The secret to writing books is to give yourself a ridiculous expanse of luxurious empty time and space to dream, play, and not do anything that taxes the mind with external cares.
Is this true? Well, I’ve found it to be true.
It means you might not do much else with your day, your hours. You might cook dinner. You might go for a walk, or a run. You might see a friend. You might do a puzzle. You might scroll through Netflix watching the intros to thirty shows as entertainment before bed.
I struggle justifying how much time is spent on staring out the window. Or writing things that don’t turn out, writing draft after draft after draft. So many words assembled tenderly, hopefully, excitedly, only to be discarded.
If this is what it takes to write books, is it worth it? Who am I serving? Just myself?
Well, what if the answer is yes? Yes, I’m serving my writing, at the expense of many other things I could be doing with this one precious life.
What makes you feel purposeful, as you go about your day? What tells you, gut-deep: you are worthy? I don’t know. I’m asking.
It’s a funny thing to be a human, to want to be purposeful, to want to make decisions independently, freely, but to be inextricably embedded in a culture, context, generation, family structure, biology, language(s), place.
I notice that I easily accept the value of tasks or actions that measurably help someone else, like donating blood; concrete chores also have value, and doing them feels valuable, like laundry and cooking; it’s also easy to measure worth by monetary reward, doing X and receiving Y in return. In my experience, writing is generally untethered from any of these logical measurements. But I don’t believe anyone’s worth rests on external evaluation; or on evaluation, period.
You are worthy because you are fighting it out here on planet earth.
You are worthy because you are worthy.
I drew that cartoon a few days ago. I keep returning to look at it. There’s something there that’s whispering to me: peace, and calm, and acceptance, and worthiness. I’ve been drawing daily cartoons again, as a way of journaling. I draw a moment I want to remember, and on this particular day, the moment I wanted to remember was being asleep and dreaming about my new book, which has a tree on its cover — the dream vibe was contentment.
Around 3:30AM, I lay awake and thought through how we might get air conditioning. It felt like the heat was lying on my chest, like it was a living creature, a pressure or weight that made it harder to breathe.
On Canada Day, we went to the beach. It felt safe, and it also felt like paradise, to be driving through lush Ontario countryside, undulating green, toward a deep, cold lake. It wasn’t that everything felt “normal,” but despite the differences between this summer and last summer — the complications of living in pandemic times — the possibility for adventure and temporary escape was proven to exist, too.
I’ve been running early in the morning, before it gets extra-hot. Despite all the stretching (dynamic pre-run; static post-run), my lower back aches as I sit here.
I’ve tried to write. But I’m not thinking in any organized fashion.
I’m going to take a trip to Dairy Queen this afternoon with a couple of the kids, we’ve made a plan, and part of my plan is to get a treat to deliver as a surprise to my mom … expeditiously, before it melts. She loves a strawberry sundae.
I’ve got a pile of rhubarb on the counter that needs to be made into something delicious. And loads of fresh greens in the fridge. Tiny eggs from Farmer Claire. Raspberry canes in the backyard loaded with fruit, on the cusp of ripening. Sprays of colourful flowers everywhere. This is a most bounteous season. But maybe not for story-writing.
I thought I’d wasted the day. I was lying on the couch under a blanket, feeling so tired, waking after a nap, a needless nap in the middle of the day, with sun pouring through the windows. I’d woken when an alarm went off on my phone: the province of Ontario alerting all travellers returning home to go home and stay home. A few minutes later, the alarm sounded again: same info, this time in French.
The dog lay atop the couch, stretched out. I stared at the wall. Is this a panic attack? But it didn’t feel dire, it felt like being flattened by something, unable to rise. My eldest son appeared on the scene. “Oh, are you napping?” “No, just lying here doing absolutely nothing,” I said. He accepted this at face value. He’d been cleaning his room, and wondered where to put some stuff he didn’t need anymore — boxes, binders. I was able to assist him while still prone. “Could you bring me the New Yorker magazine that’s open on the table?” I asked him. It was the latest issue, open to the fiction, a short story about tennis, of all things.
I read the whole story. It was a long story.
Soon after that, I got up off the couch. In the bathroom, I surreptitiously took my temperature. Normal. Then I went to my office, plugged myself into my Lynda Barry Spotify playlist, hit shuffle play, and wrote in my notebook for the next hour: a brand new story for a book I’d been working on diligently before … before … all of this; it seemed so long ago.
After that, I met a friend for a walk. Keeping to a safe distance. Dodging others on the Iron Horse Trail.
Home again, I returned to the story. I wrote more. My pen scratched away at the lines on the page, words flying from some unknown part of myself, turning visible, printed in block letters, the nascent form of something that might become something, someday; no, that already is. Forget someday, Carrie. It already is. This is.
When I finished writing the story, I sat back in my chair and almost cried. It felt like I’d connected with some distant memory of myself, some estranged part of myself in whose renewed acquaintance I was delighting — I remember you! Writing, through confusion, following the through-line of a plot, seeing the world through a character’s eyes instead of my own — I felt purposeful in a way I feel at no other time. Not purposeful in a practical way, like when I’m baking bread, or helping a child; but purposeful in the way of being used wholly. Not used in a bad way. Used entirely. All my parts work in concert to do this bright bruised blessed work that does not feel in any way like work.
It’s a good feeling.
Today was not wasted; I got up off the couch, but also, I let myself lay there. Maybe I needed to do both of those things to figure out how to write that story that now is, whatever it is, whatever it may be. I got it out of my head.
(These photos were taken immediately after I got up off the couch — and before I’d established that my temperature was normal. For some reason, I went to the back door by the garage, opened it and squinted into the sunshine. I just stood there on the stoop for awhile.)
I wasn’t in a good cartooning mood yesterday. But I wanted to capture this quotation from Elizabeth Strout’s novel My Name is Lucy Barton, which I was reading. So I sat down and wrote it out, arranging the words on the page as if they were a poem. I started by writing the words in non-photo blue pencil, and inked them in afterward. I was quite sleep-deprived, and realized only later, when reading over my efforts, how many “typos” I’d made. So it wasn’t a good cartooning day. To cartoon, you need patience, focus, concentration. In keeping with my word of the year, I’m trying to pay attention to what manifests, in order to understand what’s underneath. In all honesty, I might not have noticed I was lacking those traits yesterday if I hadn’t tried to cartoon.
In conclusion, I need more sleep. I have been trying to get 7 hours of sleep each night, consistently; trying and failing, I must add. I’m addicted to early morning exercise. It’s my bliss. And that means getting to bed earlier. Which means turning off my phone earlier, and climbing into bed with a book. Like the one in which I found the words I felt compelled to record, above. But I confess it’s a hard habit to change — to read a book instead of scrolling though social media feeds. The latter offers the illusion of connection, and sometimes, in the case of Twitter, a steady stream of outrage that temporarily livens my brain; but also drains me of real purpose, or the desire to act in real, tangible ways.
When I read, especially fiction, I transcend the body I’m in and become familiar with other bodies, other realities, through immersive sensory perceptions. I see through other eyes. And in this exchange, I often feel seen, or feel able to see myself more clearly. That is how I felt reading the passage above: It says what I cannot.
Reading it, I wanted to write out the words so I could keep them in tangible form. The words called out from me a response. Which led me here. Which is, where, exactly? Sitting at my desk on a dull Saturday afternoon, the first day of February, my fingers smelling of peeled garlic, not vacuuming or cleaning the bathrooms, composing a small gathering of thoughts for release, winging out into the ether.
One final thought: I write fiction to know how others are, in large part because “I realize I don’t know how others are.” But one of the oddest things I’ve discovered while writing a collection of autobiographical stories, is that I also don’t know how I am. Fiction is a necessary construction, and sometimes it becomes a mirror. A fictional character, like Lucy Barton, can say what we cannot because as a projection of her author’s imagination she is elaborately protected from the particular dangers of human pain, and this makes her free, as a character, to reveal what our human minds protect us from most vigilantly — her ambiguities, confusion, contradictions, the places where she gets stuck, the ways in which she hurts others, her lies and her truths. We see her, and we see ourselves more clearly for a moment, too.
I have a lot on my mind. And somehow that has translated into silence. How to sift through the jumble and identify items worthy of sharing? I seem to exist in a fog of confusion, at least right now.
Last week was absorbed by creating a roster for this season’s soccer team. A painful, heart-rending process, in all honesty. Humbling and bruising, too. A large part of me rebels against the levels imposed by competitive sport that claim to filter children into good, better, best. It isn’t an objective process, yet it’s treated as such; worse, there’s an implicit assumption that the teams themselves are good, better, best, based on level alone, and that a child’s experience would therefore be improved by moving up, and would deteriorate by moving down. I know what I can offer, as a coach, but within the competitive framework, it often feels like what I can offer doesn’t actually matter.
I’ve been waking in the middle of the night, unable to fall back to sleep. Mind racing. Body restless.
Not thinking about these things, exactly, but about the everything, the jumble, the chaos of a world that claims to be about one set of rules and values, while operating on a completely different set of tacit rules and values. Winning. Winning by any means. Power. Shows of dominance, especially rage. Shaming. Placidly public corruption. Lies. Assume everyone is lying to you, or you’re naive. Well, dammit, then I’m naive! The values we encourage our children to adopt could almost appear cruelly out of step in the context of this greedy, ego-ascendant world: be kind, share, be trustworthy. But that’s what I want to be and to do.
That’s the space I want to hold open.
I keep picturing the frame we teach players to make with their arms, to protect the ball and box out the pressure. It’s a strong stance, but not aggressive or violent or dirty — you don’t lift your elbow to hurt the attacking player, you simply use the steadiness of your body and of this frame you’re creating to hold your ground.
The conclusion I keep coming around to, amidst all the confusion and noise, is: I want to be kind. It’s actually almost the only thing I want to be. I don’t think much else matters to me, in the end, and in the right now. I accept that kindness can go awry, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that kindness, offered in ignorance, can cause suffering. And maybe I’m talking about something bigger, deeper, wider than kindness. Maybe I’m talking about love. Love; and attention. But it’s easier to start with kindness. Kindness is easier to grasp in the moment.
There is a mantra that’s been keeping me grounded, as much as it’s possible to be grounded, whenever it feels like I’m whirling away or spiralling down: I am loving awareness. It helps when I’m worrying about being judged, or am judging others, when I’m second-guessing my choices, or letting external pressures and feedback (real and perceived) affect my state of mind.
Here’s a ten-minute meditation to sit with.
(If the visuals in the video turn you off, just listen to the sound. Or don’t listen to anything at all, just repeat the phrase I am loving awareness, till you know it’s true.)
There are things that can’t be seen, but can be smelled. There are things that can’t be seen, but can be heard. There are things that can’t be seen, but can be felt.
Of things that can’t be seen, but can be smelled, I give you this: the place beside the porch where, last night, when cornered and harassed by our clearly not-that-bright dog, a skunk sprayed said dog and surrounding area. I don’t blame the skunk. In a way, I don’t blame the dog either. There’s no one and nothing to blame. It’s just that this is not the text a person wants to receive from her son, while driving back-country roads at around 11:30PM, returning home from a late out-of-town soccer game which one has spent standing, soaked to the skin, in intermittent pelting rain, beside a soccer field: I think Rose got skunked.
Yes, the evidence would have it. (Luckily for you, dear reader, this is not a scratch-and-sniff post.)
Of things that can’t be seen, but can be heard, I give you this: our refrigerator, roaring like a jet engine, despite having been “repaired” yesterday morning. We await the return of the repairman, who tightened the compressor and gave us a 90-day guarantee. I’m wearing ear plugs. They’re not working. The jet engine that now resides inside our refrigerator persists. (Click on photo below to play video of fridge-as-jet-engine.)
Of things that can’t be seen, only felt, I give you this (not pictured, naturally): the inside of my brain and body, exhausted from lack of sleep. It’s been hot, and I love love love the heat, but our house hasn’t been cooling down at night, and our sleep, even before the skunk and the fridge, has been restless. And so, I give you my stuporous mind. I give you my determined aching limbs, which rise every morning and run through the park, because they are certain, as am I, that the day will be better having done so, and worse having not done so.
I give you this: it’s smelly, noisy, sticky, messy in here; house and mind.
But this too, I give to you, and it’s no small thing, this thing that can’t be seen, only known: twenty years ago today, I got married, and twenty years later, we’re still married. There’s no way to see exactly what that means, but it’s plenty to live off of. It’s carried us through all the things. It’s carrying us even now.
Wherever you've come from, wherever you're going, consider this space a place for reflection and pause. Thank you for stopping by. Your comments are welcome.
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About me
My name is Carrie Snyder. I'm a fiction writer, reader, editor, dreamer, arts organizer, workshop leader, forever curious. I believe words are powerful, storytelling is healing, and art is for everyone.
Of things that can’t be seen, but can be heard, I give you this: our refrigerator, roaring like a jet engine, despite having been “repaired” yesterday morning. We await the return of the repairman, who tightened the compressor and gave us a 90-day guarantee. I’m wearing ear plugs. They’re not working. The jet engine that now resides inside our refrigerator persists. (Click on photo below to play video of fridge-as-jet-engine.)
