Wednesday, September 30, 2015

The Jane Effect

Jane had it all. Her brother invited her to live on his estate rent free. Her sister managed the household. She didn't have a husband or children to suck every drop of creative energy from her soul so that she fell into bed exhausted each night, berating herself for not having written....again...

All I am saying is that she had no excuse NOT to write. This explains perfectly why, despite dying at 41, she wrote and pusblished seven novels. Right?

Wrong.

I am the master of not writing. Sometimes I am best at it when I have nothing else to do.

Here is a (partial) list of things I can do instead of write:

nap.

freeze 20 pints of blueberries.

sort winter clothes.

clean out the chicken coop (yes, some days, I would even do this to get out of writing.)

bake pumpkin bread to give to the teachers, the assistants, the school social worker, the school secretary, the school nurse, the cafeteria lady, and the principal on the last day before winter break.

watch What Not to Wear marathon.

watch Sex and The City marathon.

watch recorded episodes of Modern Family.

watch Angels in America.

watch Grey Gardens.

fold laundry.

drive two hours (one way) to rescue three hens.

walk the dog.

copy Anna Karenina.

If a writer doesn't want to write, she can find a way to get out of it. Jane could have done that too, even without cable television. She could have hand embroidered the bed curtains.

The most worthy of causes can be used to avoid our own work, the work we are meant to do. This becomes especially tricky when we avoid writing in support of those we love. Because of course we want them to succeed, to be healthy, to be happy. And this is a good thing.

In the winter of 2010, I was in my last semester of graduate school, the time when one is most likely to give up. I was revising my creative thesis, or would I call it now, my bookmanuscript. I worked in a little room off the kitchen that was the old butler's pantry. I turned the thermostat down to 60 degrees. I shut off the radiator in my little makeshift studio. I placed a small space heater beneath the desk, creating the only warm space in the house.

Once, when the kids were home, requiring me to heat the whole house, I stood up from the chair and yelled, I quit, I can't do this. In less than a minute, three faces appeared in the doorway, three daughters, one of whom was 17, though she was younger at the time, who put her hand on her hip and looked right at me and said:

"You can't quit. You have come too far to quit. And what kind of example would that set for me?"

Damn you, daughter who listens to my every freaking word.

Sometimes what we do for ourselves is what we do for the ones we love.

And so she write.

She carves out a tiny space where nothing can fit except her and her words, whether that is a small round table in her bedroom somewhere on her brother's estate or the one warm spot in an empty house, or the voice of a daughter who won't let her quit.

 

1 comment: