I'm in a weird place right now.
For the first time in ages, writing isn't so urgent to me. I first wrote that it isn't so important to me, but that's not true. It's important to me that I write, to make sense of my world through words, and that I put those words on paper. Writing helps me stop and focus long enough on something that I can meditate on it and figure out what's going on in my heart and what I want to do in response to that.
I guess I could say that publication isn't so urgent for me, either. It's still a goal, still out there as something that I am pursuing and will continue to pursue, but I've realized that I'll still have a life I like even if I never have a novel published. Even if I'm not good enough, don't have enough time, find that I hate the whole process, God has given me a life that I want to live. There's nothing to prove, nothing to win, no value that I have or don't have based on whether or not someone likes what I write enough to put it in book form.
And most days, I believe that.
Writing is a particular instance of something I'm trying to do on a much greater basis right now. It's all part of my meditations on "enough."
I've spent so much time living in the future--hoping for things, thinking about how much better my life would be if I had more, if things were different, if I were more important, had a wider audience, could say the things that I think matter to people who could actually change. I've wanted to be chosen, gifted, talented, recognized, wanted, valued, and respected in ways that aren't present in my current life, and so I've looked to the future as not only the place where I get all those things, but as the place where I am finally living, finally someone of value, finally someone who matters.
That's all a load of crap.
The truth is that I tend to think that I'm not living the life I would have chosen if I'd been given a cafeteria and been able to pick and choose every element, but I don't know that. Maybe I did stand in that cafeteria with God, one day, looking at the possibilities and choosing which ones represented what I really wanted my life to be about. And even if that didn't happen, this is the life God has given me: this apartment, this job, this husband, these friends. There has to be value in living this life, in making choices in this context, and not just trying to get out of it and into one that I like better.
It's hard to be normal. It's harder than I'd ever thought. I thought normal was what happened when you didn't try to do anything else. But normal is it's own version of special, with it's own struggles, hardships, joys and graces. Sometimes, I'm ashamed to be normal, ashamed that I haven't made myself into something more or that I haven't been specially asked to do something important and out-of-the-ordinary. But I fight that shame because it's also a bunch of crap.
I also don't feel so much of a need to talk about my life. I live it, and I try to love it. It's not that I don't want all of you to know what's going on with me, but more that I'm spending more time living and less time sorting it all out into blog-length bits. Overall, I think that's a good thing, though I miss being around here more. And it means that my posts (like this one) are a little more garbled than I'm used to, because I haven't put them together like I used to. But it feels good to focus on living on not on thinking. Don't get me wrong...I still think, and I think thinking is good. But I think I've thought myself into a corner in some areas and I want to get out of those. And I'm willing to be an infrequent blogger who writes disconnected posts if that's what it takes!
23 February 2009
04 February 2009
Life is not all about forward motion
Manna, meat,
and the stuffed,
astonished faces
of Israel.
Bread of heaven
sustaining always,
if need be.
Does that mean
we'll be here
forever?
Stuck in a
darkish place.
I close my eyes and see
more dark.
Hidden behind
enveloping hands,
so close I could touch
if only I could see.
Solace and
loneliness,
so close, in the
dark and silent night.
More manna
makes sense
or is the answer
in the wandering?
and the stuffed,
astonished faces
of Israel.
Bread of heaven
sustaining always,
if need be.
Does that mean
we'll be here
forever?
Stuck in a
darkish place.
I close my eyes and see
more dark.
Hidden behind
enveloping hands,
so close I could touch
if only I could see.
Solace and
loneliness,
so close, in the
dark and silent night.
More manna
makes sense
or is the answer
in the wandering?
28 January 2009
Reading for life
As I start to rewrite my novel, I've been thinking a lot about the reading I've done over the years, why I've done it, and what I've gotten from it. Honestly, I've been trying to motivate myself to start over. I mention it on the other blog in the link above, but starting over is hard...it's hard to remember that the work I've done so far still means something, even though I've found a better way to say it all.
But back to reading. I always figured that I read to escape, to give my mind something to do, to create worlds and friends in my head when I didn't like the world around me and didn't feel like I had any friends. But I've been reading The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner. She talks about how most writers read, and many started reading because the world didn't satisfy, because they wanted to understand things that weren't explained to them and wanted to know how people functioned and how life worked beyond their experience.
That's totally me!
I mean, I read for all those other reasons, too. But reading has given me so much more than escape, so much more than people to populate my world when the real relationships didn't work or didn't satisfy. I could make a list of the things that reading has given me, but it would go on forever. I'm more intuitive, more big-picture, more interested in psychology and sociology and spiritual growth, more mature, more understanding, more intelligent, more insightful, more creative, more connected to the middle of who I am because of books. I credit a lot of my emotional maturity to the fact that I read and experienced many characters' growth along with them, even before I'd experienced that particular type of growth for myself. I credit a lot of my good decision making to experiencing poor decision making and its consequences through characters. I credit some of my faith to watching God work in different characters lives and experiencing, with them, the ups and downs of that relationship.**
Powerful things, these books. Powerful enough to make me say that I want to try again, to keep writing in hopes that someday I can touch someone the way my heart has been touched so many times.
**On a side note, I've begun to hope that the characters who have touched my life in these ways and so many others are somehow alive in heaven. Maybe it's a pipe dream, maybe I'm totally off the wall, but maybe not. And how cool would that be for an artist, to know that God not only leg him create something on paper, but that his creation has somehow been given life. Please God? Could the real people and the book-people somehow live together?
But back to reading. I always figured that I read to escape, to give my mind something to do, to create worlds and friends in my head when I didn't like the world around me and didn't feel like I had any friends. But I've been reading The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner. She talks about how most writers read, and many started reading because the world didn't satisfy, because they wanted to understand things that weren't explained to them and wanted to know how people functioned and how life worked beyond their experience.
That's totally me!
I mean, I read for all those other reasons, too. But reading has given me so much more than escape, so much more than people to populate my world when the real relationships didn't work or didn't satisfy. I could make a list of the things that reading has given me, but it would go on forever. I'm more intuitive, more big-picture, more interested in psychology and sociology and spiritual growth, more mature, more understanding, more intelligent, more insightful, more creative, more connected to the middle of who I am because of books. I credit a lot of my emotional maturity to the fact that I read and experienced many characters' growth along with them, even before I'd experienced that particular type of growth for myself. I credit a lot of my good decision making to experiencing poor decision making and its consequences through characters. I credit some of my faith to watching God work in different characters lives and experiencing, with them, the ups and downs of that relationship.**
Powerful things, these books. Powerful enough to make me say that I want to try again, to keep writing in hopes that someday I can touch someone the way my heart has been touched so many times.
**On a side note, I've begun to hope that the characters who have touched my life in these ways and so many others are somehow alive in heaven. Maybe it's a pipe dream, maybe I'm totally off the wall, but maybe not. And how cool would that be for an artist, to know that God not only leg him create something on paper, but that his creation has somehow been given life. Please God? Could the real people and the book-people somehow live together?
23 January 2009
Dearest, Darling Novel
I've been thinking about this post for weeks but haven't put it up yet, at least in part because The Sinus Infection That Doesn't Die seems to have taken up residence in my head and I would swear that it seeps into my brain. Oozes, maybe.
A few...days? weeks?...ago, LL Barkat posted this, where she features a letter to her being-born book. It fed her mind and her writing and allowed her to come back to it with different eyes. Since then, I've written several letters to my first-drafted novel, and this is a conglomeration of all of them. I'd hoped to find, in the writing of these letters, what wasn't working about the book, because my intuition told me something had broken and I didn't know what. I did figure out the problem, and I'd like to think the letters contributed at least a bit.
Dearest Novel,
I love you. I feel like I need to say that straight out, so I don't forget it in the wandering, confused place I feel like we've entered in the last several days. Because it is confusing to know that I love you and also that something isn't working. I feel like I've almost abandoned you, like the temptation is to leave behind what doesn't work and find something that does. But the truth is, no matter where I go from here, something will always be unfinished if I let you languish in this state. I'll look at you out of the corner of my eye, pretending not to see but really seeing nothing else, and I'll always wonder what might have been.
I don't like wondering what might have been. This dislike seems to have served me well thus far, having played a key role in netting me, at the very least, a husband. So I trust it again, and plug away at looking you square in the face and finding a shape that fits both what you've become and what I want to say, through you, to the world. You will be finished, someday, even if it's only so I can point to you and say, "That? That was my first novel," and beam with pride.
So I'll sit with you, if that's what it takes, though I don't promise a terribly high tolerance for banging my head on the wall. I'll sit with you and try to figure out how to put the pieces together a different way. I'll walk around and around you, looking at all the angles until I find one that works. And then I'll rebuild, if I have to, or at least rearrange, until the pieces fall together in a different way.
This process feels like one big game of pickup sticks, that most frustrating and odious of games, or maybe Jenga, which was always a lot more fun. Either way, I want to pull from you what is unnecessary, what doesn't work, and leave in place your core, your weight-bearing walls. Of those, I'll tear down what I have to, though I'd rather not bring the whole house down on my head.
Off we go, then, on this journey into...well, into wherever we're going. I suppose you're going to tell me that it wouldn't be nearly as much fun if I knew where we'd end up and, begrudgingly, I'll agree. So let's go, already. Let us away!
Yours,
SGW
A few...days? weeks?...ago, LL Barkat posted this, where she features a letter to her being-born book. It fed her mind and her writing and allowed her to come back to it with different eyes. Since then, I've written several letters to my first-drafted novel, and this is a conglomeration of all of them. I'd hoped to find, in the writing of these letters, what wasn't working about the book, because my intuition told me something had broken and I didn't know what. I did figure out the problem, and I'd like to think the letters contributed at least a bit.
Dearest Novel,
I love you. I feel like I need to say that straight out, so I don't forget it in the wandering, confused place I feel like we've entered in the last several days. Because it is confusing to know that I love you and also that something isn't working. I feel like I've almost abandoned you, like the temptation is to leave behind what doesn't work and find something that does. But the truth is, no matter where I go from here, something will always be unfinished if I let you languish in this state. I'll look at you out of the corner of my eye, pretending not to see but really seeing nothing else, and I'll always wonder what might have been.
I don't like wondering what might have been. This dislike seems to have served me well thus far, having played a key role in netting me, at the very least, a husband. So I trust it again, and plug away at looking you square in the face and finding a shape that fits both what you've become and what I want to say, through you, to the world. You will be finished, someday, even if it's only so I can point to you and say, "That? That was my first novel," and beam with pride.
So I'll sit with you, if that's what it takes, though I don't promise a terribly high tolerance for banging my head on the wall. I'll sit with you and try to figure out how to put the pieces together a different way. I'll walk around and around you, looking at all the angles until I find one that works. And then I'll rebuild, if I have to, or at least rearrange, until the pieces fall together in a different way.
This process feels like one big game of pickup sticks, that most frustrating and odious of games, or maybe Jenga, which was always a lot more fun. Either way, I want to pull from you what is unnecessary, what doesn't work, and leave in place your core, your weight-bearing walls. Of those, I'll tear down what I have to, though I'd rather not bring the whole house down on my head.
Off we go, then, on this journey into...well, into wherever we're going. I suppose you're going to tell me that it wouldn't be nearly as much fun if I knew where we'd end up and, begrudgingly, I'll agree. So let's go, already. Let us away!
Yours,
SGW
20 January 2009
I know...ya'll were hoping for a real post. And there's one coming, just as soon as I can figure out how to get the words out. Meanwhile, I posted about my good news over at sarahwinfrey.com. More details when I have them.
31 December 2008
Welcome 2009
I've read on several blogs that people have chosen a word for 2009, one that encompasses where their hearts are and where they feel like they're going. I don't usually do such things. A single word can feel so limiting to me, so constraining and binding. But this time, there's one word that God has been speaking over and over to my heart these last few weeks, and it is what my heart wants.
So my word for 2009? Enough.
As in, I am enough, I have enough, and there is enough. As in, it's enough that I have a job when so many don't and that job doesn't usually require too much from me and offers benefits I can't find anywhere else. As in, while I'd love to be published, to be sought out for my writing and the ideas in my heart, it's enough right now that I'm writing consistently, refining my vision, realizing that I am a writer but am not only a writer. As in, Oso and I run pretty close on money every month, but we always have what we need...we have enough. As in, there's so much about my life that I wish I could change and that I'm working to change but my efforts today are enough.
"Enough" means that there's breathing space, room to be tired and stop striving, stop feeling like I should be doing more, being more, becoming more. "Enough" means it's ok that this feels like a confusing season of life, an in-between stage where I'm coming into something that I don't yet possess, but I possess it more than I used to. "Enough" means that I don't have to understand, I can run into walls in this darkness and it's ok. "Enough" means release, and peace, and sitting with friends drinking coffee instead of always balancing the checkbook and running the errands first.
I'm not a poet, but this is how "enough" came to me today.
Enough
Eyes closed,
sigh, and let it go.
My hands are clean.
So clean,
these hands,
but I've washed them anyway.
These hands.
I've scrubbed, picked, scratched
and scrubbed some more.
Like I wanted rid of them,
I've scrubbed,
like I wanted stubs intstead of fingers.
Like I could make them bigger, better
longer, stronger,
prettier,
I've scrubbed.
These hands,
the same ones I had
coming in,
the same ones I'll have
going out.
Scrubbing hurts
these hands.
They're as clean as they'll ever be.
I can
use, abuse, ruse, stew
them.
They're clean as they'll ever be.
These hands.
My hands.
So my word for 2009? Enough.
As in, I am enough, I have enough, and there is enough. As in, it's enough that I have a job when so many don't and that job doesn't usually require too much from me and offers benefits I can't find anywhere else. As in, while I'd love to be published, to be sought out for my writing and the ideas in my heart, it's enough right now that I'm writing consistently, refining my vision, realizing that I am a writer but am not only a writer. As in, Oso and I run pretty close on money every month, but we always have what we need...we have enough. As in, there's so much about my life that I wish I could change and that I'm working to change but my efforts today are enough.
"Enough" means that there's breathing space, room to be tired and stop striving, stop feeling like I should be doing more, being more, becoming more. "Enough" means it's ok that this feels like a confusing season of life, an in-between stage where I'm coming into something that I don't yet possess, but I possess it more than I used to. "Enough" means that I don't have to understand, I can run into walls in this darkness and it's ok. "Enough" means release, and peace, and sitting with friends drinking coffee instead of always balancing the checkbook and running the errands first.
I'm not a poet, but this is how "enough" came to me today.
Enough
Eyes closed,
sigh, and let it go.
My hands are clean.
So clean,
these hands,
but I've washed them anyway.
These hands.
I've scrubbed, picked, scratched
and scrubbed some more.
Like I wanted rid of them,
I've scrubbed,
like I wanted stubs intstead of fingers.
Like I could make them bigger, better
longer, stronger,
prettier,
I've scrubbed.
These hands,
the same ones I had
coming in,
the same ones I'll have
going out.
Scrubbing hurts
these hands.
They're as clean as they'll ever be.
I can
use, abuse, ruse, stew
them.
They're clean as they'll ever be.
These hands.
My hands.
11 December 2008
Sheesh!
I'm alive over here, I promise.
I don't quite know why I've been away, except I think it has something to do with spending so much time and energy living my life that I don't have the time and energy to write about it. Right now, there's Baccalaureate to plan and Christmas to make and to celebrate and miles to run and people to love on. Over the last weeks, there have been websites to build (though the photos in the box still need some help), blogs to start and freelance jobs to apply for. I've been overcoming some of the fear of little steps that keeps me from going anywhere and learning to care for myself even when others can't care for me like I want them to.
Overall, it's been a good month, but I miss you all dearly.
On a practical note, please do check out the website and particularly the blog. I'm hoping to chronicle my writing growth and journey over there, even as I chronicle my inner growth and journey here. I don't much love the idea of separating the two, but it seems like the best way to move things right now. FYI, there's not too much written there yet. Let me know what you think of it all.
I don't quite know why I've been away, except I think it has something to do with spending so much time and energy living my life that I don't have the time and energy to write about it. Right now, there's Baccalaureate to plan and Christmas to make and to celebrate and miles to run and people to love on. Over the last weeks, there have been websites to build (though the photos in the box still need some help), blogs to start and freelance jobs to apply for. I've been overcoming some of the fear of little steps that keeps me from going anywhere and learning to care for myself even when others can't care for me like I want them to.
Overall, it's been a good month, but I miss you all dearly.
------------------------
On a practical note, please do check out the website and particularly the blog. I'm hoping to chronicle my writing growth and journey over there, even as I chronicle my inner growth and journey here. I don't much love the idea of separating the two, but it seems like the best way to move things right now. FYI, there's not too much written there yet. Let me know what you think of it all.
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