Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. – W.H. Auden
I have tried and tried to come up with something original to write today and have fallen short. Since it is W.H. Auden’s birthday, I am taking his advice and writing something authentic instead.
Writing every day is hard.
Somehow when I wasn’t trying to write every day – or at all – I had all of these great ideas about what I’d write when I had the time. Now I’m making the time and I’m stumped. Some of it is definitely because of my own insecurity. I know I’m a great writer but that means I must, at all times, put out a quality product. Words must be carefully chosen, paragraphs meticulously edited. And some of it is because of guilt. Taking the time to do something for me, something that has no bearing on anyone else, is hard. It’s hard to spend time writing about why writing is hard when there are dishes to be done, clothes to fold, floors to sweep, stuffed animals to make, packages to send, rooms to clean… Even if I can convince myself that my writing impacts other people (because they’ve told me – thanks!), it’s still tough to let more concrete things go by the wayside for the sake of words on a page. Or screen, as the case may be.
But I know I need to write. I need to resurrect those brain cells that are slowly becoming atrophied from too many readings of Little Blue Truck and not enough readings of, well, Auden. And Milosz and Weil, Hesse and Angelou, Tolstoy and Teresa of Avila, Hugo and West. Don’t get me wrong: I adore children’s literature, more than is probably healthy, but I miss the days of reading three or four great works of literature over the course of twenty-four hours. Now I read You Are My Cupcake so often that I find myself using its text as a mantra if I cannot sleep. (You are my cupcake… my sticky little gumdrop… my mushy little sweet pea…)
So I become disciplined. Or at least I try. For as much as I enjoy the majority of my time staying at home with Eli, there are times that I miss reading while I eat breakfast. Now I have to watch the boy like a hawk before he somehow manages to both mash his oatmeal into his hair and fling it at the walls at the same time. There is value in this, I know, even value beyond Eli giving himself facials people pay lots of money for at spas. He is learning and growing and that is vitally important. It’s also important, though, for him to have a mother who models a passion for reading, writing, and learning. This means that sometimes he’ll play with “A CAH!” by himself while I flip through Auden’s Collected Poems on the couch. And sometimes I’ll write posts on my blog while he reads Peek-A-Who to himself.
That is not only okay, it is good. It is good for us both to be disciplined enough to be able to play and learn and work together and apart. Eli’s pretty good at this; I’m the one who has forgotten that my self is important and significant and worthwhile. So even though there really are dishes in the sink, dust bunnies on the stairs, and laundry in the dryer, I’m headed down to sit on the couch with a blanket and the dog to read For the Time Being. And it will be great.