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Week
2: Write in Front of Your Nose
Or, Digging Your Toes into the Earth
One of the most common and
persistent writing-related ailments is a blockage in the creativity
duct. Nine times out of ten, this blockage is caused by a belief, lodged
right in our inspiration nodule, that every time we sit down at the
keyboard or notebook we must produce a major work of art.
It must be complete and organized and finished and gorgeous and make
sense. So we have to basically birth it, whole, in logical order. This
is a very tall order and we usually respond like this:
"My God!" we think to ourselves, "where do I begin? How do I begin?
I am totally overwhelmed! Ack!"
I diagnose overwhelmitude complicated by secondary perfectionitis. So,
what's the treatment? We've got a potent home remedy, and it's right
under your nose. Literally.
When you don't know what to write -- or you know what you need to write
but don't know how to get there -- start with what's under your nose.
Usually when we sit down to write, we have an idea of what we intend
to produce: an essay, a poem, a short story, a chapter in a novel. Often
we have even more specific goals: an essay about our state government,
a poem about the death of our mother, a short story where a scientist
wins the Nobel Prize, the chapter where the narrator meets his love
interest. Of course it is fine to have goals and it can be very useful
to have an idea of what you need to say for a particular piece. For
instance, if you are writing a book review, you clearly need to discuss
the book you are reviewing. But that doesn't mean that you have to start
there. This course, Dancing with the Muse, is about getting to our freer,
bolder writing, our non-English-class-give-the-teacher-what-she-expects
writing. We are going to focus for now on how to do that, and later
I will talk about how you turn that into a book review (or a chapter,
poem, or essay).
For this week, focus on what is in front of you. Just for this moment,
don't think "essay, poem, chapter"; structure and outcome will fall
into place later. For right now, we are focusing on what is in front
of our noses. This can be literal -- the dog snoring under our feet,
the old piece of string blowing in the wind outside the window, the
ceramic bowl our daughter made where we store our pencils on the left
side of our desk. These are all good places to start writing. Just as
we discussed last week, you can dive in and start with any of these
topics. You can go very deep into them, giving detailed description.
If we chose the dog snoring under our feet we might talk about the wet,
spongy feel of his nose or the texture and smell and feel of his fur.
Or you can spin off in a wild new direction; you might start by describing
the dog and move on to a dialogue of what the dog says in his dreams
which leads you to write about a wolf hunting on a mountaintop. You
might end up with a conversation between a wolf hunter and God. Regardless
of where you start or where you go, the same rules of crapulence from
last week apply: write whatever comes to you, don't stop to think, don't
worry about whether it's good, just let it pour out. Let your writing
hand stumble drunkenly in the dark. It might unexpectedly bumble into
the Muse.
You can also write what is in front of your nose in a metaphorical sense.
We have all heard that writers should "write what they know." Does this
mean you can't write from a woman's perspective if you are a man, or
write about gardening if you hate dirt under your fingernails? Of course
not. Great writers do that all the time. Writing what you know really
means taking a bit of your experience, or something you've studied,
or something that happened to a friend, and starting with that. You
can spin fantastic fiction by beginning with something that is your
lived, breathed experience. What you end up with will not be your story,
but having begun in a place that you know intimately will give it the
feeling of truth.
For instance, one day I was grocery shopping. I use a mobility scooter
to get around; it is an electric vehicle similar to a motorized wheelchair.
In the produce section I nearly rammed into a rickety little table with
a basket of limes on it. That got me thinking, "What if I had knocked
over that table? What would have happened next?" I wrote a short story
that starts with a woman in a scooter knocking over a pile of tangerines
in a grocery store. Knowing inside and out the experience of grocery
shopping in a scooter gave me a lead on a funny piece of fiction. I
started with what was under my nose: being a disabled woman in a challenging
environment.
In Bird by Bird , Anne Lamott talks about writing "short
assignments." This is writing only "what you can see through
a one-inch picture frame." In other words, don't try to write the
whole novel or short story or article in one breath. Break it into little
pieces, as if each one was a short assignment, and just write that little
piece. This is another way of thinking about how to begin to write.
Whether it is -- literally or metaphorically -- what you can see through
a one-inch frame or what is under your nose, these are both good places
to start.
OK, now let's get back to the issue of how this applies when you need
to write something specific. What about if you have an article due or
you need to get a poem finished or you really want to write an essay
about the week you spent with your grandfather when you were seven?
You can do any of that and still begin with what's under your nose.
For instance, the first time I wrote a book review on assignment (meaning
that an editor of a newspaper asked me to write it and I agreed and
thus had to actually deliver a piece of a certain length on time), I
felt quite overwhelmed. I read the book twice, highlighting as I went
and dog-earing the pages. I took extensive notes about the themes, the
sections that were written particularly well, the places where I felt
something was missing. By the time I had to actually write the review
I had almost enough material to write my own book! I didn't know where
to begin; it felt like too much to handle.
So I started with what was under my nose. I thought about my personal,
emotional response to the book. Exile and Pride is a memoir
of a working-class, queer, disabled woman from the Pacific Northwest.
Now, I am a middle-class Jew from Boston, so I do not know what it's
like to be raised in a small logging village on the Oregon coast. But
I sure do know about being queer and disabled. And what was under my
nose as I read this book was how hungry it made me for more books on
this topic. I devoured Eli Clare's memoir as fast as I could, and once
I put it down, I felt a physical longing -- an emptiness that needed
filling -- for more narratives by queer women with disabilities, especially
those that addressed the environment as well. I felt as if I had been
fasting and then taken one sip of soup, and that taste only made me
aware of the depth of my hunger. I used my own feelings -- what was
under my nose as I experienced the book -- to start the review. Once
I started pouring out my tale of hunger for quality writing by queer
women with disabilities, I was able to transition and talk also about
the book: its structure, its strengths and weaknesses, where it fits
in the genre, and the other material that makes up a book review. Here
is the opening paragraph from the review:
Reading Exile and
Pride made me realize that I have been starving. The more I
read, the hungrier I became. Eli Clare's deft mixture of memoir, story-telling,
and sociopolitical analysis left me wondering, "Where are all the
other books that encompass disability, the environment, gender, queerness,
class, and the history and meaning of the words we use to describe
these conditions?" It is a rare book that can touch on so many intertwining
themes with the skill of a poet. Exile and Pride is like
a slice of thick, black bread to a readership hungering for an accessible,
yet complex, discussion of how we shape and are shaped by history,
location, and identity. (From Sojourner , "Multilayered,
Complex Realities," Book Review of Exile & Pride
, March 2001.)
You see how I started with
my own feelings -- what personally affected me about the book -- then
segued into information about the memoir itself? And how I carried the
metaphor of my own hunger through the first paragraph, to liken Exile
and Pride to a slice of nourishing dark bread? I ended up with
a review I felt proud of, even though when I first started writing I
hadn't known how to begin. So I followed my nose.
Using the "right under your nose" concept helps start your writing motor
and get you driving. Once you are cruising on the highway you can let
your mind wander; you can decide to veer off the map and take back roads
or you can zoom up the interstate to Canada. Do not worry about how
you're going to get from here to there. Let the Muse be your GPS (global
positioning system).
This technique is important not only for new writers, but for
experienced writers, too. Sometimes those of us with a good grasp
of language -- who got A's on our term papers in high school -- are
good at cranking out correct, proper writing that is lacking in passion
and creativity. We know our writing is "fine," but it's missing some
spark. We want our readers to burst into flame from excitement and instead
they just nod their heads at the end and go, "uh-huh." Often what is
missing is that connection that comes from writing what's under our
nose: using something so essential and elemental to us that when we
veer off in a new direction we are still carrying with us the groundedness
of knowing who we are and what we are saying.
I have a strong "sense memory" of places where I have lived or spent
a lot of time -- especially places I have been barefoot. Being barefoot
connects you directly to time and place: the seasons, the climate, the
geography, are all transmitted directly into your skin. If you spend
the summers on the beach in Florida, you can probably describe in detail
the feeling of hot sand burning the soles of your feet, the granular
texture, the salt that gets caked around your toenails. If you spend
the winters in Boston, even though you are not barefoot, you know the
squish and ooze of slush seeping through your boots and soaking your
socks. You know how ice, pitted with salt, crunches underfoot, how the
earth is unforgivingly hard and the grass looks like old hair.
When you write, you can always start from a place you know that intimately,
that deeply. It will make your writing more connected; it will give
it snap and texture. Even if you have no idea how you're going to get
where you're going from here, it is good to begin on solid ground, where
our toes and skin and heels know the feel and smell and texture of the
earth.
ASSIGNMENT: WEEK 2
Sit down at your desk or pad of paper. Let your glance fall on something
that you could see if you held up a one-inch picture frame: your cat,
your leftover lunch on a plate, the rocking chair across the room, the
pine needles on the snow outside your window. Anything, absolutely anything
is fair game, even the dust bunnies under your couch or the toenail
clippings that didn't make it into the trash can. Choose one thing and
set your timer or watch for twenty minutes. Then write, starting with
this thing. You don't have to stay with what's in front of your nose;
just start there. The important thing is to keep writing for the full
twenty minutes. Say anything you want. Be as descriptive as you can.
If you can't think of what to say, make stuff up. If your mind takes
you in other directions, go with it -- you still want a sense of the
craptacular. Don't cross out, don't think, don't edit. Just describe.
When the timer rings, you can stop. (If you want to keep writing, you
can, of course, but that is extra credit.)
Super Size It!
If that went well and you want to do another writing practice
this week, here's the bonus assignment. Remember a place with your feet,
your hands, or your mouth. Write for twenty minutes starting with the
feel (or taste) of that location between your toes or fingers or teeth.
You can stay with the sense memory or you can be transported to this
remembered location to write anything you want. Start with your toes,
fingers, or teeth and go from there! Be reckless and messy; say whatever
comes to mind. If you get stuck, go back to your soles, palms, and tongue.
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