Keep Showing Up
Thursday, February 12, 2009 I need to have a bath. I hate them, in a way. I call them Filth Soup, but sometimes I just need to soak in burning water and watch my skin turn red and roll off the detritus of days of wear into tiny, soft, grey balls.
If you have been hanging around this website for a while, you might have noticed that I write at length far less than I used to. This is a temporary state brought on by daunting projects, mental illness, and the occasional conviction that I have nothing to say. There was a poem by Theodore Tilton that my mother kept in a binder with a collection of other poetry which she had typed onto white paper. The line that was repeated throughout this poem was Even this shall pass away. I have carried that line with me everywhere for twenty-five years. It reminds me in hard times that there is more than this, and it reminds me in good times to take notice. It tells me now that I will be clean again.
To write things down is to give them away, to turn them out of myself, to grow them their own legs. Not everything wants its own legs. Not everything chooses its own time. That is the thing with being human: we are little gods. We create and make. We decide. I amputate stories from myself, and I don't know how to take responsibility for that. I want them not to be mine once they've been expunged. Here, you can have it. Take it or give it away. It is something else now.
As I have felt a thousand times since I wrote my first story at the age of seven, I was ready to lie down the pen again. The words too often feel bumbling and tiresome. This isn't the fun I thought it would be in 1982 when a witch handed me the gift of magical berries to save me from involuntary time travel and help me find my way home. Getting drunk is not a cure for sobriety. And a hot bath won't save me from getting dirty again.
Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love
Keep showing up. The gremlin of genius may be out on vacation, but keep showing up. The words may clumsy and the path unclear, but keep showing up. The inspiration may be inconvenient and difficult to capture, but keep showing up.
My side projects may be difficult, I might need a few long breaks to purify myself in the bathtub, and you might find me drunk on a Friday night moaning about the complication that is my work, but I will keep showing up.
Writing is the only thing that has ever made any sense to me. It is a poor lover, and it doesn't pay the bills, but it does lay out a damn good feast.
Reader Comments (32)
verbum.
I love that you posted this as I was just pondering these same ideas hours ago and wrote a post about a commitment to creativity. I certainly love reading your words and am so appreciative of the community you have founded with Grace in Small Things.
I am a dancer rather than a writer. I enjoy the daily challenge of feeling creatively connected to myself and others through words. You have said in this post all that I wish to say but feel unable to.
truth. all of it.
"Writing is the only thing that has ever made any sense to me. It is a poor lover, and it doesn't pay the bills, but it does lay out a damn good feast."
yes. yes a thousand times over.
that video really spoke to me as well. i'd love to play it on repeat in my mind.
Oooooo, oh! This give me renewed faith. So lovely.
With me lately it's more lie a "Show Down" than a show up.
My projects and I swagger out into the dessicated clay lane and the Sherriff of Craftingham counts out the paces .... I may have a six gun, but they have six guns.
I think I need to ask for single combat ;)
Ole!
dang skippy. I just finished watching that before I popped over here to read your post. Oddly much of what she said I can apply directly to my writing project (the one that is kicking me in the ass, the head, the heart and the soul). And so I will keep showing up. If I don't...If I give into the fear and the self-loathing, then the urge to drink gin a 9am grows stronger. So there is that.
onward, sister!
This is where you are, Schmutzie. I think you must be in many, many places, the bathtub being just one of them.
Damned perfect! This!
Thank you for this. I think it might be just what I needed right now.
Word Up.
and another Ole!
Nice post, but I'm not sure how healthy it is to view your writing as a lover, poor or rich. Too unrealistic. I prefer thinking of writing as a high-maintenance wife that demands a lot of attention and fancy gifts before she will even think about having sex with you.
Have I told you lately that I love you?
(and my dad used to say that, "This too shall pass." Still, all these years later, it's a tremendous comfort.)
Ole.
And Brava.
this is nothing short of brilliant,and it's the kind of writing that should be studied in universities. so many layers here, so precise, so beautiful.
i subscribe to the simplicity of "keep showing up", there is a lot to be said about perseverance, it's the path of a warrior.
I came from Withchypoo... thank you for posting this. It inspired me this morning.
even this shall pass away...those are the words that i should listen to, to get me through the days.
thanks for this.
http://momofboxer.blogspot.com/2009/02/im-leaving.html
Bless you.
Keep showing up. Such great advice, the only advice, really. But so hard to follow.
Thanks, I've been feeling a lot of this lately too.
schmutzie-i've been reading your blog for quite a while and have never commented, reading was enough.
but i am sitting in a cafe, after having just sat with a printed-out copy of EG's "Some Thoughts on Writing" from her website and writing about what that meant for me. Stunningly uncanny when i read your post.
Don't stop your writing. I read because it means something to me, because it is great. As EG insists, "Just don't sit on your work and suffocate it".
Elizabeth Gilbert is a wonderful speaker. Thanks for sharing and an "Ole," to your post! Keep on keeping on, Schmutzie.
Filth Soup
That is um very descriptive. Being able to schedule posts helps me turn up while depressed so my Spurts of genius can fill in the gap, just don't expect comments.
If my writing is a lover then I'm in an abusive relationship.
Very interesting. Ole! (Although I am not a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert at all.)
I don't know what to think, really, about perpetually blogging and and the creative process, not that my blog is for my serious writing and not that I've been at it that long. I've heard the Natalie Goldberg-just show up and write-type of advice, but my personality tends more to the don't-be-afraid-to-get-quiet-when-you-see-signs that you need to refill the well approach.
I need retreats, silent meditation retreats and retreats in general. I deeply believe that my creative center is one of the Jungian cave varieties that can not be constantly tapped. I have to go spelunking sometimes to sit away from conversation, and carry no pen and no bucket. The well does run dry for me.
I'm not sure how the pull of instant media publication will work out for this type of creative.
Writing is the only thing that has ever made any sense to me. It is a poor lover, and it doesn't pay the bills, but it does lay out a damn good feast.
Now you are starting to make me cry. I know what you mean. :)