Writing in the In-Between
Making poetry where we are.
Hello dear subscribers! First, two thrilling updates -
My first book is officially out - no longer on pre-order! Order it from from your local bookstore, from Amazon, Indiebound or most places where books are sold. If you’re local, my book launch will be September 22nd in Burlington, VT.
And: I was just awarded a WOW-sized grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to complete my second book, a poetry novel! I’m overjoyed.
I’m grateful for this incredible support from my colleagues and community, and I’m especially grateful to each reader, for the holy gift of their attention.
Requirements
As I write this, I'm traveling, living out of a backpack with only my phone and a lined journal with which to write, so I thought this would be the perfect time to bring up the practice of writing from where you are, with whatever materials and resources (internal and external) are available.
Writing is an unusual in that the barrier to entry is much lower than for other forms of art.
To paint or sculpt, you need good light, studio space, and a great number of tools and supplies. To compose classical music, you need musical literacy, an understanding of instruments, notation, software, and access to a venue and instrumentalists.
But the only requirements for making written poetry (vs oral) are just:
1) literacy, and
2) some kind of tool for marking things down.
The Mythical Ideal Circumstance
We often picture a perfect place or time within which we're sure we could write, and we lament that we don't have it. Much-coveted residencies offer writers luxurious cabins or rooms with a view, reinforcing the idea that we must have a proper room, a desk, and total peace and quiet in order to produce quality writing. Sadly, we often use our lack of these things as excuses for not writing.
I'm as guilty as anyone of this. It certainly didn't help when I once read a poet's account of asking Gwendolyn Brooks how she made time for writing amidst all of life's other responsibilites. Brooks responded that the question shouldn't be how to make time for writing, but how to make time for anything else.
A dizzyingly high bar! As much as that’s an invigorating challenge, it feels unreasonable. Besides just the million life-maintenance tasks we all have to do, I've come to recognize an additional time/resource suck: processing.
When a relative or friend visits; there is not just the time spent in their company but the time spent mentally and emotionally preparing for it and the time afterward, processing it.
When we have a minor car accident, it isn't just dealing with our whiplash, vehicle repairs and insurance issues, it's learning how to focus again, how to access inner calm.
Processing times come tacked onto almost anything—harder stuff like difficult phone calls, or great stuff like receiving good news (my brain genuinely didn't work very well for hours after hearing the great news about my grant—my partner had to help me cross the street because I was so distracted).
A lot of us (myself included) dodge healthy processing and instead hide out in unhelpful coping mechanisms like binge-watching TV (my own personal vice), drinking, spending way too much time on social media, or other forms of escapism. So we have to add in the additional time and energy it takes to drag ourselves out of our escapist activities.
And if we DO sit down to write, we also have to deal with the million ways the internet interrupts and tempts us—and, of course, with the million ways our self-doubt interrupts and taunts us.
Virginia Woolf described this latter problem perfectly, through a character who was desperately trying to make a painting:
It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself - struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage, to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her.
- Virginia Woolf, from To The Lighthouse
So on the one extreme, we have Brooks throwing down the gauntlet, challenging us to center our lives entirely around our writing. On the other extreme, we have real life and its intensities, bruises, responsibilities, vices, and the ever-present lack of ideal circumstances.
Although I admire Brooks' purity and dedication, for a daily mantra I tend to go more for the great science fiction author Octavia Butler's advice, that we must not wait for inspiration (or the ideal circumstances, I’ll add) but instead rely on establishing a habit of writing:
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.
~ Octavia Butler, from essay Furor Scribendi
With this goal guiding me, I usually manage to write:
fairly regularly, even if just a teensy weensy bit,
whether I am feeling inspired or not, and
in the in-between parts of life.
The In-Between is a Great Place to Write
When I worked as a fine art model, modeling for university art departments and community art centers, I often had to pose about 9 hours a day. Every 25 minutes I would get a 5 minute break. It was amazing what could pour out of me in those short minutes, scribbling in a notebook or typing with my thumbs on my phone.
I wrote my first chapbook on the bus to and from a temp office job I was miserable at.
When I’ve had to drive a lot and couldn’t pull over to write, I’ve recorded myself speaking poetry and typed it up at a later date.
At concerts I tend to write all over the program.
In fact, a great deal of my writing has not come from a sturdy, spacious desk with a lamp and a comfy chair; nor from a residency with a view; nor from super-protected, mentally focused hours that have probably never been seen in the wild. (If someone tells you a tale, don’t believe them).
The old hastily-written back-of-the-napkin idea is a stereotype for a good reason: it's a valuable and time-honored way to write and create.
Challenge:
This month, write through imperfection.
Don't wait for an ideal (or even a decent) arrangement.
Write in the traffic jam, on the toilet, on a paper towel, in a voice recorder, on a receipt on your knee as you stand and wait to cross a busy intersection, in the morning before your coffee, in the middle of a stairwell, while you're falling asleep, while you're on the phone, while taking minutes at a meeting, in an examination room waiting for the doctor to come in, or just after packing your kid's lunch and just before running out the door.
If it helps you to be less harsh in your self-judgements, think of it more like doodling with words than writing.
But do it. Take an in-between moment that would normally blow away in the winds of time, and say to it, “I dub thee Useful and Creative.”
And let me know how it goes. :)