There's No Write Way

A resurgence of a writing practice.

The sheets were crumbled around me, both dogs flanking my sides and locking me into a half bedsheet burrito. Depending on the season, light barely made its way through the windows, never mattering anyway. Outside, it was the silence of the city before people started their morning commute. No cars honking, no buses chugging along the main road blasting black smoke behind them, just naked city streets with pavement waiting to be pounded on. Most of the time it was my silly little side lamp, my thoughts, and dog snores that helped narrate the ritual.

But then set change; a rocking chair, a front porch, and extremely hot and humid Texas air became my companion to the scribble that flowed through my fingers. A sweet smell of honeysuckles occasionally wafted towards my nose, a wave to the neighbors as they walked their dog. Light instead of darkness, outside instead of in.

Now I sit at my desk, something I never used to do. As someone who is very in tune and border line obsessed about spacial awareness, my desk means works, and I never want writing to feel like work (although it is). But yes, now I sit at my desk, the humongous evergreens towering right outside my windows alongside the naked Oak trees who are patiently waiting for Spring to arrive.

Most mornings it looks gloomy and haunting, just the way I like it. Most mornings it’s peaceful and serene, a precursor to the inevitable fast twitch of the day. Most mornings this writing ritual doesn’t even take place, but on some mornings it does.

Inevitably, my mind ping pongs to other places; my kid waking up in the room next to me, the director who hasn’t gotten back to the team about a launch, should I order those glasses today or tomorrow to make sure they get here for Monday? My legs shake in anticipation of what? I’m not so sure, and there’s an uneasiness that sort of sits in my stomach, not in a nefarious way, just as a reminder that this ritual is forever evolving, essentially changing with every version of me.

Nevertheless, it’s always been a part of me, through every iteration, through every timeline, the ritual of writing is intertwined in my soul and engrained in my DNA. The body does not forget something that is as meaningful and powerful as a lifeline.

And every time I write, even if it’s a little something, it makes me feel like that little spark will eventually turn into a tumultuous fire. Life will never be what it once were. Energy shifts, locations change, your love spread a little more thinly and as I realize that more and more, I come to the awareness that the mundane and the immense both ring true.

One random Monday when my husband left on an early flight and my kid still asleep I woke up and thought I’m gonna do it — I’m gonna transport back to my old writing habits. I slink out of bed, tip toeing in my best attempt to not disturb my snoring pup or wake my child, creep up the stairs to pour a cup of my elixir, and grab my computer from my studio. When I get back down to my disshelved bed, my pup is already standing behind the door, staring at me and giving me the ‘let me out lady eyes’ and my child is groaning in her crib.

Once I take care of business and get myself settled back into my creative space for the morning, I turn on a quick meditation, the familiar feeling of ‘my time’ quickly fills my veins; and yet this ritual that seems so mundane and similar to what it’s always been, couldn’t be more different.

The author copy of the book I self-published almost a year ago sits on my night stand, dusty and stiff, unopened for months and is accompanied by three other books that are messily stacked on top of each other, intermingling with one another. It’s a familiar sight, one that makes me feel a chaotic sense of comfort.

The ritual I once knew, once depended on, feels clunky and misstrewn, all except the familiar thought of wtf am I even writing that tends to penetrate my fingers. I wouldn’t call it writers block, if anything I’d refer to it as writers misfire? I’m one of those annoyingly optimistic people that thinks any word written counts as a piece of something, even if it’s seemingly trash. I wonder if I’m going to look back in 10 years and think that about my first book, but that thought is always followed up with ‘am I even going to care.’

48 minutes into my practice and I find myself task switching between all the things except for writing, an occurrence I’m used to but none the less as annoying as it ever is. My brain feels like it’s constantly on the brink of spewing out overworked steam like an engine that just performed its last ride.

But then I find the golden nugget of a sentence and I’m brought back to why I write. It’s not for me, it’s for the undeniable reality that writing sets my everyday, mundane occurrences into a screenplay of something way more elaborate and exciting.

I did a branding shoot the other day and in my mind, I had this Pinterest board of simple, minimal, aesthetics pictures lined up to take — the shoot didn’t turn out that way at all; because I’m not that way at all. I am all edges and tchotche’s, shoes lay dormant around my home and my brain thinks in layered, multi-hyphenate, non-linear lines. From what I’ve learned, most of the time your internal landscape, what makes you you, will expose itself without effort.

And that’s a beautiful thing.

I was recently gifted one of my grandfathers’ red pencils, an exact one he used to use to grade papers. The scent of his and my grandmother’s home still lingers on its Dixon Anadel Red 1940 vessel, and I have a strong sense I’ll be using this pencil a lot. Not for creative purposes or anything extraordinary, but as a talisman of comfort, a reminder that practice and repetition is in my blood.

So now I sit here, almost a month after I’ve started this piece, enveloped in fake candlelight and the blue light from the computer screen burning through my retinas. I don’t really have any specific topics I want my fingertips to expel because actually I have way too many that just twist and turn inside my mind, but here I am, resurrecting my writing practice even if it’s at a snails pace.