I had a post for you, towards the end of last year, then fear stopped me. It wasn’t good enough I thought, but then it never really is for me…or rarely. Whenever I pick up a pen…well, actually I don’t pick up a pen much anymore, but it just sounds so much more poetic than grab my laptop, which is what I typically do now, which is how I’m writing right now. But anyway, back to the sentence at hand. Ahem, whenever I pick up a pen, I do so with the hope that whatever I write will be great, will be thought of as great, first by me, then by somebody else. I want it to be moving. Soul-stirring. Sentences so good you’ll want to read them aloud.
Have you ever read sentences like that? Zora Neal Hurston has some in her autobiography “Dust Tracks on a Road.” She has sentences so good, I was underlining them and I wasn’t even reading it for school, or some class assignment. I was reading purely for pleasure, yet felt I needed to remember where these lines were in case I wanted to reference them again.
I’m sure you’re probably wondering what these lines are. Perhaps one day I’ll reveal them to you. But right now I’m sitting on my bed; it’s 10:31 at night and I don’t feel like getting up to get the book and look for them.
But the point is, I want to write sentences like that all the time. I’ll toot my own horn and say I’ve written a few. They come to me once it a blue moon. Though I must say, I take little to no credit for them. When that happens, it’s like the Spirit of the Lord takes over me, and I’m just a vessel. I had no part in it. I simply wrote the genius that popped in my mind. It was just…how’s that saying go? A flash in a pan, only meant to be temporary, and yet I want it to last forever. Want it to be at my beck and call, to use whenever I desire. But God says no, you gotta put in the work.
And so I write, this year to put in the work. I’m giving myself permission to write shit. To not be perfect. To not even try to be perfect. I mean of course trying not to be careless, but overall, just trying to be a writer – just writing.
I was reading this book by this director named Sidney Lumet. He’s directed several big movies, several famous movies, but the one I’ve come to know his name from is “The Wiz” the black and soulful adaption of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” I’ve heard that the movie had tons of bad reviews, and was a box office flop in its day, but I gives no fucks, I love that movie.
So anyway, I was reading this book he wrote—he being Sidney Lumet—and in one of the chapters he was talking about he was teaching someone, or somebody was teaching somewhere – I believe it was a photography class. Anyway, in order to pass this class the students had an assignment to choose from one of two options: take a bunch of random pictures everyday or take one really good, well-crafted picture. And what he found was that the best photos came from the students who took a bunch of random photos, rather than those who spent so much time crafting the “perfect” photo.
To me, that just underscores the fact that you get better by doing. And that if I just keep writing, I might have to first churn out scores of junk, but inevitably I’ll get to the good stuff.
So bear with me if you’re reading this or any subsequent post and thinking, “what the fuck?” Just know that sooner or later you’ll get to the good part.
And who’s to say when or where the good part is? It’s all subjective. Perhaps it’s even now.
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