Living the Comma #37

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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Living the Comma #37

Decide. Start. Annie Dillard.

“VLADIMIR: It’s the start that’s difficult. ESTRAGON: You can start from anything. VLADIMIR: Yes, but you have to decide. ESTRAGON: True.” ― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Dear Writer Friends,

This week, I am thinking about reasons not to start a project. Any project. A big project. A medium project. A small project. A project riddled in conflict and weight that I jump and swerve to avoid. A light and fluffy project that is perpetually bottom listed. An overwhelming project that has been comfortably fermenting like fine wine. A wake-you-up-in-the middle-of-the-night project that makes my palms sweat, but not sweat enough to simply just do it. This is not about procrastination or fear or failure or pain or inertia. This is about putting on the shoes and taking the first step. This is about sitting down and circular breathing — in through the nose and out through the mouth — and quieting the monkey mind. This is about the beauty of the wait and the decision and the action.

What decisions are you waiting to make, to create, to build, to tend, to cherish? What decisions rise to the level of mostly ignoring, burying in the sand, looking away, pinning on a cloud of impossibility? What decisions weigh, tire, break, and churn? What would it look to lift the pen — and/or fingers — and write? What would it feel like to head toward figuring it out? What would it look like to leave life’s park bench and stoke the fire of imagination and decide and move?

Conversations with Authors — Annie Dillard

I remember reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in college. (It is a must read.) I have revisited the breadth of Dillard’s work over the years when I want to ground myself in what it means to pay attention and consider nature and beauty and faith and perhaps even a path to start a project. She offers me a way into a writing life that allows for reverence and excellence. That is hard to do. When you visit her website, she shares her Vita — Annie Dillard Vita. It provides an account of her literary accomplishments.

Seeing

“It is a dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty in simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.” — Annie Dillard

Read “Seeing” here.

My thoughts on Dillard’s “Seeing” essay here.

Write Till You Drop

“Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” — Annie Dillard

Read “Write Till You Drop” essay here.

Dialogue with Annie Dillard on “The Writing Life”

What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being: it is a life boat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern. — Annie Dillard

Read A Dialogue with Annie Dillard in Writing on the Edge — Deborah J. Brasket here.

A Writing Prompt —

“Have you been bracing yourself for a new beginning? Perhaps one that is daunting yet inevitable, or maybe one that you’ve been hoping for and dreaming about? What will it take for you to get there? Who will be with you? What will it feel like when you get to the other side? If you’d like, use the refrain, “I will begin again as …” — Aura Brickler

The Book of Alchemy, – I Begin Again, page 1, I Begin Again, page 2

As we begin the second half of the year, let’s take this opportunity to begin, again. Let’s commit to defining and moving forward on the projects that live in our hearts. Let’s leave our park benches and dream and decide and act.

From the heart of the comma,

Katie

Thank you for Living the Comma with me. Face-to-Face meetings resume in September. Stay tuned. Subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project and share your light. It has never been more important.