Some Writing, A Tip, and A Pep Talk

I was on Art House America recently. I wrote an essay called “A Surge and A Story,” and it’s sort of a Lenten reflection on Jesse’s work and my storytelling. I attempt to make a metaphor out of water and God and run it through the course of the piece. (Hmmm, water and God….nobody has EVER thought to make a metaphor out of that. Where does she come up with her ideas?)

I’m thrilled to be on Art House America again. I found the website a few years ago and after reading a few of the essays, I was thankful to be in graduate school because I thought that after I graduated, I might have a better chance of submitting to Art House. Plus, I have struck up a friendship with Jenni Simmons, who is the editor. If you are on Instagram, I recommend you follow her. I love the way she sees the world and the way she shares it with us.

Last week my story about my 8th graders ran on Relief Journal. Something has shifted with this class and I since I wrote this. (Keep in mind I am referring to the point when I started to write this essay, not when it was published seven days ago. I think I started writing this at the end of January.) I feel at home with them when they walk in the classroom. I’ve been smiling more. I start to think that next year at this time I won’t be able to call them mine, and I get sad.

The day this was published, George, the main character in my essay, walked into class with an oven mitten on his hand. I asked him why he was wearing an oven mitten and he told me that it hurt to open his binder, and that mitten made it easier to open it. Fair enough, I thought. “George,” I asked. “Are you right handed?” His mitten was on his right hand, and yes, he is right handed.

“How will you write in class today?” I asked him.

“I can do it,” he said.

So I have them write about a time when they were really scared; so scared, that they couldn’t control their thoughts. I wanted them to relate to how Juliet must’ve felt when she gave her soliloquy before she took the poison. They wrote and they wrote and it was so quiet I got scared. I said, “Now, look what you wrote about and see if there is anything else besides fear.” Lots of them said things like anger, confusion, sadness, and that all made a lot of sense. It’s what I assumed they’d find.

Well, George, he found something different. He raises his ovenmitted hand and tells us that once he thought there was a stranger in the house.  He tells us he gets out of bed and goes to find the stranger in order to save his parents from him or her. “I was scared, but what got me out of the bed was the love I have for my parents, so I see love in what I wrote.”

Me too, George. Me, too.

In other news, I received a few messages here and there lately circling around two topics: my writing routine and fear in rejection. My responses are to give readers a tip and a little pep talk.

The longest I can write is 90 minutes and here is why: I make three cups of coffee each morning. As soon as I pour one cup, I set my kitchen timer for 30 minutes, and then I walk to my desk and sit down. I stay there until the timer goes off, then I pour myself another cup of coffee, set the timer, and sit down again. It is elementary, I know, but if I don’t set the timer I will get up after 5 minutes, or as soon as writing is hard and it is ALWAYS hard. I will change my clothes. I will work on lesson plans. I will go to Target. I will eat donuts. So if you are thinking about writing or wondering about a writing routine, I suggest using this method. If 30 minutes is too long, set it for 15. I guarantee you can write a sentence you’ll be proud of in 15 minutes.

Here are my thoughts on rejection: It’s not something I’m afraid of, but it is something that makes me sad. I also have a difficult time not comparing myself to what other writers are doing, or more specifically HOW other writers are doing. I’m ashamed that nothing I’ve written has ever gone viral. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut when I read about someone who’s been blogging for five, six, or even two years and they are at 10,000 subscribers. How does that happen and what is wrong with me that I can’t make that happen? What is wrong with my writing? That is the path I begin to go down after I’ve written something that hasn’t done well (or as well as other writers).

When I am on this path, two things can happen. Mean Callie can come out, and she is a real bitch. She starts saying nasty things; anything from my writing to my faith, to my mothering, to my weight. “Your butt got bigger, and that’s why you can’t write anymore,” is something that she would say. Mean Callie thinks this is a good way to get back to work, and I’m sorry to say sometimes it works. I don’t suggest developing a mean alter ego for yourself because I don’t know when to turn her off and she darkens the way I see the world.

What I do suggest is what I’ve been doing a lot more of lately. I say to myself, “That really stinks that you put weeks and maybe even months into that piece and nobody said a word about it.” I’m usually on a run when this voice comes out, so I run for a few minutes and then I add, “So what do you want to do? Do you want to stop writing? Because you can. You can stop anytime you want.” I’ll run and imagine my life without trying to write it every once in a while, and so far my answer to this question has always been, “No. I don’t want to stop. I’m willing to sit down and try again.”

I realize now that I’m willing to try again not so much for people to say, “HOLY COW CALLIE YOU ARE A FABULOUS WRITER!” That’s nice, I admit. That’s real nice. But what gets me to sit down is what has happened between my 8th graders and I. I see more than my fear and sadness. I see a lot of love. Any post you read here, anything I’ve written on Coffee+Crumbs, Relief, Makes You Mom, Tweetspeak, even the Banner – anything I set out to write I understand now that I’m looking to see more than what I set out to see.

I don’t know one writer (and I know a few) who doesn’t have to deal with fear or anxiety or sadness or jealousy. Not one. My pep talk is this: you are going to have to figure out how to hold hands with those emotions while you write. When you do, you’ll find a better story.

I’m finishing this post up as Hadley reads the first Harry Potter across the table from me. “Remember the grim?” she asks me smiling. I tell her yeah, I remember. “That seems like something that’s not that big a deal,” She tells me and she’s kind of laughing now. I wonder if she’s nostalgic for those pages now that we are in the fifth book and things are much more complicated, or if she’s proud that she got through them and stuck with JK Rowling because sticking with the story helped Hadley trust the narrator, the characters, and the power of fiction.

“Like,” Hadley says, “you kind of forget about that fear,” she says, still grinning.

Yes. You were scared once and you got through it, and hey, wasn’t that a good story?