Feeling It

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing is feeling it–really feeling it.

I am the type of person who cries at movies. I also cry at weddings, funerals, and other random emotional occasions. And when people close to me are crying because they’re upset, I start crying with them. Sometimes my children laugh at me (in a gentle way) for how easily I cry, but it’s the process of fusion into other people’s stories and lives, fictional or real, that moves me to emotion.

Ironically, I find it harder to cry when I’m the one who’s upset about something, and hardest to bring my fiction to a place when I’m crying along with my characters.

But it must be done.

And despite all the warnings about overly sentimental poets, who, according to nasty critics, cry at their own trite work, I find that tears can be a gauge toward getting to the heart of something–the sad but satisfying emotional truth of story.

Transitions

I find this time so hard–going from being swamped with end of semester details from my teaching job to an open summer. I push and push and push to get all the work done, and then suddenly, time opens, blank and terrifying!

How to resist the call of filling up all the time with things I don’t really need to do, in other words, procrastination?

Why, after a thirty-year writing habit and two published books is the open page, the worries about whether I’ll produce anything good in all this luxurious time so difficult to deal with?

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Dreaming Impossible Dreams

Last weekend, I got to see an old musical I’d never caught before either live or on film–Man of La Mancha. Since it was a local production, and the music I knew from it struck me as rather cheesy, I was expecting it to be a pleasant evening, but I wasn’t expecting to be wowed.

Boy was I wrong.

While I’d always known the story of Don Quixote, it wasn’t until I saw the production that I realized the power of this quirky character’s idealism and vision in an ugly world, how he kept insisting, despite his faltering gait and halting voice, in a world of chivalry and castles and decency. And when he sang, To Dream the Impossible Dream, I could feel the audience riveted in their seats, reacting not so much to his powerful singing voice (which was nothing to discount) but to the urgency of holding onto creating your own vision of the world and working to make it happen, even if it might seem impossible.

We certainly need Don Quixote’s idealism if we look at the ugliness of the world today. How hard it is to stay active and true to the quest to creating a just and peaceful world. And on a more personal plane, to be a writer also feels like an impossible quest much of the time, yet we have to keep holding onto our visions and express them in the most effective way we possibly can, regardless of whether we achieve fame, recognition, or ridicule.

Taking Advantage of Spring

On these sunny days, the call of the outdoors is often stronger than the call of the computer and the internal world. The question, for me, at least, is how to resist, but how also not to feel silly for wasting these glorious days indoors. I’m blessed with Lefty, my four-legged personal trainer, so no matter what, I get out for at least 30-45 minutes, but often that doesn’t seem like enough. Still, spending large chunks of the day outdoors makes me feel as if I’m not giving my writing the time and consistency it deserves.

I have no easy answers, but here are a few things I’ve found that make the dilemma more bearable.

(1)    Write first, go out second, but make sure to go out. Perhaps, write less.

(2)    Fully celebrate and experience the spring; here in New England I have been happily mesmerized by the pinks and whites of weeping cherries and flowering dogwood among other trees, and the yellow of forsythia.

(3)    Use the unstructured time outside to contemplate character and plot problems—sometimes the best ideas come as I’m pulling weeds out of the flower garden.

(4)    Occasionally take a full day off and do something really fun—go on a bike ride, a long hike, spend the whole day in the garden. The trick, is obviously not to be seduced into taking too many days off, but often a break from routine can serve to nurture and replenish.

(5)    Perhaps, enjoy the day and write at night—I can’t do this, but maybe others can.

If nothing else, this “problem” makes me appreciate the rainy days more than I might have, as I get a break from being torn.