If you’re a writer, your goal might be to finish writing a book. Or start one. Or publish a book you’ve written. Or perhaps you’ve done that and your goal is to promote it. Maybe your goal is to sell out your print run or win a contest. Whatever your goal, you may think that reaching it will make you happy. But more often than not, as soon as we reach one goal, we create a new one. There’s nothing wrong with this, per se—many of us get a lot done this way—but when we believe that our contentment or joy is somewhere “out there” attached to a goal we have to strive, fight, or suffer in some way to achieve, we live in a perpetual state of wanting, and, in the words of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, we “can’t get no satisfaction.”
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Most Mondays I wake up raring to go. Some days I hit the ground running, but other days, the sheer number of things I want (and tell myself I “have” to do) paralyzes me. My best defense is to dump everything that’s swirling around inside my head onto the page. This morning my to-do list looked like this: One of my life intentions is to relish the joy of self-expression. But lately I’ve been reluctant to say what I think, especially on social media and in my blog posts. This is partly because posting anything other than politics these days has felt trivial, and political conversations can easily erupt into flames. Putting out wildfires makes me anxious, and I don’t want to live in hatred and fear. I know from experience that crashes are inevitable when anger and fear take over the steering wheel of my life. Another reason I haven’t been relishing the joy of self-expression lately is that when the shit hits the fan, like it has these past few weeks in our country, I tend to think that the problems of the world are so much bigger than I am that nothing I have to say could possibly matter. Of course this isn’t true. It’s a lie fear tells me. I know there’s plenty all of us can do. Especially writers. A few months ago, soon after I’d finished writing my memoir, Raw: A Midlife Quest for Health & Happiness, I had the opportunity to share five minutes of my work at a reading. While combing through my manuscript for excerpts, I found myself thinking, Hmm, maybe this writing isn’t as strong as I thought. The writing felt flabby and slow. I found myself tinkering with passages so they’d read better in a shorter timeframe, and wondered if that was okay. In past readings, I’ve mostly read my poems, complete works, each one featuring a beginning, middle, and end. We writers are an ambitious lot. We write books, blogs, and articles. We build platforms, read voraciously, navigate rocky inner and outer terrain, and invest huge amounts of time, energy, and money into our work. We are passionate. Some of us take jobs to support our families and our writing habit. Hours slip away while we toil at our craft. This is all fine—until it isn’t. A few weeks ago I received an email from Jack Grapes, my old writing teacher and mentor, who published my poetry book in 2008. Jack is a well-known and beloved literary figure in Los Angeles who has been teaching for over four decades. His email promoted an upcoming writing workshop offered by a former student of his. I wonder if he’d do the same for me? I thought, in the midst of putting together my fall writing classes. A couple weeks ago I watched daily video interviews with coaches, speakers, therapists, and social media gurus on a free online summit called “Write Because it Matters,” hosted by Dawn Montefusco. I attended my first AWP conference and book fair this year, where I feasted on literary and writing business delicacies, along with over 12,000 other attendees. After reviewing over 550 offerings, I selected fourteen panels, which I attended over three days. It was a treat to see SWP Publisher Brooke Warner speak on the panel: “A New Girl’s Network: Lessons From The Movement of Equal Voice,” and SWP editor and Grammergency blogger Annie Tucker, who spoke on the panel, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting A Redline.” |
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