Notes from a Writer’s Journal

Excerpts from my recent journal entries:

I am finally getting excited about writing my memoir. I don’t feel as much fear around writing my story and digging around in the past. Before, in the memoir class I quit two summers ago, I told the teacher I couldn’t write that story and still be in it. But what I should have said was that I couldn’t write it while I was constantly reliving it.

I knew I’d write about it eventually, but I was rushing things.

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I heard on a podcast this week that the book you’re writing teaches you how to write it, which I find both fascinating and comforting. Knowing I can write in my own winding, nonlinear way is a relief. I can write like myself and the book will teach me how to write it. I love that.

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Right now, my job is to dig everything out and collect as much raw material as I can.

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I realized today how much I’ve been putting off writing the book. It’s creating huge problems for me. I think I need to write with a notebook and pen, then type the pages as I go, maybe once a week. I also think I need to do that writing first thing in the morning. In fifteen minutes, I can probably write 300-500 words. If I did that each day, I’d have 9,000-15,000 words written in a month.

I’ve never written a book before and it feels scary. What if I can’t do it?

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I have to believe more in the truth than in my own fear.

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Every morning, I sit here and a little voice inside says she doesn’t want to write. She’s tired, she says. She just wants to rest. She thinks I’ve done enough writing and it’s not necessary to keep going right now. The voice shows up every day and the only thing I know to do is acknowledge it, then set a timer for fifteen minutes and get to work. That’s all I have to spend on my writing today: fifteen minutes.

If I want to do more, great. If I don’t and all I do today is my fifteen minutes, that’s great too. Something is better than nothing. All progress counts. What’s hard is that it doesn’t feel like progress—it feels like nothing more than words. I’m throwing words onto the page and they’re unwieldy and jumbled. I’m making a mess, one that I’ll have to clean up later. The task of cleaning it up is daunting. I’m trying not to focus on that for now. I just need to get the words down. That’s all I can do.

I can tell my story, what I saw and felt. I need to get the story out of me, no matter what comes of it.

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Maybe I don’t need to know and all I need is faith that it’ll come together. I have work to do, a reason to be here. I’m resting in that right now. It’s my job to show up and do the work I’m called to.

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This is not just a writing practice, but also a living practice. We have to listen—to others, to ourselves—and we need space in order to contemplate and create. The world is so noisy and distracted, but we don’t have to be. We can choose slowness, contemplation. We can choose to rally against a culture that demands more and more—more numbers, more readers, more output. We can choose to be faithful to our calling, to write and think and explore ideas on the page. To hold up what we create to the light and check for holes. What is true here?

The world can be so fast, demanding so much, but there is time to slow down, time to taste and chew and digest. There’s no rush.

What really matters in the life of a writer? Is it output? Productivity? Do we write because it’s deep in our bones? Do we have something important to say?

We must believe in the process and let go of success and failure. We’re not responsible for outcomes, only for our own faithfulness to the work. We have to continue to hone our craft, to read well, to show up to the page regularly.

Yes, we can do this in public, but not all writing is meant to be for the public. It’s our responsibility to discern which is what.

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The world doesn’t need more voices repeating the same old, same old. We need people wiling to step out, break the mold, listen to their hearts, and share what they find.

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Part of me is so exhausted and worn out from writing. I can feel that. I feel resistance toward cracking open that notebook and reaching back into the past for a memory. There’s so much more to write, especially now that I have an outline and an idea about where I need to go. Part of me just wants to dig in and another part of me wants to retreat to bed and give up.

Maybe that feeling is normal. Maybe writing our own complicated stories or living our own complicated lives is not a straight line or a story arc. Maybe it’s a tangled mess, a twisted ball of yard, a necklace that’s wound into itself that you pick at but can’t pull apart. Maybe these things are true, but you persevere and take it slow. It can’t beat the life out of you. Writing can’t strip everything away. It has to give back. It has to give you life too.