(Another Killing the Good Girl (KTGG - 25 year-old undergrad thesis novel) excerpt plus editorial critique and Writing Adventure #8 coming soon!)
It’s spring and the male birds are once again singing in the morning. VERY EARLY. They’re doing their bird thing: looking for mates, establishing territory—at 4 a.m. Not all birds sing that early; I just got lucky with the one outside my bedroom window.
Spring mornings are cold, and until just a short while ago there wasn’t much green. But even though when this singing started it was in the 30s and the trees were bare, the bird knew what to do. The bird acts according to its instincts, singing its signature song in the dark to create a family and a home (I know I’m anthropomorphizing).
This dawn chorus of one is too loud for me to pretend I don’t hear it. It goes on for 1-1 1/2 hours (about 5-5:30 a.m.) and when the bird is quiet I go back to sleep, not good sleep though, so I’ve been dragging myself through the day. Since early morning birdsong continues into late August, at some point (I hope soon) I will get used to it and stop waking up, but for now I’m trying to lay there, listen, and appreciate this bird singing.
Things like the bird are why I’m writing poems now and how the poems are coming in. I don’t do anything. I’m not trying to do anything. But the minute the first one showed up after several years of nothing and I said yes to whatever it was, not what I thought it should be, I filled pages and pages of my notebook the way I used to before grad school, conferences, agent speed dating, and critique groups.
Not all of what is in my notebook is a poem or belongs in a poem and that doesn’t matter. That something is coming in at all is thrilling and enough.
A little over one year ago, in my first newsletter, “The Great Realization” I talked about my realization that I wasn’t having any fun when it came to writing, which is why here I’m focused on bringing the writing life to life. I’ve been on a fiction break for three years now, rethinking my “why” for my projects and my writing, and only just starting to write poems again.
Because of this, crossing my one-year anniversary here on Substack (yay me!) is a personal achievement. This platform is keeping me writing somewhat regularly and rekindling my relationship with Creativity (feels like it should be capitalized). The Big C is trusting me with ideas for expression again, not because I need to produce something or to validate myself or the writing.
It’s like sitting very still and silent so a rare, beautiful creature will come closer. You can’t move or acknowledge it. You can’t touch it or talk to it. You can’t need anything from it. You have to let it be. Its presence is a gift.
I started out this way as a writer and then I went to grad school. I’m not knocking higher ed (I work at a college and I love the educational environment), but somewhere along the way during my MFA program, I lost that writer. I’m sure my wonderful professors were trying to help me excavate more of her without damaging anything but to some degree it’s the nature of these programs to mold everyone in a similar fashion rather than reveal and nurture what’s unique about each writer.
Being in a grad program and the writing/conference/publication/teaching system after that changed my writing. It changed me. It has an effect on all of us as writers in some way if we are participating, sometimes for the better and sometimes not.
Writing itself is not going to make anyone a writer. That’s an oversimplification. Setting that aside, the dedication of oneself to the craft of writing will improve skills but there’s more to it than that. Writing is a never-ending, unsolvable puzzle. It is always a question to be engaged with. That’s what makes it glorious, right?
I can’t make demands of it, force it, control it, hold on to it, own it.
It’s a creative expression/experience, which can be both low, crawling, and painful as well as high, flying, and euphoric (both can be true and important). I’ve learned to let go of expecting/needing/wanting something out of it and accept what shows up.
This is as close as I can get to how I’m thinking about writing and being a writer:
Writing is a complex, multi-dimensional creative state and act where whatever surfaces is embraced and expressed, with all its chaos, danger, and excitement through words.
It’s the creative state I’m paying more attention to now. That mysterious moment when the feeling, image, or idea shows up. Before, I would swoop in with a net. Now I’m staying curious, receptive, writing more in the spirit of discovery. Letting it breathe.
I used to live by the Jack London quote: “You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” What kind of terrible relationship with inspiration is that?
When I think of how I chained my writing to me with outlines and deadlines and expectations, I am surprised and grateful that anything good survived the death grip I had on it for too long.
I’m not talking about being passive and I don’t mean don’t have a goal. We can still be disciplined (show up regularly). We can still plan (imagine)—I just wrote about that in Writing Adventure #7. I’m suggesting trying play and exploration.
What if we didn’t expect anything from our writing? To make life better. To comfort us. To change anything or anyone. To change us. To make us more interesting. Special. Stronger. Wise. Connected. Rich. Famous. Worthy. Happy. Loved.
It’s not a deal or transaction. It’s an offering we can honor or not.
We can open and allow and receive our signature song.
We can listen to the bird.
Happy writing,
Chris
So glad to have read this post - I'm a brand-new subscriber! Congratulations on your milestone, Chris! 😊