Mental Meanderings

Chapter 3 & On Your Page: Exercise 7

I always feel strange when I talk to people in real life about my being a writer. I was on the phone the other day to a woman who was booking an appointment for me and we were in a chatty frame of mind, "What do you do?" she asked me. My standard response these days is, "I'm a writer". It's easier to say I'm a writer rather than I'm a writer/poet/freelance copyediter/mother/homekeeper.

Anyway, her response, and one I've heard from others before was, "Oh wow, that's great, I always wanted to write a book." To me it feels like a no-brainer, seriously, if you want to write then write. It takes no exceptional skill or fancy hardware. You pick up the nearest pen or pencil and start scratching away. That's how books are written, by people scratching away. But to non-writers it seems like being a writer is some magical state, royal, special, famous. We could have our own reality TV show, "The Life and Times of a Writer." --- See how she spends hour after hour staring off into space. Ohh look, she's washing her dishes, isn't she amazing?

Anyway, Chapter 3 of Page After Page reminded me of that experience. It discusses the role writing takes in your life and compares it to that of a lover. I mean come on, to write we have to be in love with our writing. It doesn't happen any other way. We have our lovers quarrels and our tiffs and even better the make up sex. That's a writers life. In chapter 3 Heather Sellers askes, "Is your writing life going to be a lover in the center of your life? The thing you pulse toward, the fever in your soul? Or is your writing life more of a casual crush, something you think about, but don't do much about?"

I think a lot of people have a crush on writing. Even many WDCers, perhaps even most WDCers, simply have a crush on writing. It's good to snuggle up with their writing when they can sneak away from their main squeeze, the busy-ness of the rest of their life. For me my writing is more of a marriage. It's not in that first love stage any more where we live in each others pockets, it's in that comfortable stage where we are loyal and companionable and have to lock the door to keep the kids from disturbing our lovemaking sessions.

That's it in a nutshell for me now. I write and I surround myself with writer-like experiences which include my poetry and my poetry group, reviewing, copywriting, copyediting, and of course reading. Those fill my average day along with the household chores which sometimes don't get done. These things, and my writing sessions at night are flexed into the time I'm taking care of my kids. I check my email first thing in the morning then get dressed and get my oldest to school. I'm home with my youngest working on the writer-like experiences during the day, and after they are in bed I have my blog and my writer-sex, my book.

Ok, so I kind of got distracted talking about my writer love-life. Basically the whole chapter is devoted to deciding how important writing is in your life and deciding if you want to permit yourself to have an open-writing relationship where you can have a little non-writing on the side or whatever.

Exercise 7:
"The excuses you are making right now are illusionary distractions - and very, very useful. Write down and look at them. Write down what you were thinking, list all those obstacles, to-do lists, jobs, fears, dreams, excuses. Put together all those busy-drugs you are addicted to, meetings you must attend, children you must feed. Write it all down. Are you in the mood to fall in love with writing? Are you too exhausted to take on a lover?" - Heather Sellers, Page After Page.

Ok, so she wants a list? I guess I already started one didn't I. Kids, to and from school, meals, diaper changes, child-related-mini-dramas (splinters, sibling rivalry, wanting something out the fridge, needing help with something etc.), weekly TV show addictions (Heros), dishes, laundry, folding, making beds, general tidying, general cleaning, reviewing, poetry writing, poetry reading, research, online distractions, chatting, exercise, blogging, reading blogs, email, submitting, movies, music, singing, mother, games, sisters, friends...

I'm sure there are probably more. That was mostly just to-do list stuff and jobs. Writing about my dreams and fears feels separate and not really for this blog entry. I could write whole entries dedicated to those and have done in the past. lol

As for the answer to those questions I pretty much already did by admitting where my relationship is with my writing now. I guess the good news is that even though we're married we have sex every night. At least NOW we do. When I was blocked it was a long and painful drought where I went around feeling very neglected and unloved by my writing. The thing I've learnt is that my writing-lover waits for me to come with flowers, not the other way around. It's a little one sided in that sense but when you show up with a box of chocolates, you get so much more in return.