Hello friends. I've missed this little corner of the world. Missed the routine of showing up, of documenting simply, day by day. Of taking notice, and hearing in turn how your worlds align and turn. I like that asynchronous connection. The moments of inspiration and reflection that come of shared moments across time. The stories that find their way into the comments. The wayward emails I get, reminding e we're all connected, and my words find their mark in New Zealand or Sweden, Buffalo, under feet of snow, or in Burlington, where my muscle memory is still strong, and winter has already gathered close.
Here, autumn slips towards winter gently. The rains have started, but each day there are moments of brightness, and in them we rake leaves, look up at the sky and find rainbows, or walk to the cafe among the rose gardens for chai tea in the afternoon at work. Still, it's taken until this month to feel a gradual settling of routines, and a steadiness in orbit here.
In the cafe yesterday while writing, I overheard someone say, "Patience is the destination."
I couldn't help thinking that they've got it exactly right. Flannery O'Conner only ever finished three pages in the three hours she wrote each day, and Gertrude Stein even less, though both I think understood the secret is just showing up steadily for something. Stein said, "If you write a half hour a day, it makes a lot of writing year by year." The accumulated truth of persistence. The evidence of patience on the page.
All this to say I've begun writing again, stories this time, slowly. I write for three hours on Saturdays, and find that with this routine I've begun to be increasingly able to just sink in and write when I get to the cafe and order a coffee. In between times the story lives with me. The scenes find me vividly and sometimes I'll write notes, like today while running on the treadmill I could hardly wait to finish three miles so I could jot down what I'd worked out.
I've stopped expecting I'll finish anything with any kind of speed, and with that release of expectation I've found a new kind of focus for my work.
Still, it takes commitment. To showing up. I'll be working on this new material at the Tin House winter Writer's Workshop in January, staying in the Sylvia Plath Hotel on the Oregon coast for a long weekend, and for this opportunity thrilled. It's a way to remind myself of who I am. Of putting a stake in the terrain that is my life, as a writer, even as I am also other things.