What is keeping you from taking a pen and a notebook and writing? Maybe you feel as I do when I see before me a trillion zillion leaves covering my yard. Where do I start? There is no way that I will ever get every single leaf. And look there are still some hanging on the trees and all around me brown, orange and red leaves twirl to the ground in their own unique spiral. Of all the answers that great authors have given to the question “why do you write?” I like Flannery O’Connor’s the best: “because it would be worse if I didn’t.” As hopeless as it looks to rake all those leaves, as hopeless as it looks to ever write a work of beauty or a work that will be read, it will be worse if you don’t.
As I start raking, I put aside the vision of a leafless yard and think only of the movement of my arms. Slow, even movements that are not rushed. I will rake for an hour, I say to myself. Tomorrow, Sunday, I will rake another hour. Soon, little piles of leaves start forming in the yard and in spots, the grass which is still green, reveals itself like a blue sky when clouds drift out.
One sentence, two sentences. I will write for an hour. The pen gliding on the white, blue-lined paper. Words appear out of nothingness and now they exist. What I write is so different from that vision of beauty or that work of meaning and value I seek to create. But it doesn’t matter. I concentrate on sentences and paragraphs. One pile of leaves at a time. One circle of grass is clear. Then I start a new one, each circle connected to the next.
No matter how hard I try, I will never get every single leaf. A gust of wind comes and blows leafs from my piles. I can’t even get one small circle totally clear, leafless. I am shooting for percentages here. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll go crazy with anxiety. I’ll start to damn the leaf that falls and mars the green. Or I’ll say the hell with it. Let the leaves fall as they may. What do I care? Who needs more clarity?
So I protect myself and my task. Eighty percent, if I can get there, would be great. I’ll work for an hour today. An hour tomorrow. I’m grateful for the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, poor as they are. I am grateful. Because it would be worse without them.
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