Practice

After weeks away from my writing, I’m having trouble finding my way back to it. I’ve lost the thread, the sense of the story I was telling. A writing practice is like any other: It keeps you limber, keeps you connected. Over these crazy weeks, I’ve written every day, but the writing is so different. Or is it?

Writing fiction or memoir, I slip into a reverie, slide into the scene so thoroughly that I can see and feel and smell the story unfolding around me. I search for telling details, the ones that do the heavy lifting. If I describe the smell of new mown grass in the breeze—the tang of dandelions and the sweetness of clover mixed with dust and rust and two-stage motor oil—you know I’m outside and that it’s either summer or on the cusp of it. If you’re perceptive and I’m telling the story well, you’ll also have a picture of the area—maybe in the south, where the iron content gives the soil that red color and the smell of rusty metal. The yards are seedy enough to have dandelions and red clover and small enough to be mowed with push mowers but not so upscale that yuppies are manicuring them with those everything-old-is-new-again rotary mowers.

When I’m writing how-to, I watch the project come together as though it’s a movie behind my eyes. I break the process down into manageable steps and draw word pictures of what should happen and what to watch out for. I foreshadow, summarize and expound; I describe and detail.

Not that much different after all, is it? I’m going to go read the last few chapters I was working on. With any luck, I’ll step back into the story like slipping into a pair of well-worn Birkenstocks after an afternoon in high heels.