“Writing Is A Process”

Do you know how many times I’ve heard this, how many times I’ve said this? It is a process- and processes are messy. The world has an order, which is why- as humans- I think we crave that order to be reflected in our lives as well. Things have their place. Step 2 comes after step 1. Things fit.

You know what you want to write about, and from there you craft a thesis. You build from that an argument, and you sort things into an outline. From there you flesh it out. B follows A, and C is the conclusion.

But things don’t fit. Ask any writer. Or ask anyone who has ever written a paper for class. Or ask anyone who has ever gone into something with a set plan. Order is not what comes first. What comes first is often just a word, just the argument, just a counterpoint before you even know what the point is, or what you want the point to be. I often start on “T” and I have to simultaneously work backwards and forwards to get any bearing on what alphabet I am even in the middle of. And things get messier from there.

As a kid you have a dream. The dream morphs as you age, but in college you figure it out. You graduate, get married, work, your life is crafted.

Things are never that simple for anyone. Things never fit your order.

I went to college the year the economy went to hell. I was lucky. I had 4 years of college and 1 and 1/2 years of graduate work to allow things to rebuild before I had to step foot into the working world of obligations. I watched people graduate, and I heard them talk about such grand ambitions. But, the secret to happiness is lowered expectations, so I tried to brace myself. People didn’t get dreams jobs, I didn’t need a dream job. People don’t get dream lives. I didn’t expect the world. I heard all the negative chatter about “my generation” stepping in with our egos and our attitude like we were entitled to the things that we dreamt of and worked hard for. I lowered my expectations, and I tried to be practical about what my life would look like.

I’ve written entire papers before, thousands of words, before I discovered what I was writing about. I’ve cut out and trashed whole papers because at the end I found my thesis- I understood what the previous 9 pages were building up to. It is such a painful process, such a slow process, to not know what you are going to say until you have said it.

I hate decisions because in order to decide what to do, you have to know what you want, where you want to go. And honey, I’m drawing this treasure map out as I walk. Some days it feels like an adventure- an entirely blank landscape waiting on me to sketch in the details. Other days it feels like I’ve been dropped into an ocean blindfolded and I have to flail around until my fingertips catch hold of something to keep me from drowning. It feels like I’m writing a paper all the way to the end, and then rewriting it from the last page only to get to the last page again and realizing I am saying something completely different. So I start again, rewrite, rewrite, etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

As the people around me all ask in different words and about their own life “what does it mean”, “Is this all there is”, “Is it worth it”, all I hear are my own sentiments: “when I observed all that happens under the sun, I realized that everything is pointless, a chasing after the wind”. This plight is not unique. I’m not the only one who has absolutely no idea where I am going. I’m not the only one erasing the first 9 pages again and again hoping to finally have something that makes sense, something that means something. But just because the first 9 pages didn’t make the final cut does not mean that they are pointless. They got you to where you were going. And even Hannah Montana knew the value of the journey. This “it” that we question, this thing we want to debate the worth of, this is who we are and where we are. It makes up our lives, it consists of what is here and now. Chasing after the wind creates its own wind. Chasing after the wind is the fun of it.

I’ve tried to be practical. I’ve tried to do things that make sense- that followed a certain order. First a, then b. But practicality has never been my strong suit- it sits uncomfortably on my frame. And I’ve never been one to know what I’m saying until I’ve said it. So I think that I’ll keep writing, I’ll keep talking, I’ll keep looking for the argument that I’m supporting and changing with it as I go. Because, after all, writing is a process, and we are all trying to figure out just how to process.