"Spitting in the eye of despair"...

So today is the day- the day I officially became a writer. It literally felt like the first day on a new job. I dragged myself out of bed, even threw on some clothes, and headed to the kitchen to make tea. I had bought this tea, you know the kind that helps with clarity and brain function, blah blah, figuring that if I had something yummy to look forward to, it would help me to get out of bed and work before I have to go to work. Well, I guess I'm gonna need a little more on-the-job training in that department. The first cup was barely edible, the second only good enough to warrant about 5 sips. I felt like the new secretary who can't even make coffee on her first day. But, I'm hoping I'll get better, and maybe even learn how to make scones one day!

So, after that I warmed up with a writing exercise my life coach taught me. Even at this point, I was feeling the nerves. I was hoping what to write about would magically come and hit me in the head when it was time. It didn't. I came up with one line in my head that I liked and applied it to a story I had started a couple of weeks ago. But, I couldn't decide if I liked it better in the first or third person. So I did a little experiment and tried both. Third, definitely third. The problem is I couldn't come up with enough meat. I had the bones. But at this rate the story would be a page.

Reading over the few paragraphs I had written, I realized what I had been most afraid of. More than merely failing, I fear a) not knowing what to write about and b) hating what I do write. And, that is exactly what happened today. I got so frustrated, I went out to my backyard, sat on the concrete patio and meditated for five minutes, trying to get rid of all the yuckiness. When I came back inside, I named the yuckiness Expectations. I realized I had been writing as though this were the draft that would be sent off to press. I stopped. I decided to work instead on a novel I started about 5 or so months ago. One I had put away, because of course I had decided I didn't like it. And, this time, I just wrote. I didn't worry about capitalization, spelling, symbols, or theme. I just typed. It probably wasn't prize-winning material. But that's what the second draft is for. By the time my two hours was up, I had most definitely made my 1,000 word daily goal that Stephen said I should aim for. And, that was it. My initiation. Yucky, but I did it.



Driving home tonight, I listened to the last CD of On Writing. Stephen talks about the process of writing the book, and how it was filled with self-doubt. Stephen King filled with self-doubt? Ridiculous. And then I thought, why is that any more ridiculous than me being filled with self-doubt? There was one line he said in particular, though, that grabbed my attention and I repeated it in my head almost the whole way home. It was in answer to the question he hears most often- does he write for the money? His answer was a longer version of this: writing is "a spit in the eye of despair".

It was nice to remind myself of why I am doing this. Not for money. Not for fame. Not for something else to do. Lord knows I don't need that. I write because it is my connection to life. Because, every time I sit down with words, I become closer to life. The feeling I get when I transform my thoughts into the perfect sentence, when I am shooting pictures, when I go hiking, when I hear a beautiful piano solo by Ben Folds, when I'm jumping up and down with 20,000 people to the music of No Doubt, when I'm with my husband- that is life to me.


So, I was doing the dishes tonight when I came across my wonderful cup of tea from this morning. It was green. Even green tea is not green. How I made green tea, I do not know. Maybe I was summoning the spirit of Dr. Seuss to inspire my writing, who knows. But it made me laugh. When you can laugh at your mistakes, I figure it's a pretty good day.