After my sister died, I wrote like crazy. Not about her. It took a while before I could do that. I wrote a novel in six months. It’s a bit in shambles, but it’s a whole novel, 85,000 words or so, complete with chapters and characters I somehow created in a world I somehow conjured. And it’s so littered with Southern colloquialisms, all the y’alls and fixin’-to-go diamonds have found a spot. It makes me feel all warm cornbready inside when I think about that accomplishment. Maybe I was trying to find a way to distract my brain from all the hurt. I wrote lots of poetry and short stories. And I joined writing groups online. First fiction, then poetry groups. And I began submitting to publishers. Mostly, I found a community of folks who share a love of writing and putting out work. I’m in the middle of a play, a comedy I started a while back, and I’ve had my second poetry book finished for a long time. But for some reason, I won’t stick a fork in this stuff. The play is waiting to be completed. The novel sits comfy on my computer. The poetry book, though finished, I won’t stop fiddling with.
Something has happened these last few years I can’t figure out. There are two kinds of writer’s block, I’ve discovered. The first is the traditional one. The one where you sit in a coffee shop or outside on an old porch and no matter how many hours you mull over sentences or pray to the pencil gods, nothing other than gobbledygook falls out. Sometimes, even gobbledygook would be an answered prayer.
But there’s a second kind of writer’s block. The enough is never enough kind. Where each sentence needs refining, each stanza or paragraph rearranging, each word reconsidering. I’m sure there’s some psychological reason for being this hard on myself. For reworking the dough so many times, the biscuits become dense and lifeless. (FYI, I had no intention of putting even one bread metaphor in here, let alone two. I’ll be on the lookout for an unplanned rye or baguette.) The poems that have gotten the most traction (found publishers right away) are those that I did little editing to. Just scribbled the words down and sent them on their way. I apologize to all the folks in writing workshops or MFA programs who read that in horror. But it’s true. The most reworked of my writing sits coffee-stained and lonesome.
I was mulling this over. And I’ve come up with a couple possibilities. One. It’s my personality. People who know me know I require perfection. I expect it of myself, not so much of others, so maybe I’m a less annoying Type A. Well, slightly. The other, and I think this is the key, I feel a bit directionless. Feeling stuck in life can make a person feel stuck in their head. I was on a trajectory I was happy with, but I got knocked out somewhere in the fourth or fifth round, and unfortunately, not every dream can come back. I suppose many of us can say that. We’re traveling down some scenic country road surrounded by wildflowers and endless green. Then unexpected things happen that pull at our guts and hearts so tightly, they lift us right into the air. And we don’t know if we’ll ever find solid footing again.
Except, somehow, one day, even if it’s wobbly, we do touch the ground again. It takes a while, but every now then, a stanza finds its way to the page. Fat slices of dialogue land where they’re supposed to. And words usually reserved for folks in the fancy league, words like “incalcitrant” or “acrimonious” plop themselves into a sentence without sounding like some hoity-toity smarty pants trying to impress the masses. And somehow, all that stillness moves again. But for me, even though the words come out, I refuse to let them be. Maybe that’s a metaphor for something. I refuse to let lots of stuff be.
I promised myself a while ago that I would adopt the mantra sometimes good enough is good enough. It’s been a struggle to repeat that. But I’m going to keep trying. Folks don’t know all I’ve been through and am going through, and I sure don’t know all the hurt and obstacles and ridiculous messes others are navigating. Maybe it’s time we give ourselves a break. I figure even one thought jotted down a day counts for something. And line by line, sentence by sentence, we discover gems we can show the world. Even if they’re a bit unpolished. To heck with worrying about every dangling modifier, the wrong “there,” or an oopsy-daisy misplaced comma. To heck with worrying about sentimentality or a lack of any economy of words. Maybe it’s enough just to create. Bless our hearts. I suppose some of us need to practice picking up that pen again and seeing what the ink turns up. And some of us need to learn when it’s time to put it down.
Sarah Mackey Kirby 