Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-12-15 - 10:37 a.m.

Companionable

I have to write this morning. I do. I've done so little in weeks and weeks; I've done so much. All the things that keep me from writing - teaching, driving, putting food on the table, my excuses, my talismans. And then - the extra things I stuff into the empty corners, like the tissue paper in the purse you just bought, making it look full - wrangling with online communities, doing web site maintenance, chatting, e-mailing.

But last night I lectured a friend about doing the work we're given to do. Well, I didn't lecture, because I can't - can't get on the soapbox, as mine has never been anything but rickety. Where's MY body of work, anyway? Where is my list of current submissions, my poetry chapbook, my novel cover letter? For that matter, my novel?

It's not about laziness. It's not. Because I will go a hundred miles AROUND the writing to avoid going two straight miles through it. It's about staying with the things I know I'm good at, the safe things. The things I know I CAN do. About being in perpetual state of getting ready to write. Getting prepared to do this great writing that I am going to do, really going to do - I believe this - some day. Uh-huh.

And when I wear that out, it can be about noticing that I'm not writing, and feeling bad about not writing, and analyzing why I'm not writing. All of which is, no matter how virtuous or writing-related it may feel, still - not writing.

Or I could sit and beat myself; woe, woe. I have done nothing of note, I have done nothing of merit, I have done nothing. It would be true. And it would be irrelevant. This, this is about what I do today, what choices I make. The house is dirty. The Christmas cookies lie flat in magazine photographs, waiting. I can choose to write, and leave the house, and leave the cookies and all they represent. I can choose not to - I can say I will write tonight, after the kids are in bed, after the cookies are laid out on plates. I can say that, although I won't write then; then doesn't arrive. It's easy, it's virtuous. No one would fault me for saying, "I don't have time to write, I have all these other important things to do." I might convince myself that I did the hard thing - that cleaning the house, such a virtue, with the muse tugging my shirttail, was the braver road. Of course it isn't - it's the easier path, the safer path.

So I'm writing. That's what I'm doing. I'm assembling some words, limbering the fingers, trying to find the groove. Knowing that I can't find it, but if I wander around looking hopeful long enough, I may fall into it, because that's the way it happens. I am being available to the muse.

It's really a companionable thing. If I do the work, sit myself down here and open my heart and let some words come through instead of dicking around with downloading better word processing software or searching out the perfect quotation I want or surfing to see what publications are accepting submissions or any number of chores that could be called writing but aren't writing, if I do that, then maybe my friend can be doing his work today, too. Let this be a day of small beginnings.

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