I noticed yesterday morning, recycling and garbage day in my neighborhood, that we had about one-third of our usual toss.
And because the idea of a post on The Irrepressible Writer came to mind, I trusted that what I’d noticed about our effort to decrease our garbage must have something to do with positivity and the writer’s life.
But what?
I try to allow meanings or connections to slide right into my brain the way I slide a pan of veggies with olive oil and spices into the oven to roast (no metaphor intended; just cooking Friday night dinner as I write). This morning was one of those times.
It occurred to me that the reason my husband and I are making ecological progress is because of the same “Three Things” necessary to create and maintain resilience for writing and for life. Believe. Learn. Practice.
Increasingly, those “things” ring true in many areas of my life, not necessarily all three at once. Small and large activities involve an intensity of belief in the purpose and value of what I’m doing, sometimes a continued and important learning curve, and always practice.
I consider it a blessing that I have the luxury of being able to try to live this way.
It doesn’t matter whether those activities are washing dishes in the sharp winter sunlight and deliberately being mindful, present, in those moments, looking out my back window at the snow and prairie grass; being the kind of friend, wife, mother or volunteer I want to be; or letting myself sink into the emotions and life of my main character in my middle grade work-in-progress.
Believe. Learn. Practice.
Garbage…writing…life.
Yep. Definitely connected for me…in the most positive way.
You?
I think one of the things that’s challenging when applying the three steps to writing is that you can’ t always see the visual “proof” that it’s working. What’s great about the garbage/recycling example is that you CAN so clearly see it… and extrapolate that if the steps are working in this area, they are likely working in the writing area, too. That’s a bit of solace on those days that the visual proof just isn’t there….
Greg, you make an excellent point about the reality that is simply built in to the writing life…and, I would have to say, into many other fields of work in which we must believe before we actually produce the product. And as Anne Lamott reminded us in BIRD BY BIRD, even our tiniest production, of any quality, is a step toward the dream.
It is harder, no question, to believe in something before it’s tangible. And yet we do, and we must – because that’s what helps to make it real. Kristin Cashore’s exquisite post on this last week is a poetic commentary on this aspect of our process: http://bit.ly/6w19KE
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!