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.

Want some cookies?

On Writing, Part 1.

Recently, I decided to set aside 30 minutes a day to sit in front of my computer and give myself some time to let any stewing stories come out. So on the days when I am not too tired, or forget, or decide to look for a real job, I sit down, and note the time (I try to keep myself to 30 minutes). I am discovering that if the stories and writing come out at all during that time, they come as a drip. I am not a writer with a churning mass of stories. Things seem to come to my brain in packets. Like, I get a little packet, write the words from it, then have to wait for the next packet of info to arrive before the words come out. OK, next packet please.

Stop. Think.
(That was the entire last packet.)

I think I used to write down words right away because I was afraid I would forget them if I let them sit around and dust off completely. I am now starting to trust that I will not forget the important, brilliant things I think of. Or if I do, I will remember them. Or maybe I am just a tired mom who will not only forget the brilliant thoughts, but forget that I thought them in the first place, thus releasing myself from regret that I didn’t write them down immediately! Any of these is fine.

Sometimes I sit for 25 minutes and then write for 5 when something occurs to me. The process of writing is so much not-writing. And the not-writing part of writing is so not concrete—there is no finger clacking or progress. And I dislike and distrust things that are all in my head. So I write crap when I should be doing the not-writing part of writing.

But the not-writing part is not just not-writing. It is, oddly enough, not-thinking. Thinking seems to kill the things that are burbling up to the surface. So really writing involves not-writing and not-thinking, for long periods of time. It sounds so easy.

Here is my new exercise: I will sit, not-write and not-think. Something will occur to me (I hope). I will not write it down right away. I will wait until it is urgent that I write it down. Perhaps then I will know it is worth writing down. Some timer will go off – “ding!”—and it will emerge as a fully-formed thought loaf.

Or maybe I will just go make cookies.

The DAP Mystery.

My son getting ready to start kindergarten has gotten me thinking about my own kindergarten experience. I find that while I have brief flashes of memories from preschool on a farm in Iowa (feeding the animals, climbing on the empty propane tank, making Thanksgiving hats as either an Indian or Pilgrim—I was an Indian, and I was pissed) I have many more solid memories of kindergarten. I have a sense of who I was in kindergarten, who I was becoming, what that period of life meant for me. And I’m hoping that perhaps now that my son is entering kindergarten, his experience will shed some light on mysteries from my own kindergarten experience. Like the mystery of “DAP.”

DAP* was a unit in kindergarten, like finger painting or gluing toothpicks on construction paper. It was a “floor activity” rather than a “table activity” and an “individual activity” rather than a “group activity.” It was an individual floor activity where each child picked a basket of dumpable objects, small things like balls and bottle caps. Well, actually, the only basket I can remember was the basket full of Barbie accessories. There were lots of different baskets, but only one Barbie basket. So DAP Lesson #1: position yourself to be the girl who gets the Barbie accessories.

Anyway, in DAP you picked or were assigned your basket. You found a spot on the rug not near any other kids. Then you dumped out your basket. I was pretty OK until this point. It was the next 18 minutes that mystified me. I had no idea what to do with the junk in the basket. I looked around at the other kids for ideas. Their stuff was spread out. So I spread mine out. I remember thinking that if I just had the Barbie stuff I would know what to do. Hello—imaginative play! But inexplicably there was no actual Barbie with the Barbie stuff. Just accessories. DAP Lesson #2: learn to deal with disappointment; and DAP Lesson #3: accessories do not a person make.

I’m not sure if we had DAP all year, but I’m guessing we did because how could they tell if we had mastered the skills it was supposed to teach and moved us on to something else (like actually playing Barbie)? So I spent 20 minutes a day for a year dumping out baskets, moving the stuff around so it looked like I knew what I was doing, and then cleaning it all up nicely and not fighting over the Barbie purses.

I went to law school. A good one, and I also practiced at a big fancy law firm. I took the New York State Bar Exam. I parent two young children, at least one of whom made it to kindergarten. I owe some of this to DAP. I have no idea what the other kids learned—probably math skills, or spatial reasoning, or architecture. What I learned was how to look like you knew what you were doing. Years later, in college, a friend asked if she could borrow my notes from a seminar we had both attended. It was boring. I told her that actually I didn’t take very many notes, and generally have very little idea what the seminar was about. She looked surprised. But you looked like you were really paying attention, she said. Aha! DAP! I learned that in DAP! (With these skills I feel I would also excel in careers in sales, clinical psychology, or politics.)

I’m sure they have DAP or its equivalent at PS8. I hope my son is smart and creative enough to figure out the developmentally appropriate lessons. But if nothing else, I sort of hope he learns DAP Lesson #4: fake it and smile.

*I am now informed that DAP stands for “Developmentally Appropriate Practice,” which means about as much to me as an adult as it would have as a kindergartener. Personally, I would go with "Dump and Pretend."