Late Riser

On imperfection, expensive notebooks, and doing the damn thing anyway

Some Sunday mornings fill me with weird guilt, and today is one of them. The voice in my head mumbles something like, “Who did you think you were kidding, committing to a biweekly newsletter? You can’t count on yourself to have something worthwhile to say every two weeks. This was never going to work.”

It’s true. Most of the time, when Sunday morning rolls around, I have absolutely nothing to say. I walk the dog outside in the perfect stillness of the morning, I make coffee, I scramble an egg and butter a piece of toast, and in all that time, nothing comes. There are no deep thoughts, no witty remarks. It’s as quiet inside as it is outside.

These are the perfect conditions for abandoning a writing habit. I know this from an unfortunate amount of experience. Many times, I have sworn to myself that I was going to set aside x days or x hours a week to write poetry consistently. As many times, I have failed.

Most of the time, my lack of motivation comes from that same uncomfortable feeling that I just don’t have anything to say. The tank is empty, and the mind won’t start, so why bother?

One of my favorite pieces of only-sometimes-followed writing advice comes from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, which I read in high school. Goldberg talks about the drawbacks of using fancy notebooks for writing in. She says this:

“Sometimes people buy expensive hardcover journals. They are bulky and heavy, and because they are fancy, you are compelled to write something good. Instead you should feel that you have permission to write the worst junk in the world and it would be okay. Give yourself a lot of space in which to explore writing.”

I barely remember anything from the year of my life when I read that quote, but for some reason, that little tidbit has stayed with me more than almost anything else I have ever read about writing. There is something in it that really calls me out in the tough-love sort of way I need. Yes, I am a compulsive fancy-notebook buyer, but this quote is bigger than the notebooks; it gets at the gnawing feeling that if I am going to create, I have to create something good every time.

This thought is a killer. It’s paralyzing. My own tendency to think this way has resulted in a lot of negative self-talk throughout my life. I could never be a professional writer, because professional writers are the kinds of people who never run out of ideas. And me? I struggle to run into ideas.

If every writer thought this way, there would be no writers.

I really didn’t want to sit and write this today. I was convinced I had nothing to say that anyone would want to read. The empty-tank feeling was taking over. But then, Goldberg’s notebook quote came back to me, as it often does when I need to hear it. I started to think about how the feeling of writing for an audience is a lot like the feeling of a brand-new, expensive hardcover journal. If I give into that feeling, that compulsion to write something good or not write at all, I stop giving myself room to explore the practice of writing itself. I commodify my relationship with writing - one of the most sacred and long-standing relationships in my life - when I don’t let myself write imperfectly.

So today’s Early Riser is, maybe, a bit boring. It’s also a bit late. It’s also a bit disorganized. But it’s honest, and it’s for me. And maybe, hopefully, it’s for you, too. Write your words. Do your dance. Paint your picture. Make the worst art in the world. Do it happily, and do it freely.