Getting Started

Alright. Well, I promised a friend of mine that I would write something else on here within a week, and then I came and realized how long it's been since I hit you with anything. Sorry for the absence. I know you all hang on my every word. All four or so of you. All four or so of you other Walters. Anyway, I had started this thing back in October and never finished it, and it's just as applicable now as ever, so I thought I'd give you a little bit of what I was thinking about in the small hours of the morning several weeks ago.
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I like to write, and I teach writing, and most of the people that know me know both of those things. So I'm asked from time to time, mainly by my students these days, "How do you get started when you write?" I never know what to say without sounding like either a jerk or some intentionally obtuse literary type. And you know what type I'm talking about. An example:
"Oh, I really thought the Proust piece was just a little, I don't know, overreaching."
"Mmm, quite. Though his exploration of consciousness both in terms humanity and as a medium... That was powerful."
"Certainly."
And they both walk off without a clue as to what the other was saying. But daggone it, aren't they so literary. Gag me. But anyway, I was saying how I'm afraid I'm going to sound like one of those people, because usually, what I do to get started is to, well, just start. And I know that probably sounds like I have this opinion of myself that I'm burning a different fuel from the rest of the pack, but I promise you I don't. What usually happens is that I'll have something that I've been learning or reflecting on, and then all of sudden, something like a fortune cookie or a habit I see in myself or around me, or maybe just a small, normal thing happens, and I'll have one of those moments where I say to myself, "Yes! That's exactly what I'm talking about!" An instaneous metaphor, if you will. And then I never have any idea how it's actually going to work itself out as a string of words. I have to just sit down and start to think through my fingers, if you can call it that, and eventually, in my obnoxiously protracted way, I bring it around to something that occasionally makes any sense at all. Most of the time, if I'm trying to actually make a point, I'll explain it in terms of the fortune cookie or the ice cream cone or whatever. (Eliot, the New Critics, and some of the type I mentioned earlier would call it an objective correlative; I just think of it as solid writing.)
Well, that's what I've kind of arrived at today. I've never push-started a car by popping the clutch, and I don't really know the mechanics of it. I have, however, gotten a pen to start writing by scribbling furiously until ink came out, and I have popped the clutch on my brain by just writing until it starts working for me. And I think it's similar enough with a lot of things in life. If I spend all of my time worrying about whether I'll be able to pull something off, it'll never end up happening at all. Sometimes you just have to realize that there are times when you can do all the planning in the world and it's really not going to do a whole lot for you once you're actually in the thick of things. And then you just grit your teeth, and before you know it, the ink's on the page and somehow better than you thought it would have been.
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So. Not anything you didn't already know, I'm sure, but maybe at least one will go and tame that hyena or build that house or whatever. Get moving! Until next time...