A friend of mine came up to me after a performance at the Sycamore, a lovely dive establishment in the Mission of San Francisco, sipping amber liquid from a pint glass, and after our usual exchange of “how are you”s and “you look great!” (she did look great, by the way), she asked me, “Okay so, how are you so productive?”
My brain stopped. I think I swayed on the uneven patio cement for two whole breaths as she looked into my face with earnest curiosity. I tend to be one of those delightfully insufferable party people who has an off-the-cuff remark for easy laughs. A regular Dorothy Parker type, but not as drunk (usually). But my brain caught in the grove of the question, because I had honestly never considered it. It caught me totally off guard. I had no hilarious answers, nor even constructive ones. I clutched my pearls (okay, rhinestone necklace) and exclaimed “MOI??!!” (I do not speak french).
In fairness, I perform and publish fairly regularly, had a poetry chapbook come out this year, published a novella, I promote things to an annoying degree online, and all I ever ask anyone is “what are you working on?” I’ve produced literary shows and sloshed out of bookstores after too much free wine and questions for my favorite authors. Whenever people ask what I do, I never mention my day job. I say I’m a writer. I take irrational identity and pride in being a Writer.
Despite all that, there’s no great answer to this question. I could recite the residency brochures and books on productive writing I’ve read. The morning page requirements, the routines I’ve tried to build. This question, no matter how many times it is asked, always catches me off-guard. It’s usually in bars, after open mics or after shows, over beers or bourbon, and another writer or poet asks me with wild eyes “what’s the secret?”
So without fanfare or lace trimmings, here’s my secret — I leave the dishes. In the sink. Often for days.
I think the act of romancing writing encourages people to think they must be in comfortable, remote, solitary environments that are beautiful and serene in order to truly write. We’re all repackaging the same 24 hours with the distinctly NOT same amount of things to fill it. And we are all looking for motivation and drive to plough through responsibilities to be artists. Plus there’s the contextualization of inspiration. We offer yoga retreats, and remote writing spaces to give us opportunities to center and breathe and write. A place for you to be the solitary genius with your thoughts and to finally get your beautiful story out.
We wouldn’t have created an entire section of the bookstore dedicated to motivational quotes if there wasn’t an active and thirsting market.
Right now I’m writing this essay in the dark of my apartment, sitting on top of a pile of unfolded laundry, while a Youtube video plays Neil Gaiman’s speech “Make Good Art,” because I, too, need some inspiration. I moved into this apartment three days ago, I haven’t unpacked enough to find my hairbrush, and my unpacked kitchen is overflowing out of my sink, and I am plodding words onto an empty Google document like they are emerging from this chaotic swamp of untended domesticity.
I would like as much as anyone else to feel magically inspired in a sparkling clean living space with a delicately and deliciously manicured estate attached (ideally). My fantasy is somewhere between high literary genius and Disney princess. Bunnies having tea parties and birds guiding me to the tucked away tree house office where I type my brilliant words on my typewriter. I’m clad in a ballgown that is also, somehow, a cardigan with elbow patches, and everything smells of spring flowers and pipe tobacco. I am never lonely or unconfident or anxious, just unlimited in my brilliance!
My writing process does not look like this. There are no spring flowers (however there is ragweed pollen that is currently making me sound like Kathleen Turner and use my cat’s tail as a tissue), no flowing gown (just an oversized t-shirt that has a mysterious marinara sauce stain), and my brilliance isn’t shining so much as resembling a window that a toddler has put their hands all over. Words do not flow out of me like overwhelming swells in an instrumental where I am the main character we’re all rooting for, but feel a bit more like a couch gremlin who is pulling out my eyelashes one by one. I own two typewriters and I’ve written exactly one letter on them before deciding that my laptop really was the way to go. And, while my writing process is not aesthetically pleasing, it does have one thing going for it. It’s wild, feral even.
The concept of Author that we sell is very much its own fiction, one that we internalize and pile onto our own failure. Every day we don’t hit some imaginary (and usually improbable) word count, or don’t have the mental bandwidth to finish that story/novel/essay/Facebook post/ransom note, we then use it as a way to pick on ourselves for not living up the artistic lie of the ideal writer. Even the writers that admit the arduous process of writing is difficult make it sound like this incredible feat of achievement. As Barbara Kingsolver says, “I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.” Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” And while I appreciate those sentiments, they contextualize writing as a great hunt, and arduous sport. For working professionals, engaged parents, and people living with chronic mental or physical illnesses, clubbing and chaining the muse isn’t the feat the established literary world imagines.
Real words are stolen. They are jotted on receipts at the DMV, they are typed into a Google doc on company time, tucked into your shoe in the breakroom, they are something you seize back from a world that seeks to make you a Functional Adult. Space and time for art is not a thing you earn. Art is a heist, not a romantic landscape. Art is not assimilating so seamlessly into your life that you have extra time to do it because of your efficiency. It skitters in the corners, disguises itself with trench coats and mustaches, blooms in unscrubbed bathtubs and sticky floors. Art grows in the muck of life.
Writing is the radical act that in a world that wants to gobble up every last bite of your time and energy, you shut it down and put your ass in the chair. Because life will do that. Your boss, your sense of responsibility, this social enforcement to turn down help will swallow you up like krill. The world doesn’t even need to open its mouth.
The thing that gets me to write one word after the other is knowing that I’m ultimately getting away with something. The world doesn’t want me to write a book. It wants me to pay to have a mental breakdown in a cabin in the middle of the woods and call it a writing retreat. The world sells me “self care” because it’s looking for a way to absolve itself of providing me the community support of my art and craft.
But when I pretend to take notes, or write something down on my phone on the train, there’s an illicit thrill. A first sentence, or a breakthrough, or just those precious words are evidence that the time it took to write them are mine.
At least, this is what I tell myself when I stare at an unmoving cursor blinding in a document. Because the other half of this equation, once you have actually put your ass in the chair, is muscling through the panic that you’re a big phony. Singer/Songwriter Grace Askew calls it “daring to suck.” It’s a simple concept but it’s the most important. No amount of muse or motivation can power through the lull of just barfing words onto a page, hoping a quarter of them are usable.
Despite the thrill of the illicitness of making art, there’s the brain weasels. The brain weasels usually show up when you read something you’ve written or start to revise. They tell you things like “wow, last night this seemed great and now it’s terrible,” or “you wrote one hundred painful words and none of them do anything.” Brain weasels generally affect the voice of your most disapproving parent, partner, or boss, which is deeply unfair. But they are the choir of doubt that leeches your energy and your ability to create. Because even if you can manage to get the words out, you still have to like them. And often, other people have to like them. My Google Drive is a graveyard, full of essays and stories and poems I let die in the cold because I couldn’t get them finished, good, or published. In my experience, it never really stops breaking your heart.
Imposter Syndrome might be one of the larger natural predators of humanity, a social anxiety that tells us we’re not enough and surely failures because things aren’t easy, linear, or limitless. In the New Yorker article, Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It, imposter syndrome is described as “the anxiety that you are getting what you have not paid for and do not deserve; that you will eventually be found out, and your bill will come due.” Capitalism runs on you believing that art and the space for it is something you’ve earned for being good, or something you need to sustain energy for after you’ve completed the rest of your life. But that’s fundamentally impossible, it’s bootstrap logic. And this is where the grit and grind and dare take over. Writing is hard and slow and things sit on shelves, in trunks, or in Dropboxes for years, sometimes. Don’t think of it as abandoning, think of it as curing.
I always ask my Imposter Syndrome the same question, at the end of my life will I regret not sweeping more floors? Doubtful.
And it’s easy to find reasons to do other things. You probably SHOULD do your dishes. You probably SHOULD fold the laundry. Or wash the baseboards, sort the mail, clean the dog’s ears. At this moment, as I type this one handed, I am stress eating my third quesadilla of the day. There is a system of maintenance that we all require, but in the grudge match of writing or looking like I have every aspect of my life figured out, I choose words. Inconsistent, fickle, bitter, thorny words that I have to forage from the wilds of my life.
So if what you are looking for is permission, and want validation on how people appear to be doing it all, it’s that our laundry is unfolded and there are cobwebs on the staircase. Join us — leave the dishes.