Writing (And Living) Through

Sometimes, the only thing worse than making a mistake is doing nothing.

In writing, yes, and in life.

As writers, we often find ourselves stalled at important moments. A character just had an epiphany about how she has allowed herself to be controlled by others. Another character has finally admitted the fear and lies he harbors within. The story's climax is approaching, the action climbs, the mystery mounts.

And we stall.

In life, we also tend to stall right before the biggest moments of opportunity. Right before our own stories are about to break open, break free, break the rules, and break barriers.

What connects figures like Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Atticus Finch, Lisbeth Sanders, Mark Twain, Sojourner Truth, King Arthur, and John Prendergast? My list--randomly chosen figures whom I admire for their commitment to justice and truth--is peopled by fictional and real-life heros and heroines. Each one of them possesses a single characterteristic that, I think, is essential to be who we truly are as writers and as human beings.

Each one of these people does not stall.

This does not mean that they haven't faced the same kinds of crises we all face. It does not mean that they have not fallen on their knees or felt their souls crumble in heaps as they cried out, What's the point!? Indeed, many of them have, and for the real-life figures, it has often been well-documented (as in the case of Mother Teresa, who reveals in her posthumously published letters and journals, Come Be My Light, that she often felt God was absent from her life, even as she chose to continue doing the work He had called her to do).

There is a very big difference between stalling and resting. Or, perhaps a better way to phrase that asserttion would be to borrow a line from Mr. Han in the new version of The Karate Kid: "Being still and doing nothing are two very different things."

As we write or as we live, we need to be still. We should take the time to listen, think, pray, recollect, prepare and all of those other things that lend energy to our pursuits.

But once we stall, the fight is over. The Chinese have a proverb for it: "He who hesitates is lost."

Living through the confusion, the pain, and the uncertainty does not mean that we deny the fears we feel or the failures we face. Instead, it means that we look these foes in the eyes and speak honestly and authentically, growing those muscles that gather invisibly to push our voices out from our mouths and into the world.

The only way to go through something is, in fact, (and rather redundantly) to go through it.

As writers, we may need to write through scenes time and time again. We often find the paths our characters need to take by watching them walk down one and then realizing, Nope, that ain't it.

The same is true in life.

But making a mistake is a far better choice than doing nothing. We learn from our mistakes; our souls grow and our voices learn to speak more boldly. From doing nothing, we learn only how to continue to do more nothing (granted, in more modern ways perhaps).

The journey towards going through has certainly been a long one for me--and it continues to get longer when I stop and view the trail ahead each time I take a water break. But when I look back at the path I've already walked, I can smile and see that, at the very least, I don't stall my way through life or writing nearly as much as I used to.

I still do sometimes, and indeed, old habits die hard.

But when I'm writing a character now, and I find him getting close to the climax of the novel, I push him forward on his dragging feet--sometimes kicking and screaming the whole way. He argues with me, and he often offers an excellent list of reasons why I should let him stay the heck where he is.

But my characters aren't winning those arguments nearly as much as they used to.

And I sincerely hope that the same is true of my own life.

Growing...Well, Growing...Old? (!?@#)

After a month in York, we're starting to feel a lot more comfortable with our little home, and our new little life. We even recently got some new things up on the walls which were bare for so long. We were at the Newgate Market in the city center this past Sunday, and we saw a guy selling posters.

Laminated posters!

For a couple who rejoices anytime we're able to manage a trip to any kind of store where home furnishings can be purchased--it's amazing how much becomes miraculous without a car--we were overjoyed to see posters for sale. Only a couple of miles from our home.

Laminated posters!

These babies were some serious goods, so we ended up choosing four large posters with which to decorate our home: one copy of Martin Luther King, Jr. giving his "I have a Dream" speech, with the entire speech in text below the image; one copy of some semi-motivational poster featuring a person dressed in a thick red coat climbing a huge, snowy mountain; one copy of Churchill's war slogan, "Keep Calm and Carry On"; and one copy of the original Casablanca movie poster.

After hanging them around our home later that night (eventually using tiny nails and a hammer that we got for a pound at a store called Poundworld--the UK equivalent to the Dollar Store or Family Dollar in the US), we felt like a King and a Queen in our little place.

It doesn't take much.

(Did I mention that these posters are laminated?)

After Tyler had practiced using his own Bob the Builder plastic hammer in the same spots where I used my Poundworld hammer moments earlier, and we had gotten him down to bed for the night, we breathed a sigh and sat down in our living room.

Then, we got up.

We washed the dishes, cleaned up the fake hammers, screwdrivers, saws, Bob the Builder trucks, diggers, excavators (you get the picture), and threw a load of laundry in.

And this is the interesting part. As I was throwing some clothes into the washing machine, I noticed my pant cuffs dragging along the floor. My shoes were off, and I thought, Hey, these pants need to last me three years, I don't want the cuffs to get all worn out already, etc...

So, what did I do? I did what anyone in my place would probably do: I bent down and rolled up the bottoms of my pant cuffs.

I rolled up my trousers, you might say.

I was wearing--to articulate it a bit differently--the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

And in a little more than one month, I am going to turn 30 years old.

So: I'm not even kidding when I tell you that this line flashed into my mind like a flashy flash: I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Turning around to see if the ghost of T.S. Eliot was, in fact, standing behind me in the kitchen, whispering his old poem as he watched me throw in in this load of laundry (he did, after all, emigrate to Britain, right?), I felt a little silly.

And a little old.

But then, I took solace. Because in that same poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"--which I still remember vividly from Mrs. Ferrero's 11th grade English class at Windsor High School--Eliot also asks "Do I dare disturb the universe?"

Now, that sounds like a question I still want to answer.

(Instead of the latter question he asks, "Do I dare to eat a peach?")

Whew.

So, I'm okay, right? I'm not already starting to think that I'm old. I still want to disturb the universe a little, right?

After all, I was just rolling up my pant cuffs because hey, these pants have got to last three years.

As long as the laminated posters will.