What I Wrote When I Wasn't Writing

 

   

    I’ve always identified myself as a writer. At least since the day my grandfather (who was also a writer) visited my fourth grade class and talked to us ten year olds about what it meant to be one. He gave great advice; always have a pen and paper handy so you can write ideas down whenever they come to you, notice the little things, and make a commitment to writing everyday.  In his case this meant getting up at five A.M., trudging down to his basement office reeling from a hangover, and banging away on his manual typewriter before heading off to his real job as a roofing contractor.  But even at the tender age of ten, I knew that my grandfather was not only a writer but an alcoholic, both a genius and a failure, my greatest supporter and for that I loved him.

He wrote philosophies, huge, sprawling manuscripts that lie unpublished in musty boxes in my basement. Now as I try to decipher the words on those pages, I realize that what he was writing, though jammed packed with long words and references to important thinkers, his ideas made little sense and his letters to publishers are heartbreaking as he enthusiastically explains his new philosophy as if he were the next Aristotle. Because in addition to all the aforementioned attributes, my grandfather was also delusional and manic depressive.

My path as a writer has been a little different. I don’t write philosophies (or drink myself into oblivion every night) and though I often think I haven’t gotten too far with it, I have had some small successes that have kept me going on and off over many years. Awards, recognition, productions, all affirmations that my grandfather did not get. And yet…

The last production of a play, which I wrote and directed myself, was seven years ago and though it was well-received and got a great review, I have been somewhat stalled in completing my next writing project. Maybe it’s Theatre, or no longer wanting to be part of the collaborative process that Theatre insists on, often putting the writer at the bottom of the totem pole in the list of its contributors. But during this time, these seven blank years, I have written many things; scenes for plays, notes on plays, poems, children’s book treatments, journal entries, memoir chapters, novel chapters, and general ramblings of an unspecified nature. Reports, proposals and even published op-eds and essays.

So why do I say I’m not writing? Because I’m not working on anything that I would consider substantial that I am finishing and preparing to somehow share with the world, or at least a few of you out there in it. And maybe that’s where this blog comes in,which I have pondered and avoided for years. Like filling “one inch picture frames”or recalling “school lunches” as Anne Lamott suggests in Bird by Bird. These tiny pieces of something.   

 Words on the page like soft unknowing footsteps following one another, leading to a yet unexplored landscape. My virtual basement, where I bang away at my laptop, begin and end these small observances. A brief, yet complete experience. Like prayers or yoga, staying present in each moment. Stretching, breathing, noticing the little things and honoring where I came from.