On (the oozing blob of) Writing, Part 2.

I am untrusting and risk-averse. Part of the writing process makes me a little short of breath in a panicked way, like when you think you left your iPhone somewhere in Ikea. Or when you have that dream that you have an exam but haven’t studied (nerd alert!). I get this anxiety not just because I have to write slowly like a worm composting dirt (see Part 1), but even then, when I finally get something down (on paper? On screen?) I am finding that the best writing comes out when I have no idea where I am going when I begin to write. I sit down thinking I’m going to write some awesome essay about some joy of motherhood and end up reflecting on being the fat kid in the dance recital. This lack of control can make a prudent, planning person completely insane. It’s like guess and check (which, oddly, I am more than happy to use to figure out any math problem). It just seems so risky to go through this exercise to figure out if there is a story there and where, exactly, it is. But I guess writers are people who are willing to be frustrated on the off chance that there is something there, one day, and it grabs hold of them. If they hadn’t looked, they never would have found it. But there are also many writers who looked back there and found nothing decent, I think.

Now I find myself wondering what other things in my life I might avoid because I don’t know the outcome. Not little stuff like Kimchi or Gorgonzola crackers, I mean big, terrifying stuff, like trying a new job, or taking an improv class, or quietly writing alone in my apartment. My system of not leaving things to chance has worked out pretty well for me up to now. Why change it? But then little piranhas of curiosity start attacking. What stories might be behind that curtain? And will I die a horrible death if I look back there and nothing comes out? Probably not. The worst that can happen is that I wasted a half-hour of my life having heart palpitations while trying to write nothing, think nothing and plan nothing so I can write something and be surprised.

So, in case you were wondering, this is a summary of my writing life. It is an infuriating and risky slow ooze to potentially nowhere, except when it leads me to somewhere.

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