DOING NOTHING

a little advice if you write

A large part of writing consists of not writing, of not doing anything at all. It’s hard. Doing nothing is an art, and you might need some practice. Sit by a window, take a ride on a bus, don’t look at your phone. Don’t even bring your phone. Doing nothing is not the same thing as getting nothing done. You are letting the aquarium settle so you can see the fish. Forty years ago, when I was doing nothing on a bus, I noticed in the back seat a man holding his son. The little boy sat upright on his father’s lap, exactly like a vase of flowers. The image is still fresh in my mind, nourishing some part of me I don’t know by its name.

We are bombarded by media. Turn everything off. Let your mind wander around . See what you notice. Monkey mind, disparaged by its very name, is what I count on. Let it swing from the chandelier, climb a tree, let it go anywhere it wants to. If something attracts its attention, the more trivial it appears, the more interesting it may turn out to be. Your subconscious may know more than you do. Nothing is insignificant when you’re a writer. Anything can take you on a journey, sometimes to a place of ripening, sometimes nowhere at all, but even nowhere deserves a little attention. And it’s always an interesting ride.

And that journal? Maybe call it a diary. Maybe call it your notebook. I know if I called mine a journal I would write with the hope that it be discovered after my death and published posthumously to wild acclaim. This would make me self-conscious, I might try to perfect each sentence before its time. And if I clean it up too soon, I might lose the spark. It is useful to save the oldest version of whatever turned you on in the first place. If you begin to sag from too many rewrites, too many opinions, it is a good idea to go back to your original draft because that’s where the fire began. There may not be a single useful word or sentence in there, it may not be fit for anyone’s eyes but yours, but the embers will still be burning and the heat can ignite you to start fresh, like a beginner again.