Like me, my father was a writer. His approach to his art, though, was really pretty harsh. “It’s just a question of will power,” he would say. “Just a question of sitting down and getting it done.” Throughout his life, that’s what he did, my driven parent, setting himself a writing task, flogging himself unmercilessly until he’d completed it. Then, on to the next and the next and the next.
It was a method that worked for him, but as hard as I tried – and that’s pretty hard for an only child who wants nothing more than to please and be like her dad — it didn’t work for me. I was left with unfinished projects and a poor opinion of myself as someone who had no will power whatsoever. A bad writer, in other words.
It took years for me to understand that I’m just a different kind of writer from my dad. Different. Not bad. For me, it isn’t just a question of sitting down and powering through. Well, of course, sometimes it is. But before the sitting down might come the drifting around. The taking a walk. The talking with other writers. The reading, the hanging out with friends, the cooking. The making room for thoughts and ideas, the ones bubbling up that can’t be forced. In other words, doing what my dad might have called goofing off. But if I push the way my dad pushed, I’ll wear myself out. The writing I do won’t feed my soul in the way I need it to so that I am inspired and refreshed and can go on writing.
Art, writing, living: I just don’t think it’s just a question of sitting down and getting it done. It’s not just one question at all, but a series of calls put out to the universe and so many, many ways of listening to the come back of hints, suggestions, inspirations, surprises. So my darling and femme flowers!
Let us here together listen. Relax our shoulders. Smile up at the sky. Meander.
Close our eyes and allow it all for a moment.
May you revel in it, your unique and happy, your beneficial and beloved dearest and situated place in this ol’ wide world.
Every Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.
At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”) And…as I go through life life life, I will post as I am able, Mabel.
The Total Femme 