Note: this is unedited. Several years old- I wrote it first thing in the morning and sent it out just like this.
It's cool and overcast this morning, just how I like it. Today will be a long day. I go to the switchboard today then afterwards will meet with some of the women in my writing group to write at a coffee shop. We met last week too and when I got there I was sure I wouldn't be able to write. Was it an accident that I forgot a writing notebook when I always bring a notebook with me? It didn't matter, I had offers of paper from A, and I had art supplies and made myself a quick journal (thanks to this new journal making tool I learned from E) and did a strange write using the I Ching as my prompt. In the end, I wrote and we read what we wrote to each other as the coffee shop surroundings fell away and it was just voices and words. I love how that works. Writing makes the world fall away or brings it close in so that I can see it up close under a magnifying glass. Push and pull, words have tremendous power and the ability to surprise even when they are messy.
This is why I like the timer when I don't have a group to write with. It forces me to go faster. I am aware that the timer will go off and I want words on the page before it does. The writing streaks past my internal critics and snakes around the ideas of perfection and the writing hits the page, imperfect and messy and sometimes gorgeous. Sometimes dark. Often risky. The writing just comes and truthfully, during that race with the timer, I don't have any idea what I'm writing. I don't really know till I read it and then I'm often surprised. Sometimes by the direction the writing went, sometimes just by an idea, an image or a sentence that came out well. It's not important that every word we write is "good" whatever that subjective word means. What matters is the act of writing. Afterward there is always something there to move ahead with.
The biggest sort of block I've encountered with myself and with other writers is this idea that every word on the page needs to be good. Our sentences should be complete and make sense. When we are done writing we want brilliance evident on the page, we want perfectly crafted sentences that are punctuated correctly. We want ready to publish work. We are afraid to begin because of this unfair, mean expectation of perfection. I always want to coax people to let go of all of that. In truth the writing is always rich but the fear can keep that from ever happening in the first place, even if someone really wants and loves to write.
Sometimes art can be easier, but artists can have the same blocks. Sketch books are for sketches. They aren't expected to be perfect. The first penciled lines on a canvas often have nothing to do with the painter's finished work. But artists of all kinds can find the same block and fear of moving forward, expecting perfection at the first try.
Trying to be perfect. It's not a new concept to me. I grew up with that expectation of perfection and took it out into the world. I was the perfect worker and anything less than perfect was a failure. Failure was the absolute worst thing that could happen, failure could break the world. The sun would fall right out of the sky and it would be my fault.
I would love to say my children weren't raised with the shadow of perfection but in my own messy way while I didn't raise them outwardly with the idea that everything they did had to be perfect, that's what I modeled for them. It makes living exhausting, this idea that we have to be perfect. If you are socialized to be a woman then there is an extra added burden of being perfect while making sure that everyone around you is happy and comfortable and has everything they need at the same time. (I'm slowly cracking that ridiculous egg- but it's taking time)
My challenge to you and me today is to be less than perfect. To be messy and allow ourselves to fumble at things and not worry too much about the outcomes. For me that will mean the work I do today I will try and do well but without carrying the weight of it heavy in my belly. To do it and let it go. I will write today without anxiously anticipating excellent writing or not excellent writing. The proof of my beginning is in this prompt writing. I didn't have an idea to write from. I am in the aftermath of big emotional work with a dead woman's ashes and it feels like the well has run dry. That happens. This writing right now in this moment is less than perfect and there is nothing huge in it, or startling or particularly strong. Today, even though I want to start all over again I'm not going to. This is a day of practicing imperfection.
This is also a sort of self care. Accepting where I am and saying that it's okay. Moving forward with an attempt at relaxing my ideas of what good work looks like, whether it's volunteering at the switchboard or doing work for someone or writing. What does it look like to work without frenzied expectation, without waiting to hit the wall of exhaustion before I call it done? What does it look like to bring my imperfect exhausted words to the page without hoping for something extraordinary? This is my beginning. We'll see how all the rest goes...
What about you? Is perfection burning a hole in your pocket? Can you move through the world with some ease today whether you are working or resting or writing? Can you do your best and let it be good enough?
***
Aristotle
By Billy Collins This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.
This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes—
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle—
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—
too much to name, too much to think about.
And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair,
and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.
Prompts:
***
This is the beginning...
***
Almost anything can happen...
***
Nothing is simple anymore...
***
This is the end...
***
The words are dry and scratchy in his throat...or
...the words are burning in her cupped hands
***
This is your first night without her...
***
I hope this day is imperfectly wonderful to you and your creative.
I guess my new hobby is typing out quotes and pasting them in my journal. #bobdylan #typewriter #typewriterrevolution #dailywritingpractice https://www.instagram.com/p/CTZ9TXhLnU_/?utm_medium=tumblr
