Treasuring the Writing Moment
Several years ago when I was thinking about writing, I discovered Brenda Ueland. Her book If You Want To Write is well-known by writers, wannabe and otherwise. Her pithy mantra rings reassuringly in our ears:
“So you see, imagination needs moodling — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”
I’ve found myself encouraged by her on earlier readings, the one 15 years ago, another 8 years ago, another 3 years ago. (Of course I’m just guessing about when I read her before, but it doesn’t matter: I revisit her words of wisdom from time to time when I remember to. And like now, I come away with new insights.)
I needed her yesterday. How amazing that I had stumbled on old notes from a prior reading just the night before last so that when yesterday’s crisis came, I was primed to learn the lesson that she in particular would have me learn.
It’s the lesson about the dangers of the grind.
It all started several days ago when I found I really needed a good to-do list, not just my usual pile of index cards. I already had Evernote but had abandoned it somewhere along the way. I loved it for its note-clipping ad-removing features, but I’d never used it for to-do lists.
And when I looked I found it mentioned on Google in a list of the 10 best to-do lists.
So I opened up my old Evernote, and found a trove of old writings and clippings and notes full of quotes I loved and so on. Including these two things:
This quote of Brenda Ueland’s, and many notes-to-self of my own writing, about writing.
And not only about writing, but about writing a newsletter. A newsletter because I had a business I felt I needed to continue, and the only way I could keep it going and also write was to keep in touch with my customers through a newsletter.
According to Evernote, I had this conversation with myself in 2010, 2015, 2018, and 2019.
Every conversation with myself may have mentioned a newsletter, but I never got on with it. I had done one way back in years past, and knew them to be urgent, needy things that required creative words and visuals no matter what.
What I called, fully aware of the irony of it, compulsory creativity.
And then in 2020, with life as we know it changing in so many ways, and a miserable death lurking everywhere, I concluded that if I didn’t write right then, whenever would I?
I had just turned 77 when The Shutdown happened. On March 9, 2020, John and I decided we were sequestering, not going out at all for anything (including food — there was delivery), and I was starting my writing career.
Without regard for my business, which had always been for long-term security. What did long-term mean anymore? Plus, I liked the income but I was not particularly good at it and didn’t enjoy it much anymore and … and … .
Of course I could write daily without needing to create a newsletter. But if I did do a newsletter, I could keep in touch with my customers, maintain my customers perhaps, and have the best of all worlds.
Writing has been important to me since I found myself bursting with stories as a 10-year old. For several years I maintained a number of blogs on the subjects I loved: garden, cooking, family history, travel. Blogs are great. You can write short self-contained musings on anything you want.
So back in the Evernote days I devised the best sort of newsletter: several blog posts under an umbrella of some theme, composed in a newsletter template.
I just had to do it.
And I didn’t. I talked to myself about it for years, but never did it. Not until 3 days ago.
Why? Because once you start, you have to keep going. And once you start, people can unsubscribe if it’s not good. So it has to be good.
Which is easier with blog posts written over time than it is sitting down and writing compelling words right now because the newsletter has to go out in the morning.
So this past Tuesday I pushed the publish button, and off it went. Which takes us back to Brenda Ueland. You’ll see. It does tie together.
As soon as I published the newsletter on Tuesday, I made a copy of it so I could start on the next one. I want it to go out weekly, and I didn’t want any pressure. And fortunately I had bankrolled a bunch of posts and drafts of posts and I could easily just make Newsletter #2.
Except I couldn’t. One of the posts was dated (details don’t matter) and I HAD to write a new one. A particular new one because the three posts I link to in each newsletter are on specific subjects, and I didn’t have one of these three that I could easily write about.
So, I entered the state of mind Brenda U talks about, warns against, describes to perfection. I started to write as if it were a chore. I didn’t have time for moodling, dawdling, or puttering. I had a deadline.
The peril that had kept me away for years and years from doing a newsletter had descended on me in the first two days.
And all my fears had turned out to be right on target: I couldn’t write. What I wrote yesterday, on deadline, was worthless.
But it wasn’t until I was reading before bed — out loud to my husband as is our habit — that I heard Brenda’s voice tell me why: I had entertained no moodling, no idleness, just pure chore, obligation, grind.
After Van Gogh took a couple of years being idle (which probably made him unhappy), he painted 200 paintings.
Yesterday, because of the deadline, I went so far as to give up my daily midday swim. What a waste of time not to have spent that hour in such mental idleness!
So thank you to Brenda. Now I know how to do my newsletter. I will write my daily posts without regard to the newsletter and then when newsletter day comes, I will use what I can. And maybe I won’t publish every week — we’ll see. There’s no rule about that. Though it’s true that having begun, I need to continue. There IS a rule about that! And I want to.
So I’ll just write. YES! Write posts because that’s where I do my daily writing. GOOD. And compile them into newsletters to share them and keep in touch with the folks who used to like to hear from me. NO PROBLEM. And swim. That, too.
I love the daily writing habit. It feels good to my brain. The process pleases me, and often the words do too. And Brenda approves.
And I’ll go store this acknowledgement of her in Evernote for the next time I get off track.
