“What is important now is to go very slowly; to stop in the middle of the flood; never to press on; to lie back and let the soft subconscious world become populous; not to be urging foam from my lips. There’s no hurry.”
Some words speak to us. I read the above passage, from Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary, in bed one night. I underlined it with my pencil and then placed the book face down on my stomach to let the words sink in. I recognized that they had hit a nerve. Woolf is talking, of course, about writing, but her words spoke to an ongoing challenge of mine, as a writer, yes, and also as a person.
Not five minutes later I found myself on Twitter. And when I say “found,” I literally mean “found,” as in I have no recollection whatsoever of how I got there, and therefore no explanation for the distractibility of my mind on that night, how it swung, in less than five minutes, from one side of the forest over to another. But I suppose that part of my story is not what’s important. What I want you to know is this: I scrolled through my Twitter feed only half paying attention—the other half, it’s likely, was still with Virginia Woolf—when I came across this other bit of writing advice, which I quote directly as it appeared: “How to write: MAKE yourself do it. MAKE yourself stick it out for half an hour till you are in & paddling. That’s what it’s like on most days.” These words belong to Anne Lamott.
The polarity between these two pieces of advice, both of which, as chance would have it, I encountered in less than five minutes of one another, and both of which, as chance would also have it, came from writers I admire, struck me. I also knew instantly where I stood, which piece of advice I needed to take to heart and which one I needed to let slip away.
MAKE yourself do it.
I have spent my entire life making myself do it, pushing past my own resistance in order to get “somewhere.” It’s true that after I jumped in and acclimated to the waters eventually I paddled. I can see, though, that the cost has been high. Often I’d paddle mindlessly, without any clear picture of where I was headed. I kept going because on some deep, terrifying level it felt imperative to paddle harder and faster, to never stop moving. Overriding my feelings time and again has cracked me apart, created chasms of disconnection. Like a body target at a shooting range, there are holes in me everywhere. Feelings come up and they are unrecognizable. I don’t understand the language of my heart, often I can’t even hear it, so accustomed have I become to silencing its cries, its warnings, its pleas for help.
As an early adolescent I watched my inner circle, which in the years I am referring to was comprised of my father and my step-mother, racing along on the hamster wheel, chasing the promise of something different, something better, off in the distance. All of our basic needs were met—we were clothed, we were fed, we had shelter—still there was an underlying restlessness, a feeling that this in itself wasn’t enough. It was necessary to keep working toward something. Our daily habits, my father’s in particular, reflected this restlessness. He, my father, left for work in the morning by six, and most nights he didn’t come home until eight. He also worked weekends and often holidays. He worked, in part, because he had to. But also, he was in his comfort zone at the office. Working was how he defined himself, and it just so happened, he was very good at it.
If you were to ask me to name my father’s dominant personality trait I would say: knack for stick-to-itiveness. He has a unique ability to set his mind to a task and follow through with his agenda no matter what is going on around him. The entire city of Los Angeles could be on fire and he wouldn’t be impeded: he would park in the parking garage, stride into the elevator, and ride the eighteen floors up to his office. It’s a quality that lends itself in equal parts to self-discipline and inflexibility, laser-beam focus and blindness to the bigger picture. It can be extremely frustrating for others to deal with, and yet it has enabled an otherwise poor Jewish boy from Chicago to become a successful self-made businessman. For better or for worse, I inherited this from him.
I agree with Anne Lamott. If we are writers, it is essential that we make ourselves show up to the page repeatedly, because beyond showing up to write, little else is within our control. But it’s this second part, not the first, I find harder to swallow. Occasionally there will be a day I don’t feel like writing, usually when I’m faced with the task of creating something out of nothing, splashing that first bit of paint—no, flinging; it’s much more like flinging—onto the large blank canvas. But for the most part, making myself sit down and do it is not my problem. What I find much more arduous, sometimes impossible, is the opposite motion: pulling back. Allowing the writing to develop at its own pace; sensing when I’m pushing too hard and would be better off doing something else, like folding a load of laundry; standing in the middle of creative disorder (“the flood”), and trusting that I will, in time, find my way.
I’m a snail of a writer. I write a little every day, with exceptions here and there, gradually chipping away, like a miner, at whatever it is I’m working on. I can’t bulldoze my way through anything. When I try to force it—and you’d better believe I have tried—the result is disastrous, every time. One of the things I find most intriguing about Woolf is how well she understood this about writing. She didn’t treat her mind like a workhorse. Her mind was her diamond. She knew when it needed polishing and care. She recognized that the push and pull—work and recovery—go hand in hand. She gave herself permission to go slowly, to step away from the work, to rest when she needed it.
Some words speak to us. “…lie back and let the soft subconscious world become populous…” This is the advice I must yield to now. The advice, each time my nerves start to fray, I must allow to wash over me. To not be drawn in like a magnet to the momentum of the world. To have faith that each day I will be given what I need (even though, as the Rolling Stones have reminded me on several occasions, this might not be what I want.) To also have faith in my ability to work with what I have been given. To remember how little control I ever actually have. And, that there is no race to the finish line. No awards given at the end to those who accomplish the most. All I have, all that matters, is what is right in front of me. “There’s no hurry.” This is what I’m currently being taught, as writer, as a person.