Sweats are the new cape

Phone booth, take me away to those single-bounding leaps over the impossible! Oh, wait -- there are no more phone booths.

What's a contemporary writer -- with too many different identities to manage all of the costume changes -- to do?

With no place to do my superhero switcharoo lately, I've had to retire my cape for my street clothes: sweats. Poetic aside: this is both a literal and figurative image. Literally: getting things done is a sloppy job. Around me is a collection of stained mugs with used tea bags slumped around or stuck brittle to the sides. And under those are rumpled, paw-printed paper piles and files swarming with sticky notes. Figuratively: the humility of being imperfect, incomplete, incapable sometimes of living up to my own expectations.

All of this to say, I have I have been straining every seam of my life to accommodate book writing in the margins of full-time work, full-time motherhood and all the other stuff that needs to happen in life. As a result, I have had to cancel my trip to AWP next week to meet said book deadline. And I think it is also unlikely that I will get to do my part in the global momentum of poem-a-day writing throughout National Poetry Month (April.) Though I'm thinking I'll take a rain check for May.

Gone are the days of the phone booth and the idea that we must become someone else to do what has value. In these days of cell phones and sweat pants, we do the humble work of getting things done --  laying down words like bricks, one after the other, until we finish. There is nothing fancy or costumed about it.

And the writing exists in the weave of a whole, integrated life -- our writing life -- where we tend to our sick children and aging parents, we take the time to feed ourselves well, we sleep, we connect with friends and beloveds, we walk the dogs. And we write -- holding the paradox of aiming high while accepting what is. And we do what we can do, with that north star of platform and that energy source of desire keeping us moving forward. 

If writing a book is a marathon, then I think I'm wearing the right outfit; a cape would likely get tangled up in the wheels of the rolling desk chair anyway...

I invite you to do what you can do to enjoy this National Poetry Month and let it nourish your writing craft and practice. But don't worry that you can't do it all. Who you are is enough, and the outfit you're wearing is just perfect.

Comments

[drew]

So sorry you'll miss AWP -- I was hoping to finally meet you in person!