Meat and Gravy
I’m trying to put some thoughts on paper here today, but my cat disagrees. The laptop is taking up valuable lap space she feels entitled to, and my compromise of putting the computer on top of her is apparently not acceptable. I don’t blame her. It’s a rainy day and there’s nothing better than a good couch nap on a rainy day. Unless it’s a couch nap with a cat by your side.
Work has been going unusually well for me lately. Generally, the writing portions of my job are a bit a rollercoaster. Euphoria at intriguing ideas often falls to frustration when they don’t pan out. Some moments the words flow so fast I remind myself to enroll in a typing class to brush up on my skills. Other moments, I start ten sentences in a row with the same word and can’t remember a single synonym to save my life. It’s the meat of the job, though, and so it is both filling and occasionally gristly.
The editing is the kale and broccoli. Good for me, essential even, but far from my favorite Without it, though, the meal is too heavy and all tastes like just the one thing. Editing brings variety and brevity. It encourages me to get out of familiar ruts and figure out how to make even the most mundane of sentences into something worth eating…um, I mean, reading.
This asks the question then, what is the dessert in this meal? The part I long to savor, that I think about after I’m done for the day. For me, it’s the plotting and planning. The research and brainstorming. The weeks before the writing begins where anything can happen and I don’t know yet what will slam up against the unpleasant reality of sentence structure and narrative flow.
Luckily for me, I’m required to eat my dessert first. Every book starts with research. With reading lots of nonfiction, listening to podcasts on history and botany and culture. Poring over old images from museum websites, trying to figure out how to fit this story into that setting. It’s fun. More than fun. It’s joyful work.
But like dessert, it’s not the bulk of it. When you begin to write books, lots of people come out of the woodwork to tell you that they have an idea for a book, and they plan to write one. Every time, I think the same thing, and sometimes say it.
“You should do that.”
And I mean it. Not only because I think more creativity is almost always a good thing, but because the writing of a book is a transformative experience. The idea is important, but it’s just the first step. Like most hard things, it’s when I’m knee deep in a plot that won’t work, which characters who have become caricatures, and a premise that wasn’t quite robust enough – that’s when I need to dig in and do the real work.
And to finish my Thanksgiving analogy, that’s when gravy really helps to get the turkey down. The gravy for me? That’s the support of the people I love. Who won’t ask me to talk about work unless I want them to. Who will then listen for an hour and then offer a suggestion that I reject immediately, but which leads me onto a different, better, path. Who, in the end, show me cat videos to lift my spirits when I emerge from my work tired and frustrated.
During this Thanksgiving month, I’m reminded that it isn’t just what other do for us that matters; it’s also what others help to do for ourselves. How the people who believe in us hold that torch shining so when we’re discouraged, we have something to guide us back into believing in ourselves. For that, on this day, I give thanks.