About my writing process

Today I wrote a bit about my writing process.

I started it in my class this morning. I was in my English 101 class, and I gave my students the poem “Something You Should Know” by Clint Smith as a ‘writing into the day’ prompt. I actually got this idea from a slicer in the past. One option is you could take the beginning “Something you should know is that as a kid…” finish it and then connect it with “Perhaps that is when I became….”

Something You Should Know

is that as a kid, I once worked at a pet store.

I cleaned the cages

of small animals like turtles, hamsters,

rabbits, and hermit crabs. 

I watched the hermit crab continue

to grow, molt, shed its skin and scurry across

the bottom of the aquarium to find a new shell.

Which left me afraid for the small creature,

to run around all exposed that way, to have

to live its entire life requiring something else

to feel safe. Perhaps that is when I became afraid

of needing anything beyond myself. Perhaps

that is why, even now, I can want so desperately

to show you all of my skin, but am more afraid

of meeting you, exposed, in open water.

I was writing with my students and I began: Something you should know is that… I’ve been writing every day for the month of March with over 100 teachers from around the globe. It has made me more aware of the stories in the world and in my life and made me just more attuned to living life with eyes wide open.

But getting back to my writing process… Searching daily for a topic has been the most difficult part of this undertaking for me. What is a meaningful topic for that day? What topic do I really feel? I thought I had a great topic when one Friday night I went into the city and went to Lincoln Center and we met up with our family and cousins and heard a performance composed by my husband’s first cousin. It was a wonderful evening, but I never really felt like writing about the event and tended to write about an ordinary walk or, as in yesterday, that my daffodils have not bloomed yet.

Once I have the topic that feels right to me, I’m so relieved Settling on a topic that is your topic that day, one that feels right, is the best! Then I can just brainstorm away – dumping it out a la Anne LaMott (Bird by Bird) and know that I can always revise, move paragraphs, change whatever. I discussed that with my students today.  You might begin a piece of writing and then you realize and possibly decide that your beginning is actually two paragraphs in. I told them about Anne LaMott’s “Shitty First Drafts” and how you should feel free to get it out and not worry so much whether it’s good or not, yet. We talked about how the act of writing itself generates ideas and oftentimes you don’t know what you’re going to say until you allow the writing to flow.

I tend to constantly revise - as I’m writing, as I’m rereading the writing, when I go back to it later. Revision is always happening.

Finally, hitting “publish” and “confirm” is the best feeling. I’m done. It’s over. I can go on with my day or my evening. It definitely has felt like a pressure many days, particularly before a topic is decided on. (I look forward to that pressure easing very soon.) Also, once I got an idea and I just kept going, I’d be annoyed that I had to go help with dinner or hang up the laundry. A slicer wrote about all the things that haven’t gotten done in the month of March and that’s so true. My to-do list has grown for April 1st and beyond. 

Tomorrow I plan on writing about how reading and commenting on slices truly enriched this month of March.