Mama Says

They can smell it on me.

These little kids in the Writers Circle I recently formed at the elementary school, they can tell I am not practicing what I preach. I am not writing every day. I am not brainstorming ideas in my journal. I am not outlining before I write. And that’s why they aren’t doing it either. They’ve got my number.

Writers Circle was never supposed to be about me, of course. It was supposed to be about nurturing their emerging interest and skills, supporting their efforts, encouraging them to practice. It’s not about whether I pre-write, write and revise a blog entry. They don’t need to know that I wait until the day before the deadline almost every month before making a desperate grab at the very first idea for a Plain Press column that enters my head. They are supposed to do as I say.

They do not, these recalcitrant youth.

Actually, to be fair and more accurate, a few of them do. There are one or two good, good children, who listen attentively, then promptly and sincerely apply themselves to following my spoken directions. A cynical artiste might conclude that these are the very children who are the least likely to demonstrate any real flair for writing. How could anyone so organized also be creative? Well, they are. Much of what has been written by these serious-minded students has been silly and fun and graceful and complete. And when you get right down to it, the element of completeness is the part that really matters.

In contrast, let us consider the child who was eager to share her writing as soon as possible, but who — instead of reading from a draft — spoke a sort of summary of her ideas that eventually trailed off into an inconclusive sort of, “Well, you get the picture..” non-ending. This child is a person with good ideas, who knows how to draw upon sensory details to create rich prose poems. But she is having a dickens of a time performing the alchemy that transforms ideas into written words on paper. This is the literary equivalent of the air guitar.

Which makes her a kindred spirit, I guess. I am always a little humiliated when a friend remarks in passing about my being “a writer,” when I produce so little actual writing. It is the same humiliation I felt when my dear friend and mentor Hale Chatfield — who preferred actual writing to creating clever ways to avoid writing — finally got fed up with listening to my sniffling about the difficulties involved in becoming a writer and bellowed impatiently, “Oh, for God’s sake, would you just get on with it? If you want to be a writer, write something! Even a grocery list!”

See, that’s what made Hale a good mentor. Had he wished to, he could have responded to my dillydallying by thrusting a sheaf of coffee-stained ledger paper under my nose and bellowing (he did bellow, and he was also stout and grizzled), “Quit your lollygagging! I’ve drafted this entire chapbook of poems in the time you spent debating whether it was better to write in pencil or pen!”

How can I mentor these little scribes if I’m ordering them to go home and draft an essay about their dream house while I go home, boot up the laptop, and then try to see if I can beat my high score on Tetris?

I cannot — not effectively, at least. I am emitting the effluvium of fruitlessness, and with their keen little noses, they’ve caught that rank scent. Masking that odor over with references to past accomplishments or vague comments on projects I may start someday won’t disguise the fact that right now, this minute, I am staring out the window, petting the cat, or re-reading an email I sent last week because it contained a clever and original turn of phrase.

Many writers of some merit and accomplishment have paused in mid-career to comment on this issue and to offer people like me guidance. I own many books addressing this problem. My patient and encouraging spouse has recently ordered yet another such title from the library, in another unsubtle effort to prod me into productivity.

So much, in fact, has been written and sold on the topic of writer’s block that one wonders whether it is possible to simply create a niche for oneself, specializing in this genre of non-writing. Why should established authors like Eudora Welty and John Gardner get to have the last word on writer’s block? I have been writing about not writing for more than thirty years! I am an expert on the topic!

It could be the answer for me. Daily, disciplined non-writing might at least allow me to dispel this redolence of failure. I could establish a goal of 1000 words of non-writing daily. For all appearances, I would be productive. I could walk into Writers Circle like the confident, confident, dry and secure women in the deodorant commercial. I could call out, “Who has written something today?” and thrust my own hand high in the air above their unknowing little noggins.