“pretty in pink” by devi laskar

There are writers who know the last sentence of a book before they sit down to write it, and writers who write only to learn what will happen next.

There are writers who work meticulously over a sentence, only to erase it, and writers who pour words onto the page, going back later to cull out the jewels to keep.

If you are doing NaNoWriMo this month, or any approximation of it, you are leaning hard toward pouring words onto the page. At a pace of 1667 words/ day, you can’t afford to be too meticulous.

And there’s a tremendous value in practicing letting the words come. Silence the editor—or, more usually, learn to accommodate the sound of internal criticism as you would the pitter patter of rain when you are sheltered within. Ignore that voice that finds fault with everything you type, that hates every word you carve out. It’s there; it’s usually there when you are working. It means you are doing the job. And that is painful.  As Annie Dillard said: Writing is hard. Many people prefer life to it.

But the triumphant news is that you are doing it anyway. You are on the path. You hear the pitter patter and you carry on. You drown it out as best you can with the pitter patter of your keyboard. You write.

Looking back, it’s easy to be pleased with it. What an accomplishment! What a feat!

Try to call forth some of that self-congratulations earlier on, in the act itself.

Yesterday, I sat down and despaired before my book. I am at that late stage where to do more than tighten a screw or tape in a rearview mirror will mean starting over again. I have more ideas than plans, more emotion than discipline. Uh oh.

And yet as I write to you, I recall that the re-approach is always difficult, always feels this way. It gets easier once the practice is daily. I noticed in my yoga class yesterday that I could leap backwards into downward dog with a little more ease than I have been able to do it in the past, and the second and third and fourth time I went a little bit farther with a little more grace.

Yoga begins, says my yoga teacher, Ann Austin (and I think she’s quoting her yoga teacher, too), when you want to get out of the pose.

Jennifer Egan mentioned in an interview that she has a friend who has a sign pinned to her office door that reads: Where are you going? Because there’s a tendency to pop out of the writing pose, to get up from the chair, to persuade yourself that either that voice in your head is right (pitter patter) or at the very least you ought to do the dishes or answer the phone. That’s the urge to get out of the pose, and that’s when the real yoga—the yoga of writing—begins. 

So congratulations to all of you doing NaNoWriMo or even using the month of November to establish a daily writing habit or something close. You are deep into it now. You are noticing an itch, remembering an unpaid bill, considering the cruel editor’s voice urging you to fall may be that of your beloved, wise muse.

Stay! Whether you know that last line or it will surprise you when you get there, hold fast. Breathe. Keep going.

I will, too.