Pretend Writing

There is a bit-o-thing that I’ve been trying to write for two weeks, and although I’ve skipped around and done other writing, it is the one thing that I knew I had to break through before I could continue . . . but for some reason I just couldn't do it.  Then finally the other day I started writing about what I couldn’t do and about the things I wanted to say but couldn’t figure out how to say . . .

. . . and this is where I have to interrupt and say that it’s a trick I use when I can’t write something – I write about the thing I want to write. I have to assure myself that I’m not really writing it. I'm just pretending. Why? I don’t know. But for me, it feels as though a trusted person has just come in the back door and has taken a seat and had a cup of tea with me and said, OK, tell me about it – and all the while I'm talking, they are taking notes and listening – and then they leave me the notes, and I take a walk and feel much better for having talked about it.

This is another essential part of the trick: I have to let those notes set and congeal for a day or two, as though they were written in invisible ink and they needed a few days of solitude for the ink to appear. I do other things during that time – vacuum, clean out drawers, wash windows – and then I go back and read those magical notes about the thing I couldn’t write.  And with a sort of smile on my face I begin typing the notes as though they could be the real thing – and then after I’m fully tricked, I say, Wa-la,  the real thing!

It’s a trick that has worked for me since I was in college or maybe even earlier. There may have been a paper due for an English class, something I wanted to say but didn’t know how to express it or how to begin – and so I just started writing about the thing I couldn’t do. Then I looked back and saw most of what I needed – as though someone had gotten me started, and all I had to do was copy and edit.

Through all the many years I’ve been using this trick, it hasn’t failed me. But part of me can’t know it’s a trick. I honestly have to say to myself, This isn’t a trick. I just want to know what you'd like to say.  You can throw away the notes when we're finished. Let's just play.  It's important to know I can throw away the notes when finished.  And so I start answering (on paper). For me, some things just have to be written that way – from outside a window, looking in; or maybe from the back door, walking in; or from a mountaintop, looking down.

From what my notes tell me, that bit-o-thing is turning out to be a much more important thing than I thought -- so  maybe that’s what we were trying to say these past two weeks.