didn’t do yesterday.
More likely, I will try to describe that precise shade of slate-after-rain, or the confetti-soggle of washed-away wisteria petals. Or the way blue-tits bounce like Tigger through the air. Or why the garden lamps don’t shine, but street-lights block out the stars.
Perhaps if I remain quietly at home, I will find stories hidden in the dark recesses of my brain.
Maybe if I take intentional walks, I will shake them loose, or otherwise find pictures to take, moments to capture that I can distil, flowers whose names I might learn, whose mythologies might lead me down rabbit warrens or into foxholes where half-drowned inspiration breathes its last.
Perhaps I will stumble upon histories or ancient knowledge. Perhaps someone will speak to me and spark the flint that weighs me down.
Perhaps I will go visit a cousin and talk about old times over old photographs and young wine. Maybe the sisters can be reunited in their daughters, as unlike as they were.
Perhaps I will notice the first white roses when I return home.
I figure that if I keep putting the pen to the page, something…Some Thing…will emerge. I tell myself that the trick is only to start. I know that’s not true. I know that the real trick is also to continue.
