Green Day

“Figure out how to do what you want to do.”

You can wander around in the forest for months looking for a set of instructions. You can search the skies for pointing stars, interpret the broken twigs on the path,  sniff the air for the smoke of distant campfires. Or you can unfold the note tucked in the crook of the tree you are leaning against.

“Figure out how to do what you want to do.”

This is the most useful note I’ve read in years. It cut through a dozen layers of ambivalence and self-doubt, of convincing myself that instead of being a writer, I should prepare myself to be a writer. So I embarked on a Master’s degree in English, my thinking being that I should know the mechanics of writing, study the great writers, get credentialed.

“Aren’t you already a writer?” my poet friend asked. He said more than this but this is what I remember, this one question. “Aren’t you already a writer?”

Yes.

Then he said,

“Figure out how to do what you want to do.”

So I signed up for a writers’ workshop. I thought the first meeting was in January, giving me time to have pieces ready for review and discussion. I like very much planning to do this, like less the doing. So having a few months’ run-up to the event suited me except I was wrong. The first workshop was Thursday.

I walked in to a group that has been meeting a while. I took with me a piece I loved like a baby and I laid the baby on the table for them all to see, trusting the other writers to be kind. And they were kind but they told me things about the baby that I’d never seen, having held her so tight to my chest for so long. I walked out two hours later, after hearing their pieces, writing notes on their papers, seeing their babies. In my hand, I held their suggestions and questions, written in fine script with little arrows and asterisks. Everything they said will make this beloved piece better.

I think I’m figuring out how to do what I want to do. No more getting ready.

I’m already a writer.

_____________________

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash