When I first began posting on this blog I was inspired by a weekly horoscope that offered the following:
"...It's important that you do what you do best without any embellishment, pretentiousness, or self-consciousness. Don't you dare try to hard or think too much or twist yourself like a contortionist to meet ... expectations. Trust the thrust of your simple urges."
For ten months I worked collaboratively on a manuscript of imaginary letters with a dear, longtime friend only to eventually scrap it, or, let's say temporarily set it aside to age. We felt we could no longer move forward due to constraints that were being placed on the work from the outside. It was our decision that we were in fact twisting and contorting, re-writing and subsequently producing something that began to no longer resemble the original work. This simply didn't feel right. We opted to hold true to the initial intention.
I then began assembling a book-length manuscript of poems and spent another healthy stretch of time editing those miniature tales of family, but this time I heard my truest voice singing. Still, it hasn't been a simple process and with the re-writes many less than flattering stories have surfaced, riveted to the paper like tent spikes holding them securely to the earth. But the rough edges of the truth are necessary, so I let them sit there staring back at me like big-eyed watch dogs in a Grimm's fairy tale blocking the entrance to the riches. But this hasn't scared me off. Simultaneous with the retention of the muddy skin and scowling faces, there is also the paring away. In shedding is shaping. There is a beginning. There is a middle.
Editing one's work isn't done lightly. There is an audience of the muted yet ever present characters being described to wrestle with and, additionally, the discourse with an editor - other than yourself - to juggle and weigh. And then there is the final naming. This has been almost as much of a struggle as anything - how to pay homage to the whole, how to ignore the "little darlings" and find a cover that calls out from a shelf, from a reader's hands across the room, from a coffeetable where the last visitor placed it carefully and hopefully lovingly. You'll have to stay tuned for the book's release, or return to this posting to hear the final selection...
"...It's important that you do what you do best without any embellishment, pretentiousness, or self-consciousness. Don't you dare try to hard or think too much or twist yourself like a contortionist to meet ... expectations. Trust the thrust of your simple urges."
For ten months I worked collaboratively on a manuscript of imaginary letters with a dear, longtime friend only to eventually scrap it, or, let's say temporarily set it aside to age. We felt we could no longer move forward due to constraints that were being placed on the work from the outside. It was our decision that we were in fact twisting and contorting, re-writing and subsequently producing something that began to no longer resemble the original work. This simply didn't feel right. We opted to hold true to the initial intention.
I then began assembling a book-length manuscript of poems and spent another healthy stretch of time editing those miniature tales of family, but this time I heard my truest voice singing. Still, it hasn't been a simple process and with the re-writes many less than flattering stories have surfaced, riveted to the paper like tent spikes holding them securely to the earth. But the rough edges of the truth are necessary, so I let them sit there staring back at me like big-eyed watch dogs in a Grimm's fairy tale blocking the entrance to the riches. But this hasn't scared me off. Simultaneous with the retention of the muddy skin and scowling faces, there is also the paring away. In shedding is shaping. There is a beginning. There is a middle.
Editing one's work isn't done lightly. There is an audience of the muted yet ever present characters being described to wrestle with and, additionally, the discourse with an editor - other than yourself - to juggle and weigh. And then there is the final naming. This has been almost as much of a struggle as anything - how to pay homage to the whole, how to ignore the "little darlings" and find a cover that calls out from a shelf, from a reader's hands across the room, from a coffeetable where the last visitor placed it carefully and hopefully lovingly. You'll have to stay tuned for the book's release, or return to this posting to hear the final selection...
So, instruction to self. Hold and hold still. Listen and release. Know that the words will whisper and that the contortionist act really isn't as necessary as it feels when you are so tense that you can no longer feels your hands for the fists you have made of them. I have tried too hard probably all my life. Something keeps reminding me this isn't necessarily the road.
Just late last night my body was experiencing the relief of a similar revelation, and no thanks to me or my writer's brain. just this sense of the only next sensible action: to let go. I cant even name the particulars, no desire even to articulate it within the self, but such relief.
ReplyDeleteI love that as I get older my body gets its say and is becoming a saner ringleader than the most of me. An incredibly arduous set of turns, to put it mildly, you document here--how brave to fall back and listen. What joy could there be in "arriving" if the sacrifices shift the work beyond recognition?