Stillness

What's Necessary for a Writer

I find myself considering stillness. Life is noisy and sometimes moves pretty damned fast. Even when it drags, and you wish it would pick up its silly feet, there is a hum to things, a quiet crackle in the ear. The most boring days aren’t necessarily still. Stillness isn’t silence, it’s a pause in the ordinary motion of life. Stillness is rare and essential for a writer; stillness and big blocks of time without interruption. Anyone writing at home with children on the loose knows this is more fantasy than reality, but it is a thing always hungered for and grieved when it fails to show.

But then, someone takes the kids off your hands, the house is yours until your partner comes home and, bless him, makes dinner without being asked, and you have your keyboard and that bright blank computer screen to keep you company as the clock on your desk ticks, ticks, and ticks.

As I said, stillness isn’t silence, but a letting go of the quotidian (such a great word, that). Not to be confused with concentration, because that implies directed thought, stillness is when the mind can be let free to roam. I’ve also heard this referred to as “gathering wool,” but that seems more dilatory somehow. Regardless of what this mental state is called, it’s the only one (for me) responsible for generating meaningful work.

Shut out the world, summon the world. Let associations come and go as they please, let language find its own way and realize you’re just there to keep it from becoming too abstruse for a reader to care about following.

Give yourself permission to play with ideas, do the “what if,” game. What if this sadly uninspiring character isn’t a man but a woman? What changes? Is she easier to write? Change the sequence of events, begin the story where you planned to end it. Turn the world upside down and put it on its head. You will see things that before were hidden.

It can be hard to trust your instincts or even your inclination. We all have that mean inner editor asking why you’re such a dope, and what made you think you could write, anyway? Tell them to shut the hell up. Seriously. Insight is rarely born of self-doubt; self-doubt disturbs the precious tenor of stillness.

Write for yourself, first, and for others later. In stillness there’s courage that one day becomes confidence, and you’ll need that confidence when you start submitting your work, because the rejections are going to outnumber the acceptances a hundred to one – several hundred to one, in my case, before I finally found a home for my first published story. Throughout all those let-downs, don’t forget to keep stillness alive and well so you can effectively revise and improve what you want the world to take from you and celebrate.

Thank you for reading. You can find me at www.anneleighparrish.com and enjoy my photography at www.laviniastudios.com