This is the first in a series of blog posts that Nin Andrews and I will write about our writing process, or lack thereof. We like to bitch about writing, and I've been not writing and then bitching about not writing . . .
CALL IT WRITER'S BLOCK
- I say I am going to write but then I can't decide where to start. I feel like a little kid with her pants to her ankles standing in the middle of a high school lunch room—vulnerable, exposed, full of fear.
- I say I am going to write and this has me in a tizzy. So I take for a walk to de-tizzy.
- I say I am going to write so I make myself a sandwich instead. I open a can of tuna fish and toast some bread. I don’t have any mayo, so I get in the car and drive to the store and get a jar of mayo. When I get home I find that the dog ate the bread.
- I say I am going to write but then I realize that I am late to a department meeting and I needed to make photocopies for the other committee meeting after the meeting. When I stand in the copy room and wait I recite “In a Station at the Metro” over and over.
- I say I don’t have time to write so I show up to the department meeting early. This turns out to be the perfect place to disappear into a poem. My colleague’s must think I take very good notes at our meetings.
- I say I am going to write as soon as I am done reading those papers. As soon as I finish reading those papers I collect more papers.
- I say I am going to cook dinner, something special, but instead I heat up leftovers. I wait till tomorrow to go to the farmer’s market and get fresh produce: spinach, arugula, watermelon radishes, purslane, purple potatoes, pea shoots, and heirloom black beans.
- I say I am going to write so I vacuum the house for two hours. I get on my hands and knees to scrub the baseboards then start a load of wash then take the dog for a walk.
- I say I am going to write but then I get in the car and drive to the antique store and look at dressers. I open and close the doors on old dressers, rub my hand around the insides to see if anyone hid a letter. I convince myself that some old dresser drawer sitting in an antique shop has a letter hidden inside.
- I say I am going to write but then I call my mom and ask her for my great grandmother’s recipes. We stay on the phone while she digs through the kitchen drawers and then she reads me recipes over the phone for an hour. She says wait till summer to make the cagootz and don’t forget to slice the zucchini thin before adding the eggs.
- I say I am going to write but then I call Nin Andrews instead. She tells me a story about this one time when she was at a fancy restaurant before a reading. She and her friend kept yelling out. It went something like this: Nin: Should I read the vagina poems? Friend: Yes, read the vagina poems. Nin: But, I don’t know if I should read the vagina poems. Friend: Oh, yes! You just need to wear the right dress to read the vagina poems. Nin: Okay, I will read the vagina poems.
- I say I am going to write but then I check my email, iron all my shirts, dust the light fixtures, replace the eyehook on the screen door, make a few phone calls, fall asleep at a decent hour, wake up, exercise a little. I completely forget that I said I was going to write. I go teach a poetry class in the prison and sit around the table with ten women. I write a poem about escaping and call it “Writer’s Block.”
Not writing is part of the process. But, there are those times when I feel guilty or fearful and all I need to do is to keep going, keep being, keep showing up. Too often, I get that feeling of not remembering how to write, but just like all feelings, this one is temporary, too.
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