But tell it slant

Today is the final day of the Framingham State faculty writing retreat I’m attending at the Warren Center in Ashland, MA. It’s a luxury to spend two intensive days working on a work-in-progress, but at the same time, creativity cannot be turned on and off like a spigot. Once the school year ends, my Time To Write begins, and I feel a pressure to Perform and Be Productive. There is no time to waste with dilly-dallying.

Unfortunately, however, my Muse can be shy. When I tell her to say something profound about a specific topic, she looks at me askance. “Who, me?” her expression suggests. “I have nothing interesting to share,” she admonishes, then she lowers her eyes and promptly fades into the wallpaper.

The only way I’ve ever been able to address a topic is indirectly, with a sideways glance. If I want to write about some aspect of the Buddha’s teaching–for example, the fact that the earliest depictions of the Buddha showed his footprint, not his entire body–sitting in front of my laptop is not the way. The way is to walk, or take a shower, or do something completely unrelated. In order to write about this, I need to preoccupy myself with that.

This, of course, is the power of metaphor. You don’t talk directly about loss, heartbreak, or betrayal: these topics are too big, too deep, and too difficult. Instead, you consider them askance. You talk about the balloon that slipped out of your grasp or the toy you dropped out a car window. This loss captures all those other losses, and suddenly you are in the same room with the Terribly Frightening Topic you’ve been avoiding.

Emily Dickinson urged readers–or herself, her most important reader–to tell all the truth, but tell it slant. She suggested this is the best way to reach readers without overwhelming them…and I’d argue it is the best approach for the writer herself. If you’re stuck on how to write about a topic, write around it.

So this morning, stuck on what to say about the Buddha’s footprint, which itself is a metaphor for the Buddha’s spiritual path, I left my laptop, took a walk, then returned to revise something I’d written earlier on a completely different topic. The only way to understand the Buddha’s footprint is on foot. The words will lead to words, and the way will show you the way.

 

Pardon my dust

I’m writing this at the almost-end of today’s faculty writing retreat at the Warren Center in Ashland, MA, sponsored by Framingham State. I’ve spent the day revisiting a book-length collection of essays focused on impermanence and loosely centered around the four seasons and the Four Noble Truths. It’s a book I’ve been trying to write since 2012.

Today, I focused on a random chapter toward the end of the book–the tenth out of twelve chapters–that focuses on the month of March. I picked this chapter to work on today because it isn’t June, the first chapter in the book, and the place where I’ve always started and gotten stuck in the past. Taking to heart a piece of advice I give my students, I’m revisiting an old project in a new place: a place where I haven’t hopelessly muddied the ground with my own footprints.

Today I read through the scraps I had, deleting huge portions that definitely don’t fit. I moved passages that belong in other chapters, and I pasted in segments from journal entries and blog posts that I might want to recycle.

It hasn’t been pretty, this day of weeding out, copying, and pasting. It feels less like creative writing and more like construction or renovation work: pardon my dust as I move things around, revisiting words I wrote more than a decade ago.

 

Before the show begins

Sometimes when I sit down to write, I have an idea in mind, but many times, all I have is a blank space. They say that nature abhors a vacuum, so when I set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, I know something will appear.

Today has been a typical Friday, filled with tasks and to-dos. At the almost-end of a productive day, it’s difficult to find something to say. But when I start to write, one word naturally follows another.

The blank page is either intimidating or inviting, depending on your mindset. If you’re worried about saying something profound, the blank page is scary, but if you’re curious to see what happens next, the blank page is an empty stage moments before the show begins.

 

The details of the day

Today is gray and chilly: the temperature is above freezing, but it feels colder. J and I drove to Framingham for lunch, then we walked laps around the town green, as we did several times last summer. Saturdays are laundry day, so I’m folding one load while the other is in the dryer, after putting away yesterday’s line-drying.

If I were my Mom, grandmother, or great-grandmother, today’s journal entry would end there. Among the sentimental treasures I claimed from my Mom’s house last December were three diaries: a multi-year diary from my Mom, a similar volume from my great-grandmother, and a half-filled diary from my grandmother. In all three cases, my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were trained by the format of five-year diaries, limiting themselves to a few lines listing what they did on a particular day, not what they were thinking or feeling, even if the page gave them more space to fill.

I’ve been keeping a journal my entire adult life–long enough to recognize how my writer’s mind works. The first paragraph or so–most if not all of the first page of a smallish notebook–is devoted to minutiae: the weather, my to-do list, or what happened yesterday. The first few paragraphs or first full page, in other words, sounds remarkably akin to what my Mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother wrote, although the details of our days differ. (I’m amazed, for example, by the litany of chores my great-grandmother did as a farm-wife, with so many chickens to kill, pluck, and fry.)

But here’s the difference: whereas my diary-keeping foremothers wrote a few lines every day, I write a few pages. After exhausting the news of the day, I push on to the next paragraph then the next page, digging deeper to discuss how I’m doing, not just what I’m doing.

I’m immensely grateful to have these diaries from three generations of women in my family: proof that my proclivity to scribble the details of my days is not an accident, but something passed down to me. But I also wonder about the lines not written: that is, the blank spaces at the end of each page.

If my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had more time and energy–if there weren’t so many chores to do, and if they hadn’t been so frugal with ink and paper–what more might they have written?

 

Where to aim your energy

Today is sunny, brisk, and below freezing, so puddles from yesterday’s unseasonably warm rain are frozen into topographic abstractions. If I were queen of the world, I’d give everyone today off for Leap Day: a bonus day to do whatever brings you joy. Instead, I’ll run errands on my way to teach: just another Thursday.

Four years ago, Leap Day fell on a Saturday during a semester when I found time to journal only on weekends. The day before, J and I voted early in the Presidential primary: we chose Elizabeth Warren. Leap Day 2020 was unremarkable: I did laundry, J and I walked to lunch, then I ran errands in my then-brand-new Crosstrek.

This year, I write in my journal nearly every morning: it’s a rare day when I don’t write. And whereas I blogged only once in February 2020, this month I’ve managed to blog every other day: 15 times in 29 days.

Over the past four years, I’ve learned the world won’t stop for you: Leap Day or not, you still have to run errands and do laundry and go to work. But you can choose where to aim your energy. My morning hours are precious: I’ve learned that if I don’t write in the morning, when my energy is fresh, I won’t find much to say later. My sundowning hours are better spent on mundane tasks like answering email, prepping, classes, or grading papers. Write first; work later.

 

Another racing day

Yesterday my five-year diary asked “What can’t you throw out,” and I answered “Journals.” My old journals fill several bookshelves, and recently I’ve also started stacking the slim notebooks I carry in my teaching bag and fill with five-minute in-class writing right alongside conference schedules and notes from phone calls. It’s the kind of random minutiae that once made me compare a writer’s notebook to a junk drawer filled with odds and ends.

My mind is like a racehorse occasionally let out to pasture. The academic year is my racing season, when my mind is full of logistical details that put my intellectual abilities through their paces. Can I juggle emails and class prep and teaching and grading while still finding the mental stamina to skim a student’s draft and give insightfully helpful feedback?

If summer is the season when my mind is let out to pasture to laze and graze, my journals and notebooks are my race-season paddock: a small enclosed space where I can rest from racing. It’s a place to either warm up or cool down, my intellectual legs needing to stay strong and supple ahead of another racing day.

 

One step up from nothing

I was never a fan of outlines when I was a student; I just dove in and wrote the thing. But now that I teach writing, I see outlining as an easy way to get started–and entry drug to drafting.

Any one can write a list: a list is the easiest thing in the world to write. Jot down one idea followed by another and another–and bam, you have a baby outline.

After you have a list/baby outline, you can go back and add things, delete things, or rearrange things. But you have to start with something rather than nothing, and a list is one step up from nothing. A blank page is intimidating, but a list says “yeah, I have something to write about”: a place to start.

***

In my first-year classes at both Framingham State and Babson, we start with five minutes of freewriting. Students are free to write about whatever they’d like, but I post three random words to give students a nudge if they have nothing else to write about.

Today’s post comes from yesterday’s five-minute entry in response to the word “Outline.”

 

Some assembly required

When I taught at Babson on Monday, I found a cardboard box containing a handful of wooden letters. The letters didn’t seem to spell anything; instead, they seemed to be left behind after a student presentation or project.

I can’t think of a better metaphor for creativity than a castoff box of random letters. Here are the building blocks of meaning; you just have to arrange them to create your own message.

 

A leaf of faith

Some days when I come to the page, words appear like magic, sprouting spontaneously like mushrooms from the mold of my mind. On other days, I come to the page and find no words waiting for me.

Mornings when I walk the dog, I almost always find something interesting to look at, like this photo of a raindrop on a tiny leaf, backdropped by a larger leaf. When I walk the dog, I almost always find something that catches my eye, but when I try to find something to say about these spontaneous images, the words are sometimes slow to appear.

Writing is an act of faith as much as skill. You keep showing up to the page or keyboard, not knowing where the words will come from, but trusting they will show up, eventually. Writing is a leap of faith–you set down one word and hope others will follow–just as trees take a leaf of faith every spring when they unfurl fresh greenery against an eventual fall.

 

The daily leaf

More days than not this past month, the first photo I’ve taken in the morning shows one or more leaves fallen on the hood of either my or J’s car.

I find leaves visually interesting–I can’t help myself from photographing the first new leaves that unfurl every spring–and cars provide a shiny surface for the withering of those same leaves in the Fall.

A car hood, in other words, is a blank backdrop for each day’s batch of newly fallen leaves.

Taken together, leaves pretty much look alike, but when you examine any individual one up close, you see its unique contours and veining. Like fingerprints, no two leaves are alike.

More days than not over my adult lifetime, the first words I write in the morning are scribbled into the blank backdrop of a notebook, page after page turning like leaves.

Taken together, my days look pretty much alike, but when you chronicle a life word by word every morning, you see each moment’s unique shape and texture. Like leaves, no two days are alike.