Fly About

In this morning’s writers’ group, the question was posed: what do you find hard about writing?

Because I write pieces that are very short and I am good at writing short things, nothing much is hard for me. I said that to the group, adding that I am a fast typist and started my career writing grant proposals for an antipoverty agency. I told them I rolled paper into the typewriter and wrote. The cost back then of making a mistake, a typo, was the extreme aggravation of erasers that ripped paper and white correcting fluid that clotted over, forcing the correct key to strike on a small mound of paint. Sometimes, I left the error in because it was more aesthetically pleasing.

I hardly ever rewrote a proposal. First, there usually wasn’t time. Second, bosses knew the cost of doing too much editing. “First draft, last draft” we all said. We swore by this approach, otherwise known as CTSO or Crank the Shit Out, justifying the fast write by telling ourselves that the perfectionists were still revising while we were on our way to the bank.

It was remarkable training. Because of those years with a typewriter, a deadline, and an eraser, I don’t hesitate with written words. I just start with a sentence (like Hemingway, one true one) and then the rest just comes. That is the part I didn’t tell the group because it sounds dopey, as if I believe my hands are taken over by some otherworldly force. But that’s what happens. You know how authors say that their characters write their own dialogue? That’s what happens when I am writing a piece that has meaning for me. I almost can’t type fast enough to keep up with the words fluttering around me like 10,000 seagulls.

It is the loveliest thing in the world.

I wonder if it is okay as a writer to relish that moment when the seagulls swoop me up. Maybe I should labor harder, suffer more, not settle for such small things, such short pieces. I feel that I am missing angst – not as a person because I seem to have plenty – but as a writer where I am, almost always, so happy to see letters forming words, words forming sentences, paragraphs on a page. Birds flocking.

I love this writers’ group for this reason. I never thought about this before.

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Photo by the Bialons on Unsplash