Lauren,
I've been trying to be a writer as long as I
can remember. Bursts of bad poetry, endless study of concepts like
anapests and chiasmus, trisagion at the feet of Jane Austen and
eucharist at the altar of William Blake. I almost made it this year.
I
started a NaNoWriMo novel, one of those mindless sprints where you
hammer out words as fast as you can for a month, and maybe more
importantly, I quit my job and took stock of what I wanted my new
identity to be. I think men always have an unhealthy prepossession with
defining their identities by their profession; having given up the
title of "military dude," I got to look for a new self, a better self. I
wanted to be a writer. I always wanted to be a writer. And it was
time to embrace that.
But it's hard, and it's
dangerously introverted. I'm an unusual intellectual, in that I find
pro wrestling to be a form of art actually worth watching, and I envy
the artists. One of the awesome things about that mode of performing is
that you know, instantly and unambiguously, whether you're delivering
the goods. If you clobber your opponent and the crowd pops -- gasping,
screaming, booing, crying, whatever -- you know you did it right.
Writing is the exact opposite; if you've delivered the goods, you have
to keep on delivering until you've spent weeks, months, maybe years, and
you'll never know whether it was good till someone's read the whole
product. Monstrous.
I made it three-quarters of the
way through this damn book, and I know exactly how I want it to finish;
everything's done but the actual writing part. Probably another eight
thousand words (and then one eternity of editing and revising, but that
hardly counts). And I've run into a roadblock. Motivation sapped,
confidence eroded, will to live entirely undercut. I bet you know how
this feels. I hope you know how this feels... no, on second thought, I
hope you don't. It's not great. But I fear it's a natural part of
writing.
So Kimberly came to the rescue. She
encouraged me to write, not just the book, but anything -- facebook
posts, blog entries, e-mails, anything. And it has helped; I'm not
dreading the keyboard anymore, and I think I was almost ready to pick
the cross back up and try to finish the damn thing, but I was still
dreading it. And then she did something amazing, because she always
knows what I need, especially when I don't. She ordered The Smell of Good Mud.
I
got it today while she was asleep, and I opened the envelope, first
surprised, then delighted, then devouring. I sank my teeth into the
first pages, sure that I would read it cover to cover before I let the
mossy green cover out of my hands. I got as far as "Opening."
"dirty, flawed, and glistening."
That's
what I needed. It's what I've needed for months, and I never knew, but
Kim always knows. Thank you. Thank you for writing it; thank you for
knowing us; thank you for sharing your magic with us. I better get to
work.
--del
