Sharon, No Last Name
On aimlessness, editing, and taking signs where you find them
I joined group writing practice at 6:10 this morning. Ten minutes late. Exactly ten minutes later, I received an email from “Sharon,” no last name.
My Tuesday writing group begins at 6:00 am for me. I have committed to showing up all three days we meet every week, no matter how early or how tired I am, even if I’m a little late.
Today, I was late because I was having work done on my AC that began at 4:45. I guess that’s a normal time to start that type of work when it is 112 degrees. I could have used it as an excuse not to show up. My AC was off; people were walking around and making noise in my attic. Yet, I committed. Not to my writing coach, to me. Because I say I want to be a writer.
That isn’t the point of this story. In truth, there may not be a point to this story at all. I have no sense of direction, which is a running theme in my life right now. Two threads currently intertwine through my being. A sense of aimlessness and tiredness.
I use that word, tired, a lot lately. It’s the easiest word to land on when I think about how I feel. I think it’s probably just a cop-out answer to avoid having to dive in and see how I’m really feeling. Knowing how or what I feel has never been a strong suit for me. So I say I’m tired.
I should choose a new word. Wearied is fitting. Languid is fun. Dispirited?
“Hey Heather, how are you?”
“Eh, dispirited.”
Tired is a more acceptable answer. It is more comfortable for people. I may try out languid, but chances are good we’ll stick with the tired old tired. It’s easier to explain, even if it doesn’t explain anything at all.
And here we are at aimless.
I have an outline for my book. I have an outline for two books, maybe three. When I sit down to write and look at the outline for the book I’m focused on, I feel overwhelmed. I feel pressure. All the thoughts and ideas that popped up while driving or in the bathroom are nowhere to be found. So I do what any aimless person does. I sit and stare at the computer screen. Organize my files. Make my writing space more efficient. Anything but write.
That clearly doesn’t work for me. I find it best if I just sit and write with no expectation of anything. No book, no thought about anyone reading it. Usually I can find something useful in that.
I start my morning writing practice with one of two openings. “If I were to write a book, what would it be about?” which tends to pull out what I’m trying to accomplish with the book. The second is “Dear Mommy,” and we see where that one takes me. Sometimes, thoughts pop out that I can turn into a piece I will someday publish. Most times, it is just fulfilling the commitment I made to myself to write while feeling deeply connected to my Mom.
Today, I was editing a piece I started last week. Editing doesn't come easily to me. My entire life I have been a one-and-done kind of gal. In school, when I had to write papers, I would just write them and submit them. I can’t even guarantee that I read them again to make sure they made sense. When I send emails, I write them and send them.
Maybe I’m lazy. Maybe I believe my value is tied to efficiency and speed. Maybe, if I utilized my expensive Psychology degree, I would consider my aversion to editing is related to my deep-held belief that I can’t go back and change the past. That everything that happened happened and that’s all there is to it. Maybe it’s as simple as an ADHD brain. It probably doesn’t matter.
Is there such a thing as a chaotic writer? There is a chaos witch. I’m a witch. I write my thoughts and feelings in real time. I write the way my brain thinks. Everything I know about writing tells me I should have direction. I should be to the point, no unnecessary words. I should only use active sentences. I should get my thoughts out, but go back and make them palatable.
That’s a lot of “shoulds.” It all seems so rigid.
Rigidity is suffocating.
I don’t actually know anything about writing. Maybe I would if I had taken the time in school to learn to edit my work. Sit in it a little.
That is something my writing coach has taught me. Sometimes things need to marinate. I think that’s true. Yet also, if I let things marinate too much, they tend to go rancid. They either sit, as a forgotten container of sour cream in the back of the fridge, or the original thought, or more importantly, feeling, floats away like a wish on dandelion fluff.
When I finally go back to the uncomfortable task of editing, I often judge the thoughts I have written on the page, only to edit out the meaning and emotion I felt. The end result: hollow words with no voice. I have thousands of words, hundreds of pages, marinating, none of them finished.
When I write to my mom, nothing needs to be finished. There is no end-game. Nothing needs to be polished. I don’t need to edit anything out to make people more comfortable or correct my grammar. Yet it still has meaning. The words are still words someone is supposed to read. Someone, somewhere, has a brain just as chaotic or aimless as mine. My writing will hit them in the gut, and they will feel something. Maybe it’s a single person. Maybe it’s just me.
Not long ago, I found journal entries from 2008 and another from 2011 about how I was supposed to write a book. I don’t often finish projects. Thank you, spicy brain. But I do know that the ones that keep coming back to me are ones I am supposed to see through. For reasons I will likely never fully grasp.
All of these thoughts, each word, all of this because this morning I received an email from “Sharon,” no last name. The subject line was just my name, “Heather.” The content read, “Heather, here’s my email.” That’s it. It came from a random Gmail address.
Have I mentioned my mother’s name was Sharon?
The realistic, cynical side of me knows this is some weird new phishing scheme begging for a response. Maybe I met someone named Sharon and forgot. Or maybe it was a sign. A message from my Mom to keep writing to her. Every inch of my being desires to respond. Maybe this essay is my response. A letter to the ethers, a time and space that may just carry my mom.
A seasoned writer would say I have too many thoughts in this essay. That I should pull each one out and expand them into their own essay. There’s that word again.
Maybe it’s time to stop shoulding on myself. Maybe tired and aimless is exactly where I’m supposed to be right now. My only job is to keep writing. To my Mom, to whoever else might be listening. To fulfill something I set out to do decades ago.