Picking Over the Wood Pile

Our home is heated entirely by a small wood stove. We are a small piece of a century past, right here in the middle of the city. I love the feel of the heat - it's so different from the heat that comes from the flick of a switch. It's encompassing and so tangible. It's a completely sensory experience from the very start: choosing and splitting the wood, carrying and stacking, laying and lighting the fire just so, waiting for the moment for it to catch and spring to life, the smell of the smoke, the dancing flames through the window of the stove, the creeping satisfying warmth that comes from a good, solid fire as it warms the house. It is also a year-round occupation. We spend summer and fall procuring, splitting, stacking and seasoning wood. Every morning in the winter, the fire is the first order of business. You can't just start a fire and walk away. It must be tended, tweaked, fresh wood added, damped, stirred. It is always there in the consciousness on some level. Come spring, the fires are smaller, fewer, but still necessary. Mostly in the evenings, but it depends on the day. Also with the spring comes a much depleted wood pile and plans for next year's winter again.

This is how I write.

I gather ideas throughout the day. When I am not writing, my senses are wide open. I am alert to what is around me for the sake of being alert - not for the sake of writing. I'm an observer by nature, and by choice I focus on things that delight: details that may seem small or insignificant, smells, conversations, the way the light catches, the way something feels in my hands, the way things feel inside me. I put labels on things, I listen for bits of things in conversations, and try to decide the exact shade of green that new grass is. But this is not with any purpose other than to observe and appreciate. It is a spiritual and philosophical decision that happens to come in handy with the writing. Most of life is a mundane repetition of a handful of chores or obligations. Our routines do not vary much and the large and exciting events do not happen very often. Or so it would seem. It is my personal practice to look below the surface as a matter of survival. Much like the gathering of wood in the summer. I may not need it right now, but I know I will. Days will come when I would freeze if I didn't collect these lovely bits of fuel now. So, instead of growing bored with the track I run daily from  school to school, I notice two crows sitting on a wire above the street who look like they're kissing or telling secrets. I will save this, throw it on my wood pile for when I need it.

Like my fires in winter, I write every day. It is not a chore. It is not always easy, but it is necessary for me. There is the writing I do for my blog and then my other writing. I mostly write creative nonfiction. Some poetry when the notion strikes, I have tried my hand at fiction a few times and intend to continue to do so because I like the feel of failure and the challenge of doing something uncomfortable. I have a loose schedule for writing that is necessarily flexible for the sake of small children who need me. But mostly I create in the evenings, edit in the mornings. I carry a journal with me everywhere and sit and write or edit when I have time to wait - sitting at the park, waiting rooms, at the library, etc. A lot of time with school-aged children seems to be spent waiting while they do things, so I use the time. Again, a spiritual and philosophical decision. I'd rather be productive and do something I enjoy than resent the time I spend waiting on others. But my biggest chunk of writing time is in the evening.

I pick over the wood pile: the cedar sticks light easily, but burn quickly without much warmth. The maple burns hot and long, but takes longer to light. The alder, when mixed with a little cedar for kindling lights well and burns hot enough to get a good base fire burning, and then I can add the hardwoods when I've got a bed of hot coals. Then it roars. So it goes with the ideas I've collected in the back of my head. My blog posts are usually kindling. They light quickly, burn up and are done. Not substantial enough to sustain a steady burn unless combined with the harder stuff and a little more patience. Thus, my blog posts are usually quick writes, with very little active thought as I write. I usually write in the middle of monkey chaos, so I damp down my senses and concentrate inward, allowing my wood to burn a bit hotter once it has caught. My other writing - the essays, the character sketches, and to some extent the poems - usually begin with the same kindling, but I take the time to layer on the wood, to tend and tweak, to shift things around to produce the greatest burn.

I always, always, always edit. Even if it is just a comment or a grocery list. I am disgruntled easily by the green wood of cliche, misspellings, punctuation and grammar errors that have no purpose (although, if there is an artistic reason for any of the above I will let them slide) so I cull them out. They won't burn and they disrupt the efficacy of the rest of the wood. Some other green wood for me: complaining for the sake of complaining or at least complaining uncreatively, trite Hallmark-y type wisdom, obviously imitative writing. I will chuck these things aside and let them season some more: do I have a complaint? How can I write about it in a way that builds rather than destroys? Or at the very least, how can I write about it without sounding whiny? Triteness is tricky. Some things are trite because they're true and therefore repeated a lot. How can I say this in a new way that isn't insipid or overused? The obviously imitative is just inauthentic and can be spotted a mile away. I also chuck out things with knots. Those tangled ideas or phrases that don't quite catch where they are, are not quite ready for the fire. I need an especially hot fire for those and will set them aside for later.

Like all the wood on my pile, all of it will be usable at some point. It's just a matter of the season or the circumstance. I have sudden blasts of inspiration occasionally, but not usually. Even those come along the lines of a perspective shift about a particularly knotty piece of work. For example, my post The Gift of Slumber came as a result of a few days of seasoning. It was around the time that those dreadful co-sleeping ads came out and everyone was furiously writing posts for them and against them. I had some very strong feelings about the whole thing, but didn't want to be part of a herd, sound whiny or vindictive or any number of other things. I discarded probably six posts that I had started on the subject and finally chucked the whole idea aside. Then one day I was out in my garage doing something and thinking about how we think our personal experience is Gospel when it comes to raising kids and bam! I had the post I was looking for - I could address it without whining, without rehashing what 197 other bloggers were already saying, without condemning other people or elevating myself. And I could make people laugh, which is always a bonus.

Everyone has that dreaded blank page, blank screen, blank mind experience from time to time. I find I cannot write anything worth reading if I am angry. It is, for me, an unproductive emotion that chokes off any creativity or objectivity. I can later write about things that anger me, but not in the midst of being angry. These are the only times when I find I can't write. There are plenty of times I don't want to write or feel I shouldn't write because there are more pressing things afoot, but those times I write anyway and am usually grateful for it in the long run. Blog writing is relatively new to me and I am still adjusting. It is a different sort of writing as its audience is immediate. I love my readers, cherish them so much, but I don't think about them when I write because it makes my writing frozen and stilted. I solve the blank page problem by covering it with words. I just start, even if it's nonsense. I like Blogger for this because I can type a while, hate it, close it and start another until I'm satisfied. The Gift of Secret Codes was a post born out of blank page nonsense. I just crammed a lot of stuff in the wood stove and lit a match. Anyone who has ever lit a fire knows that sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

This is getting far too long and rambling for a blog post. My apologies. The bottom line is that writing is survival for me. In one way or another I've been recording life since I could write. I have some aptitude for it I believe, but nothing to show for it but a growing pile of rejection letters and an uncomfortable blog with dear faithful readers, and reams and reams of scribblings. I have undertaken over the last year the discipline of writing, rather than just the activity of it. The regular schedule, the editing, the stepping across the abyss into sharing it through blogging and submission for publication. It is sometimes hard work, sometimes I'd rather flick a switch and have it be done for me but it's so encompassing and so tangible. And it keeps me warm.