I was talking with a writer friend recently about how writing happens.
Do we start with a chaotic brain dump? A well-organized outline? How do the words actually get on the page?
The answer seems to be — you should write however you can manage to actually do it.
So I’ve been doing this thing lately where I just write. Every day.
You might think it’s the “write” part that is important. It’s actually the “just” part that’s key. “Just” is what negates the millions of excuses (emails, laundry, I should organize the fridge) that stand in the way of “write.”
So, just writing might mean hours of solid writing time, or it might mean fifteen minutes of organizing research notes. But I try to get my hands on my writing every day. As Steinbeck says, “When you can’t create, you can work.”
I love Johnathan Fields’ Awake at the Wheel substack, and he wrote about the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and her daily practice. It began in 2006 as a dare from a friend: write a poem a day for 30 days, then send it to two friends who would do the same. It continues to this day, having expanded out to a larger group.
She adds:
What I learned in those first 30 days…was that I couldn't write something good every day.
This was something that had been really important to me, to write something good before that. Which meant I often didn't write at all. So when I started writing every day and realized, oh, you can't write something good every day, I started to realize, well, then what am I doing?
And it shifted the whole reason for writing. And even maybe just the way I showed up at a piece of paper and I thought, okay, could I write something true every day? And that I could do….
So, if the goal isn’t good maybe it can at least be true?
Last week, I went to the National Press Club in Washington, DC. It’s a very fancy place, and I didn’t know what to wear.
The NPC has existed as a gathering place for journalists and writers since 1908, and covering the walls of the dining room are the front pages of newspapers from the most impactful moments in American history. Those words told the truth of our world, and those words shifted our lives.
Everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Nelson Mandela has spoken at the club. Lauren Bacall once perched atop the upright piano and dangled her legs over the side, scandalously close to Harry Truman’s (clearly delighted) face. CBS Commentator Eric Severeid once said:
“It’s the only hallowed place I know that’s absolutely bursting with irreverence.”
Show me a place that honors both words and irreverence, and I will worship at that altar.
I was invited to visit the club to discuss doing an upcoming event with them. While I was there, I learned about the new Press Freedom Center, which assists detained, threatened, or exiled journalists through advocacy, direct support, and community.
I’ve long had a challenging relationship with the press, seeing as they sometimes write weird shit about me, including how I am old and “unrecognizable” because I am subject to the same passage of time as people who were not child actors.
So they write shit — I publicly mock them — and then they write about that.
We have a cute relationship.