Show your work

It all started with the YAWP Fall Writer's Residency at Fort Warden State Park, Port Townsend, WA.  What started?  I'm not sure exactly, but something, a change like a fire under my but.  I'd been all worked up about work and then I went to the residency, a long weekend gathering of writers, of quiet and solitude or companionship to write and to share our writing or not as we so chose.  Something clicked -  the schedule.  Every night from 7-8pm there was a one hour gathering to write, no sharing, no talking, just a gathering of people writing.  We sat on folding chairs, rocking chairs, arm chairs, kitchen chairs, and couches arranged, roughly, in a circle.  There was something powerful in that, something that said, "We can do this".  It has been 2 weeks since the residency and every evening after work I stop at my neighborhood Starbucks for an hour and re-enact our evening gathering.

I started a new job in June.  I live 5 minutes away, gaining an hour in my day that I used to spend commuting.  That was one of the reasons I took the job, to have more time to focus on writing only when I get home the cats will be on the kitchen counter rubbing against my arms and meowing as I set my bags down and the dogs will be huddling around my legs wagging their tails.  Who can ignore that?  Once their bowls have been filled I'll have to clean out the bits of food stuck to the grooves in the aluminum cans before tossing them into the recycling container.  After eating the cats will take their evening poop which I will have to immediately scoop so the odor doesn't infiltrate the pores in the walls and if I'm going to do that then I might as well sweep the litter which they flung over the sides of the box during the day.  By the time I'm done with all of that I'm hungry so I make dinner and sit to watch the next episode of whatever new Netflix series I am currently following.  You get the idea.  What I was getting around to sharing is that my long weekend at Fort Warden gave me back my writing practice. It gave me back my perspective on my job.  It gave me clarity of focus.  It gave me the courage to invest myself in the writing life not half heartedly or abashedly.  It told me not to give in to the voice in my head that says it won't amount to anything, that it's better to dabble and not risk failure, that it's a fool's errand and that I'm too old to have dreams.  It brought me into a room of strangers who laughed during parts of my work that I thought would be only funny to me.  It lead me to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, to a communication with its host, Brendan O'Meara, and to Austin Kleon's book, Show Your Work, which has led me here to this post where I am taking its advice - share your work in process and show a little bit every day.

I am embarking on a new journey and you are invited along for the ride as I write crappy first drafts and fail to writing anything good and learn and grow in the process.