The Writing Groove
More and more of my days is being spent in words, and not just teaching or tutoring, but actually writing or working on writing with other people. My heart feels good.
I’m even back into a regular writing practice. I start my day with a little God-time and then read some of Wislawa Symborska’s poetry. I use a line from one of her poems to get me started. Today, the poem I read was called “Still Alive,” and the stanza I chose was:
For thousands of very tangled reasons
it is our custom
to listen to him breathe.”
Something about that line just struck me – the rhythm, the idea – and so I used that to get myself going. Brenda Miller once said she uses poetry to get started, and if Brenda uses it, then I should, too. (You probably should as well.)
Today, I will spend the day tutoring, which I really do enjoy, but I will enjoy it even more because I wrote before I left. Today, I started my first piece EVER of fiction. A friend from college asked me if I’d like to try it, and I pondered and then thought of an idea (it’s a strange one). So I said yes. (More details to come soon). Since I got a few words down on the page, I feel like I’ve done what Sven Birkerts calls “real work”; now doing the stuff that buys me sustenance for the real work doesn’t seem too daunting.
Between tutoring appointments, I’m doing to draft some letters for a friend who is starting his own business for youth pastors. Then, I have some grant research to do for my CSA. I’m just busy (but not overly) so, and it all has to do with words.
Finally, almost a full year after I quit my job to do this writing thing, finally and gloriously I’m falling into it all the way. I can’t tell you what a good feeling that is.
