Writing Clip #3

Shauna Niequest:

"Before I started collecting pennies, I used to throw them away, along with gum wrappers and used Kleenex. No one accepts them anymore, really...All of a sudden, the loss of these pennies seemed tragic to me. So I started collecting them, in a pale blue bowl that my cousin Georgia gave me for Christmas. I sort them out of the more substantial silver coins in my pocket and set them in their new place, the smooth blue bowl. I don’t know what I will do with them, but thee is something satisfying about watching their numbers grow, a little army of copper coins. It soothes me to think that if there is a place for them, then there is a place for everything. It seems immeasurably mature of me to do this, like having dish towels and stamps and spare light bulbs all in their respective places. It feels to me that if these worthless little coins have a place, then they have a meaning. And then if I have a place, then I have meaning.

In a world where less and less actually exists, where you can spend money without actually having any in your hand, and you can hat in a room without atually chatting or being in that room, these smooth copper pennies are rare, curious things. They are the real thing.

So now I’m amassing pennies like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe someday I will melt them all down and make a trophy. Maybe I will grout them into my bathroom tile. Maybe I will shellac them in tidy rows onto my kitchen cabinets or make jewelry with them. I don’t know yet. But when I walk by the blue bowl in the kitchen, I find myself absently running my fingers through the coins, sure for the moment that there are things that are real and understandable, and therefore good, things I can hold on to when my hands feel empty."

I just like that someone can make me fascinated about pennies. Cool clip.

Wednesday Writing Clip #2

From Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist. (I told you I read slow).

"For me, writing is about control. Or, more accurately, a loss of control. Maybe you are a writer, and you disagree because writing for you feels more like walking on the beach or getting a massage. Well, maybe you and I should never meet for coffee. Writing for me feels like getting naked in public. It feels like falling to the bottom of a well and finding lots of creepy crawly things down there with you. It feels like opening up a box of snakes. It feels kooky and scary and out of control. It makes me upset sometimes, because it makes me honest. When I sit down to write, for a while I read magazines and send emails and wander around, and then when I finally get up the guts to crack through the ice of my mind, I find myself in an odd universe of feelings I didn’t know I felt, and memories I didn’t know I carried. After I’ve been writing for a while, I get sort of sensitive and strange, like a theater kid in high school.

One of the true hazards in writing is that you yearn to write deeply honest things that rise up from lessons learned the hard way…and then you have to learn those lessons the hard way. I had written a chapter on jealousy, and after I looked at it for a while, it seemed sort of flat and cartoony. I prayed for a new way to write that chapter, an incisive and honest way to talk about being jealous. And not a week later, wouldn’t you know it, at dinner with some friends, I found out something about a mutual friend that annihilated me with jealousy. It was a thousand straws that broke a thousand camel’s backs, and I was tumbling around and around with these vicious, terrible jealous feelings, like I was in the spin cycle with a box of rocks. That’s the last time I pray for a good chapter on anything, except being gorgeous or winning the lottery or something. You pray for wonderful, honest gritty, tender stories to write, but then you have to live through them."

If you're not a writer, maybe posting writing on writing is like an annoying English class rerun but I am kind of obsessed with writing about writing ;). I think it's fascinating and I love this clip from Shauna. I took one writing class a few years ago and maybe the only thing I took away from it, besides never to write about lesbianism ever ever ever again, was that you have to write true things. You don't just write out of thin air. You look at life, especially your life if you are willing, and write what is stark, cold, , vivid, lovely, indecent, and explicitly TRUE. And like she said, sometimes wanting those chapters to come alive means that it must come out of your own actions and heart...and it can be wildly uncomfortable. But it's the best kind of writing.

Like it?

Wednesday Writing #1

I love good writing. I don't get a lot of time to read but when I do, give me a good sentence to take in with a cup of coffee on the side and I can go to sleep. Forget twenty pages before bed. Just give me one well articulated thought. Like I've mentioned, I thought maybe I'd start posting some. Maybe on Wednesdays. For no other creative idea than "W"ednesday and "Writing" start with the same letter. Let it be just that shallow. But it's reason enough. Looking forward to it.

First clip is from a book my veeery thoughtful friend let me borrow. It's been stalking my brain ever since she told me about it months ago and now the bright orange cover of Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist has been placed into my hands. Thank you sweet friend. Let me throw out the disclaimer that we're not totally matched theologically, but I think she loves the Lord so I'll let it lie there for now.

Here's the clip. It's actually about writing, and although I enjoy humor from writers about being writers, my clips won't always be focused like that. Enough. Here it is:

"And now I can feel things turning, slowly. I can feel this tiny, fragile writer person getting bigger, like a candle flame glowing. Tonight is a writing night, and I feel giddy, antsy bold in a new way. I feel like I have a secret: I am becoming something else...But little by little, when I start where I'm stuck, over and over and over, getting stuck and unstuck, something cracks through, and life reveals itself to me like a scroll unfurling, and I write about it. I struggle against myself, and I write about it. I feel afraid and crazy, and I write about it. I don't figure out the solution in any tidy way, and I don't have a sharp and clever revelation, but bit by bit, writing is starting to worm its way into the dailiness of my life and is creating a home there. It is becoming less and less of a strange distant dream and more and more of the actual way I live."

Any writers or bloggers relate? This reminds me a little of Anne Lammott's book Bird by Bird, from which I'd like to post a thousand little snippets because she's so amazing. I don't know, I just like this because writing about writing is a little like observing a grown adult learn to walk because of how frustrating and awkward and funny it can be. So I liked it :)