8/6/2019 Why Write? (Part II)

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More on Writing

In thinking about writing and why I write, the following quote fromGloria Steinem sticks with me. I found it reprinted in John R. Trimble’sWriting with Style, which I confess to not having read enough.

 For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: 1) when I’m doing it, I don’t feel that I should be doing something else instead; 2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and 3) it’s frightening. –Gloria Steinem

It’s the first of these three conditions that strikes me most, becausefeeling this way—as if I have complete certainty in the way I’mspending my time—for me is quite unique.

 Yesterday I made it a point to write in the middle of a busy day. Istopped at a local café, warmed up with a journal entry, and dove intothe opening of a new piece of long fiction that I’ve had in mind for

some time. I dove in without an outline, without a complete idea of who my character was or where she was going, even a full sense of what she’d be dealing with.

 That I started to find these on the page isn’t remarkable. It’s anelement of that exploration, of finding one’s story through writing inthe same way a reader does, that many of you commented on in replyto this last post (Why I Write). We love the story, uniquely ours, that wefind through this practice.

What I found remarkable about yesterday was what happened after Iwrote: I started looking at the clock. At 2PM, I had to be somewhere.

 That left me enough time to do X and Y, which I did, then pushed upagainst the clock a bit and became anxious. From my errands I wenthome and read for a while, a right I’d earned, I thought, with mywriting. I had an engagement for dinner, but all through the afternoonand the night, something was stuck in my mind’s craw, an idea that Iwasn’t done at my desk, that I needed to write more.

I’m not sure where this came from. By any account, I’d acquittedmyself well in the day’s work and broken through 700 words of newmaterial. This was a noble and impressive amount, I thought. But Ididn’t feel right.

What should I have done with this energy? Usually I try to stow it awayfor the next day, use its nerves to get me up early to the desk in themorning. But this time I listened. I went back to the desk late lastnight. The darkness outside my window was broken only by a fewlights on the tops of houses.

I wrote and added more to the day’s journal. Then I went back to my

8/6/2019 Why Write? (Part II)

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fiction and added another 300 words to my first chapter, breakingthrough 1,000 words for the day. I once read that Shirley Jackson brokeout of a longtime emotional slump by writing 1,000 words a day for ayear or more. This number has since stuck with me as a reasonablegoal for a day.

I crossed that boundary and signed off. In the remaining time beforebed, my mind was quiet, the anxiety of before entirely gone. It’s thesame quiet I feel now, today at the desk as I write this. The sense thatSteinem talks about in her first test.

Indeed, accomplishment and pride can be fleeting. Writing being“frightening” is a rush, but true on more levels that I can touch onhere.

It’s her first “test”, that “when I’m doing it [writing], I don’t feel that Ishould be doing something else instead” that stuck with me even after

I’d worked again at night. It was this sense that I’d lacked during therest of my day, the name for my disquiet.

So I see this: the desire for mental quiet and a lack of nagging, as whatsome would call satisfaction. This brought me back to the desk to writeagain.

Seth Harwood has written two novels, Jack Wakes Up and Young Junius. A third, This Is Life, will be available in October. For more of hiswriting, thoughts on publication and free stories as well as free audio

downloads of his work, visit sethharwood.com