Reader,
I was fifteen when I first stumbled across Annie Dillard. Of course, I didn't stumble across her. Rather, I happened upon her book The Writing Life during a mundane library visit.
That chance encounter changed the course of my life, as the saying goes. One day I was an aimless teenager, who felt like the walls were closing in on him. The next I found myself thrust into a world of possibility and wonder, all thanks to this brilliant woman who showed me that a writing life was a real thing.
I've recently returned to The Writing Life for the first time in several years. Some passages no longer feel as inspiring as they once did. Perhaps because, in Dillard's own words, "the fanaticism of my twenties shocks me now." Or perhaps because I've found other, healthier mentors to influence my craft.
However, some passages are still solid gold. Like this one:
A well-known writer got collared by a university student, who asked, "Do you think I could be a writer?"
"Well," the writer said, "I don't know. . . . Do you like sentences?"
The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, "I liked the smell of the paint."
When I read those words the first time, I instantly felt superior to that student. I was but a fresh-faced teenager who barely needed to shave, and yet I could instantly answer this question with an unequivocal YES. And it was true. I really did like sentences.
What I failed to comprehend at the time was just how hard writing can be. As I pored over Dillard's words, I couldn't read between the lines and see just how much time she spent NOT writing. Nor could I make sense of her open declarations that she hated her job, much like a factory worker hates his.
I don't feel that way about writing, but I do know what it's like to dread the page. And that's why I routinely come back to this anecdote when I want to recover a sense of play in my writing.
Often, when we sit down to write, we're secretly convinced that we need to write something chock full of meaning. It doesn't matter what that meaning for you or for me or for anyone else. What matters is that this secret conviction often keeps us from writing. We suddenly lose sight of our materials (words, sentences) and freeze up, terribly afraid that we won't be able to do justice to the meaning that means so much us.
Which is why, I think, it's important to get back to the basics and just have fun with words.
Not everything we write needs to be meaningful. It's actually okay—no, it's actually healthy—for us to write sentences that just get thrown away.
I do this every morning when I write my morning pages. Three pages, written longhand, that go straight into the recycle bin or trash can. (I used to save them to start my charcoal barbecue, but then someone made me replace it with a propane grill.)
In classes, I get my students to do this in the form of writing prompts. Is it possible that what they scribble down on loose sheets of paper will turn into a novel? Perhaps. But that's not what we're after. All we want to do is remember, once again, just how much we like sentences.
If you don't have a habit of writing throwaway sentences, I encourage you to start one. (And no, those emails you write for work do not count.) It doesn't have to be three pages, written longhand, though I will always encourage you to write as tangibly as you can as often you can. It can be a page. It can be three paragraphs. It can be five sentences. But the point is to write as frivolously and with as much fun as possible.
Not sure where to start? Pick up a dictionary and write five sentences with the first five new words you encounter.
Or find a sentence you admire and rewrite it in five different ways, changing the meaning, trying to make it as ludicrous as possible.
Whatever you do, write, for fun, for the thrill of it, with the same kind of maniacal joy that prompted you to spin yourself sick on the merry-go-round when you were a child.
You'll be surprised just how much a little bit of frivolity feeds the writing you really want to be doing.
Keep your stick on the ice.
Frank.