Flash Memoir Friday: Writing By Not Writing
Plus talking joy, pain, and community with Ross Gay
Every year or so, my brother Alex blocks out some days for me on the calendar to use his AirBnb apartment in Orlando, and I use it as a writing retreat. The apartment is a remodeled detached garage behind Alex’s 1920s bungalow in a historic neighborhood, and it’s a cool little space to retreat and be unto oneself. I feel very lucky and very grateful. I’m also feeling resistant to working on what I came here to work on, an essay about trauma and women’s constrained choices and difficult inheritances. I was going to finish that one and hopefully write a second essay, but my mind (body? spirit?) is asking for a break.
So, here I sit ready to write— you can tell by my tarot & oracle cards, colorful pens, crystals, aromatherapy oil, and yoga mat, see?— but instead I’ve been finishing some tasks in a course I’m taking, taking naps, communing with ghosts. The usual. Today when I felt really stumped, I finally got up to straighten things I had left around the apartment, put some laundry in, and wash a few dishes. And it was while washing the dishes that strands of thought started to come together for a new essay. “Oh, yeah,” I thought, “I forgot about the puttering stage of my process. Again.”
So this weekend, I invite you to putter, to ponder, to let go of the reins of your conscious mind and to count that as creative work. Because it is. Let thoughts and images and memories swim around unmoored while you do rote activities like driving or showering or dishes. Let the connections come in their own time.
Here is an excerpt from one of two hour-long interviews I did with my friend Ross Gay last year as part of an online course, The Call: A Course on Creative Witness. In this clip, Ross talks about joy, pain, and community, and he refers to his (then-upcoming) book Inciting Joy. In the course, I also interviewed poets Sean Singer and Erika Meitner. I’m running a self-guided version of the class that opens on May 22nd. Students receive access to the recorded video interviews, readings, and writing exercises, as well as discussion with and feedback from others who sign up for the class. Early bird prices are in effect until May 5th and start at $60.
Also, here’s a funny picture Ross drew inside my copy of the William Stafford book Even in Quiet Places when we were buddies in graduate school in Philadelphia and sat around drawing each other cartoons instead of writing our seminar papers.
I got to see Ross read from his poetry collection, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, at the Orlando Public Library earlier this month and it was magical. The man radiated joy. Looking forward to reading your interview with him. I know you're in town to write and visit family, but if you ever want to take another writing-by-not-writing related break, I'd love to grab coffee! I've loved taking your courses.