“Just a Stint Every Day Does It”
Today’s Letter from the Lauffice is brought to you by Shawn, a co-creator of The Stories Between Us. We hope you find it encouraging.
The children are out the door now, off to their tiny little elementary school, the one that reminds me of the school I attended when I was their age, seven or eight, and now the house is quiet and still and the dog pads over to the couch, jumps up on it, and looks out the window. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for everything she loves to return to her.
The quiet and the stillness is good but it is also a void into which other things rush. My middle school science teacher Mr. Hoover always used to say that a vacuum begs to be filled. And so into the stillness rushes a sense of peace and ease but also the voices that wonder if I am wasting my time with all this writing. Aren’t there better, more productive ways to live a life? How will all of these children pay for college? What will we do when the next inevitable car breakdown occurs?
On my death bed, what will I think of this life?
I wonder.
In The Avett Brothers’ song, “No Hard Feelings,” they sing:
When my body won't hold me anymore
And it finally lets me free
Will I be ready?
When my feet won't walk another mile
And my lips give their last kiss goodbye
Will my hands be steady when I lay down my fears, my hopes, and my doubts?
Isn’t this what all of us creative folks wonder, in our most introspective moments? At the end, when I lay it all down, will my hands be steady? Will I be happy with the decisions I made to create, to spend so much time writing?
Will this writing life have been enough?
* * * * *
There are so many wonderful books on writing, so many favorites that line my shelves, but there are two that I always go to when writing feels like a struggle: both of them are journals John Steinbeck kept while writing his two most heralded works. Journal of a Novel is the journal he kept while composing East of Eden, and Working Days is the journal he was writing alongside Grapes of Wrath.
You can see a different writer in each, a different level of maturity. Grapes of Wrath came out when he was 37 years old; East of Eden was released 13 years later, when he was 50 and had experienced an incredible level of success, fame, and fortune. He was more settled then, less uncertain.
And yet in both journals we see a writer unsure of his ability, skeptical of the success he had encountered, and always, always, always returning to the writing as the antidote to nearly everything.
One of my favorite passages comes from Working Days:
“My many weaknesses are beginning to show their heads. I simply must get this thing out of my system. I’m not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people…This success will ruin me as sure as hell. It probably won’t last, and that will be all right. I’ll try to go on with work now. Just a stint every day does it. I keep forgetting. “
So many of his journal entries end this way. Back to the work. I must return to the work. The fame won’t last or it will ruin me but that will be fine…in the meantime, write every day.
Is there any better advice for us writers than that, no matter where we are on the journey? In the middle of a first draft or a final revisions, agented or not, self-published or traditionally published or ready to throw in the towel?
“Just a stint every day does it. I keep forgetting.”
