Recently, I posted this on one of my social media accounts;
Some pieces are harder than others to write. Years ago, I went to a Women’s Studies conference where I was captivated by a talk (not her keynote speech) given by Maya Angelou. I don’t remember the exact words she used, I was very tired after three days of workshops/sessions and then having to bury myself in curriculum development (for the upcoming term) every night. I sat in the back of this informal break-out session and listened to her, and, as always, found her inspiring, articulate, stunning. I was feeling distanced from my fellow conference-goers, who were all (it seemed to me at the time), at the “angry stage” of feminist development, and days of exposure to that had wearied me. I sat and gratefully listened to Ms. Angelou, but not really listening, just sinking, at the back of the room, into the first safe space I’d felt in days. Then she said something - this many years later, I don’t remember exactly what - and my head came up. I grabbed a pad of paper from my big conference bag and started to scribble. That “scribbling” went on for years.
What had hit me then, somehow stirred by Ms. Angelou’s words about something entirely different, was that women needed to reclaim silence, which had been for some time equated in our minds with being silenced. I tried many times over the next few years, mostly in essays, to capture the heart and essence of what I wanted to say about that. Three of those essay attempts were *pretty* good - one actually exciting an editor friend of mine enough that she argued with me to let her publish it, but, to me, it was Not. Yet. Right. Finally, much later, in an afternoon after tea with a dear friend, just sitting by my window watching her walk home, I picked up pen and paper and created the first draft of a poem. That, also, went through several drafts until one day I looked at it and exhaled. YES. That poem, “Looking Out the Upstairs Window” will be coming out in the Willowdown Books (UK) anthology The Poetic Bond X on November 9th.
I'd thought of this talk when I received an email from the editor (with proofs) at the same time I was sitting at my desk, struggling with another piece. I've been trying to write a piece about Eartha Kitt, wanting, in that piece, to highlight your courage in being outspoken, focusing (for those who don't know), on the incident
where she spoke out to both LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson during a luncheon at the White House. I wanted (want) it to highlight courage, speaking truth to power, and to celebrate her for that. Even though I'd only been trying for a few days, neither first draft essays nor poems were capturing the sense I wanted. (That I want).
I've been writing (and publishing) for a long time. It's exhilarating when you sit down with a pen and an idea, the words flow on the paper, and it's perfect, it breathes on its own, it has the right words. I think anyone who's ever had that happen would agree, and would also agree how rare that is. I will also admit that sometimes, coming back to those instantly perfect pieces months, or even years, later, I am a bit stunned to find they need work. I also have to note that, as exhilarating as those these-are-perfect-words moments are, it is even more so to work for them over draft after draft, working and working to find that - thing, the thing that makes it not just the right words, but the right heart.
That means not just working word by word, line by line (though it does mean that), it also means stepping back from each finished draft, and listening to it - what does it say? How does it feel? If the whole of it - the
words, the flow, the sense, and the content, don't absolutely SHINE with the feeling that you were aiming for, I have only one thing to say - START AGAIN.
I say this as I continue to struggle, continue to try to find the right form, continue to try to even identify that thing that I'm looking for, not only in the Eartha Kitt piece, but in others I've been working on. Some of those are finished, edited, polished -- but NOT YET RIGHT. There does exist a problem with taking this approach - there are writers, and I know a few, who will never send out anything as they work it and re-work it and re-work it. How do you know one problem from the other? If you're thinking it needs more work because you're not sure where it might have a market, or that there are those who would be upset by the content, that's the latter problem. If first readers tell you it's ready, if it's been workshopped and everyone approves, if you've done multiple edits for words, line by line, flow, and form and feel those things are perfected, but it still doesn't feel right, START AGAIN.
How to do this - how to find the form, the words, the heart - that is something that changes and can be elusive, as I'm re-discovering (for about the zillionth time) with this current piece. There are things you can do to help bring it about, to push yourself in that direction, and I plan to explore those more, here, in my next post.
NOTE: Just another note that, though I was absent from these pages for close to a year, it is not because I wasn't thinking of it - the full reasons I stayed off this page (though I was/am writing like a madwoman) will be the subject of another post.
