I Am A Writer

It has been such a long time since I have written a blog entry, and looking at how much time has passed makes me a little sad. It makes me a little sad, not because I had a dream of being a big time blogger (not by any means), but because I know I had intended this space to be where I could put down thoughts every now and then without a filter that tries to make everything look beautiful and nicely figured out (when I certainly do not have everything figured out - far from it). I wanted to have a place to offload ideas and introspections that were taking up mental processing. I had wanted to have a place where I could be unstructured, grammatically incorrect, and able to carry on a conversation with myself (and anyone that decides to read and has input). A place of my own real time wondering. That said, I decided I would at least write today what was on my mind not carrying about anything but just being in this space.

The thing that’s been on my mind a lot is what it means for me to be a writer.

There is this crazy thing happened when I decided I would finally answer the call and become a writer—for 15 minutes I thought I had the best ideas of all time, but then for the next 45 minutes I was convinced all of my ideas were trash. Put this on repeat and that’s where I’ve been (at least for now as I’m early in my writing career). For some reason there is rarely the middle ground for me. Even when I’ve heard other writers talk about the need to not fall too madly in love with any particular idea and also to remind yourself that you do have good ideas, I still find myself either preparing to sit down with Brene Brown on Unlocking Us or walking over to Brooklyn Heights to throw my book in the East River. Early in May it was definitely the latter. I was convinced my story had no value to any other human on the earth (to my agent, Hilary: I’m okay. Don’t sending in the rescue party yet).

As I opened up to my wife about this feeling, I was pleasantly surprised to know she could not only relate to how I was feeling, but also was present enough to question whether I was looking for empathy or if I also wanted her advice. After feeling seen and heard by her acknowledgment of my feelings, I truly was looking for her input (my wife is actually one of those geniuses who expects people to do their own work even if she has the short cut to help them, so when she talks I try my hardest to listen without annoying her that I don’t already know as much as her).

My wife is not a writer (or at least not one that shares her writing with others), but she gave me this one task of writing down the purpose/intention of each chapter in my book and the emotional tone it carries on sticky notes. Then she told me to lay them all out and see what they say to me. The results: chapters were connected with some semblance of how the intentions transitioned from one to the next, but also, the emotional tone throughout was a series of peaks and valleys that ultimately led upward across the parts of the book. It was relieving to know there was a clear structure created, but also unsettling as I realized my articulation of said structure had been wildly incorrect (I had thought of the structure as falling into a deep valley and trying to climb back to a new peak, but instead it was a continual climbing with a few stumbles and occasional falls along the way).

This reminded me that I was not writing a book of grief, but rather a book of triumph that acknowledges the intersections of joy and grief. Stepping back and looking big picture allowed me to see whether the details were supporting the direction.

Of course this does not mean I figured it all out—I’m probably just in the 15 minutes of being like, “Yes! This all works brilliantly.” Except maybe this time around the 15 minutes lasts for 15 hours and the turn into “everything I write is trash” is handled with more poise and steadiness around an understanding that I’m in the *fine wine industry playing a long game.

*Paraphrasing the other genius (Yahdon Israel) who I’ve heard drop knowledge about having a 30 year writing career vision (though I’m sure, like my wife, professor Yahdon is probably wondering when I’m going to do my own work and stop asking every question like the answers aren’t already in the books I was supposed to have read on my own time).

That said, to all the geniuses out there: please wait, the work I was supposed to do on my own is still loading…