Category: Practice

Posted on by Shelley

If I were a man, if this were the nineteenth century, I would have a study, and not only would everybody stay away from my study like it was the cave of a mythic, terrifying creature, somebody (probably my wife) would be making me breakfast, putting it outside my door, making my bed, feeding the kids, making sure the house was tidy, so that when I came out I didn’t get ruffled.

Do I want that, that tyranny of rule, the biggest room in a small house, bigger than the living room, or the kitchen, forcing all the kids together in one small room at the back, so that I can Write? No. Nope, don’t want that. So this is the struggle of finding the time to write, in a house where labors are shared, in a person (me) who has trouble finding and holding attention. This time really matters to me, this time is brittle. Attention broken, attention splintered, attention lost. “I know you’re writing but can you just answer this question tie this shoe find my glasses call school and see if they’re open today remind Siri that Jesse is coming for a play date?” And then you come back to the table and start again.

Posted on by Shelley

I am not afraid of success. For some reason that idea makes me angry, makes me furious, makes me enraged. I can’t remember who said it, but it’s a commonplace that haunts me, that was thrown at me once, and I don’t even know what it means. Here it is: I am afraid of failing, of getting trapped in silence. Worse: what if I open my mouth to speak, or sing, and the song that comes out is croaked and broken, people can’t bear to listen to it, they wander away, and now they know two things they didn’t know before: how bad my voice is, and how much I wanted to be listened to. Wouldn’t it be better to bake cakes? Everybody likes cake. Isn’t this a fool’s game, the path of egomaniacs, narcissists, dreamers?
My writing practice is about becoming comfortable with that fear, touching its bristly, oily fur, running my fingers behind its ears, learning not to back away from it, learning to get past it, and sit down at the table and work.

Posted on by Shelley

Last night D. spent an inexplicable amount of energy trying to convince me that the Internet is not a destructive habit, but my way of feeding my creative self. I said, no, it’s not. She argued: lots of writers and artists need to do other things– garden, clean their kitchens– isn’t that where you get your story ideas? I said: no, it isn’t. She said: how do you know it isn’t? I think about my long days, seven in the morning until one or two the following morning, the hours spent avoiding my work, my family, locked in the grip of a problem that won’t be solved, the hours I have added up, trying to imagine how much time I have lost, trying to figure out why I haven’t produced any stories. I say: hundreds of hours. She says, I’m just playing Devil’s advocate. I say, I don’t need a Devil. I need to write.

Posted on by Shelley

We had our writing group last night. Kate talked about the ways she avoids writing. I was surprised, having imagined that all her happiness comes from writing, all the time. She described being happy in stolen moments– on a subway, at some street corner where she grabs a scrap of paper from her pocket and writes down a line of dialogue, but then said that whenever she sits down at the computer to “write” she finds herself squirming and looking for ways to dodge it, so she almost never sits down to “write” at all.

I am beginning to learn that I have to write, whether I want to or not, whether I am talented and deserving, whether, on that particular day, I have anything to say. I write so that I become too bored by writing to be intimidated by it. I write so that I stop being scared by the boredom, and the frustration, and the sense of failure. I write to learn how to ignore those feelings, and keep digging.

Speaking of which, I bet people who dig for gold don’t expect to enjoy it. You just get your pick and your sleeping bag and scramble, collecting tricks from the people who got out there before you. You don’t feel like a failure if you aren’t having fun, if you find it hard– in fact, you feel victorious if you keep at it longer than you think you can stomach, you consider it a victory to build strength and stamina, to live on little water and less hope. If there’s any satisfaction, it must come from the discipline of trying, showing up day after day.

See if you can write in spite of the voices. See if you can outlast those voices, so that they go home, finally sick of you, and leave you alone, still at the table, writing.