My wife granted me the ultimate gift for a parent of two small children, several hours of blissful solitude. Grabbing my laptop and car keys I drove down to the Barnes and Noble Cafe where I sat in a corner drinking a sugary latte. My intention was to take these few precious hours and hammer out a story or a post for the website. As the first hour ticked by, the chair became more uncomfortable, the latte grew colder, and the electronic page in front of me remained blank. I felt pressured. I felt guilty for squandering this chance write free from distractions. So, I started writing.
The things I wrote will never be seen. That makes it sound horrific. It wasn’t, unless your idea of horror is reading a few inane paragraphs about a subject on which the author has clearly done little to no research, and furthermore has nothing particularly interesting to say. Granted, I just described the very thing that several of my past writing teachers have had to endure from me, and for that, I appologize.
So I learned a few things about myself as a writer that may hold true for others who toil in some creative medium. First, I learned that I can’t buzz myself into writing. My daily cups of coffee are essential to functioning, but that special dessert-esque caffeinated sugar bomb that Starbucks calls a latte isn’t helping me focus. Second, the environment was all wrong. I know that nobody was watching me tucked away in my corner under the giant Great Gatsby poster, but I felt like if someone was watching me they’d be thinking, “that dude’s been staring at a blank page for thirty minutes.” And the final lesson is two-fold. Think of them as bullet points 3a and 3b. I can’t force it, but I have to make time for it.
There’s a relevant Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (isn’t there always) where Calvin has to work on a school paper and he tells Hobbes, “You can’t turn creativity on and off like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.” When Hobbes asks what mood that might be Calvin responds, “Last minute panic.” The first part, not the punchline, is what’s relevant. Calvin’s correct. You can’t force creativity. That being said, Calvin still needs to find time to write his essay and I still need to find time to write.
At the moment, I’m sitting on the couch, legs crossed, laptop balanced on my knees. I have a cup of strong coffee with some cream, no sugar on the table in front of me. My daughter is sitting in laundry basket pretending she’s sailing while watching Moana. My son is quietly napping in his crib. The dryer is whirring in the background, the table still has dishes from this morning’s breakfast on it, and my phone keeps chirping notifications at me. This is not the peaceful solitude that I thought would be so conducive to writing. There are distractions all around me. And yet, the words have come out almost effortlessly. I’ve already reread and made a few edits and I know this isn’t greatest thing anyone will read on the internet today, but what it is, is clearer, more comfortable, and most importantly, authentic.
The Barberry Writers 