Reading a book on craft, in which the author said writers love words the way carpenters love wood and naturalists love fauna— the texture, the sound, the rhythm and sometimes, but not always, the sense. That idea filled me with hope. Maybe I am a writer, because I have a little-kid enthusiasm for words, an overweening enthusiasm: indolent, I say to myself, over and over, after hearing about Barbara’s cancer, indolent, seeing lazy predators, sunning on a rock, sullen adolescents. I am driven to sharpen and soften and slice the passages I read, even when I’m reading instruction manuals or cookbooks, loving to touch and fiddle with words as much as some people like to garden or cook. A bad day can be entirely improved by working with somebody on their writing. It never once occurred to me that this might be a clue. All these years looking for proof that I am a writer and not finding it: you are a writer if you write every day. You are a writer if you can’t stop yourself from writing, if stories crowd your head, desperate to get out. You are a writer if you have something important to say. Nope. Nope. Nope. But words. Oh yeah. I definitely got that.

I am coming to the end of my story, which might be why it’s so hard to write at the moment. This is where I arrive at the “so what” moment— not just an end, but an answer to the question, why have we been reading this? What have we learned? I was reading a book about plot, and the writer outlined the transformation a protagonist must make over the course of a book. Her suggestions about what should happen to a character infuriated me, all of them slightly fake, Yankee Candle Factory versions of mulled cider and summer rain– a protagonist should “learn something” about their weaknesses, their weaknesses must result from an injury in the past. This seems like a revelation at first– of course this would make a person more interesting! They grow! They have skeletons! But then it starts to sound like paint by numbers psychobabble, revealing more about our self-help culture than about the human experience. Do we have skeletons? Do we grow?

And yet. And yet, buried in that maddening formula— the assertion that the character “grows” and “learns” or “overcomes weakness”– is an important point, and possibly the one that has been stalling me of late. What IS this story about, after all? What meaning(s) are we chasing? Why am I telling it? Where does it leave us?

I resist the premise that every story has a lesson at its heart, because that would imply we actually have answers, when sometimes all we have is questions. Answers are consoling, convenient, but generally misleading, and I don’t trust them. I sure as hell don’t have any in this story, which is basically me diving head-first into a hot mess of race and class.

And yet. And yet we need to resolve the story in some way. How else will we know it’s over?

I came across a blog about writing and productivity. She says productivity is directly tied to three things: one is knowledge. Before you start writing the scene, set aside a minimum of five minutes to plan the scene you are going to work on. What are you trying to accomplish? What is your character trying to accomplish? What happens? What will the conflict be? The second element is time. She said, keep track of when you write, and try to schedule your writing in the times you are most productive. She wrote more in the afternoon, away from her house, and usually for long rather than short sessions. But for each person the optimal circumstances will be different. The third element– and this was the real AHA moment for me– is enthusiasm. When you do your planning/thinking about the day’s writing, try to locate the part of the scene that you are excited to write. If you can’t find a reason to be excited by the scene, invent one, and if you can’t invent one, then cut the scene, and find another way to work the information into the story.