Writing, at the very heart of it, is a bearing witness to the events of a life, to the thoughts of a writer, to the struggles and setbacks and the hopes and dreams of humanity.
That’s why it’s important to tell the truth in our writing.
We look around our world today, and we can see all the places where truth-telling is not, in fact, celebrated. There is social media, where we curate a world that works best for us. There is ourselves, which we curate, too, so that others will like or admire us. There are blogs and stories and marketing and ads and testimonials that have only the faintest ring of truth.
I like to tell the truth. I use truth-telling in my fiction and nonfiction, because I believe that the world needs more brave baring. It’s not unusual that someone in my life will say, “Maybe you shouldn’t talk about that,” because they’re afraid of what it might share about me personally, but the only way to unlock the chains of the people in this world is to bear witness the best way we know how: telling our own stories.
People, especially in this world, want to know they’re not alone, and we can do that, as writers, by opening our lives and letting them see us. And because there are so few people doing it, because our world is a shiny, pretty world, we can be sure that people will be drawn to the truth we’re telling.
When I feel that resistance (should I share this story about when I yelled at my kids?) I always bring it back to this: Sometimes it’s just nice to know we’re not alone.
It’s nice to know that other people have the same kind of struggles and the same issues and the same darkness in their hearts, that we are not as alone as we thought.
Sure, we’re encouraged to put our best foot forward, show all the beset parts of life, because who wants to follow a person who’s tripping up along the road?
I want to tell the whole truth. I want people to see themselves in my writing, and that means that if I’m not telling the truth about life, they won’t be able to find that thread of sameness. They won’t connect. And because I don’t offer something that’s of inarguable value, like a 5-step checklist for self publishing, if they don’t connect, if the stories I tell don’t ring true, you can bet those readers won’t come back.
In the world of fiction, we tend to want to coddle our heroes. We want them to come out okay in the end, but sometimes they need a little rumbling and rough treatment to come out even better. If we’re not willing to let them go there, we’re not going to connect with our audience, because no one wants to read a story about a brother who just loves his special needs brother so much and everything is great and there’s nothing at all that could improve in his world.
In the same way, in our nonfiction world, no one wants to read about people who have it all put together and never make mistakes and love their kids every minute of every day, because that’s always in our faces, everywhere we turn.
[Tweet “People are desperate to find something real. Something authentic. Something honest. We must tell our stories.”]
It’s not easy to do this as writers. Because we have to put our hearts out there, and there is no assurance of what people will do with our hearts once they’re out in the great big world, but if we know who we are, we’re not going to be as affected as we might be if we’re still searching. Maybe we’ll rumble a little with shame, because we all have places in our stories where we have let shame lock us in chains, but when we do, we get to share about that, too, and we get to let people see us, and we get to engage in real and genuine community.
[Tweet “Readers see their lives mirrored in our own, because we’re all pretty much the same. it’s the gift of humanity.”]
It’s not easy to tell the truth. To open our robes. To let the light in. But the bravery of our vulnerability will help others be brave.
Vulnerability is a little like walking out on a plank and stepping over the side, not knowing what’s waiting beneath it, but when we fall and go all the way under, we learn that we can swim here, too, in the barest of places. And eventually it will get easier. Eventually we will be addicted—because there is a relief, too, to telling the truth. We don’t have to keep up a ruse. We don’t have to pretend. We don’t have to be someone outside of who we are. How wonderful.
I can be part of the healing of humanity when I bare myself. I can let people know about my feelings and how I overcame this or that or how I didn’t at all, and, instead, failed in the hardest way. How I’m stuck. How I’m sad. How I’m determined to make it back out again. And in my telling, people find that they can feel and think and do the same.
[Tweet “The world needs more truth tellers.”]
How to be a truth teller:
1. Separate your art from your self.
Of course there will be people who come out in flocks to tell you all the things that are wrong with you after you bare your truth. But if we are fully centered and confident in who we are, we will know that their words don’t have any staying power. Sure, they may knock us down for a minute, but they’re not going to keep us down. They will hurt. Of course they will. I have some of the thinnest skin around. When people write ugly comments about the truths I’ve bared, I feel the flush of shame wash over me every time. But if we’re willing to rumble with that story and turn it around in our heads, we are better for it. We are known, and we, most importantly, know ourselves.
2. Start small.
We can start with small truths. How hard it is to write. How we sometimes get frustrated at our children for making it that much harder. How the baby wouldn’t sleep last night and we started feeling like maybe this would never work, ever, because how can you even write a coherent sentence when you haven’t had a decent three hours of sleep? Ease yourself into telling your truth and tell the smaller, easier things first.
I once shared an essay about how I wished I was expecting a girl instead of another boy, and I got quit a bit of lash back in some private places, but it was my truth, and there were also thousands who wrote to tell me that they were so glad for my honesty, because it made them feel less alone. If we’re interested in changing the world and helping others along in their journey, we’re going to have to get real.
3. Journal it first.
Sometimes it helps to journal our truth first, before we even come close to sharing it. Sometimes we have to settle ourselves into our truth, because maybe it was a little unexpected, that way we felt. When I’ve been journaling, sometimes I can look back and see the ways my mind has changed, and that helps me get some distance from the situation and share it, because I know that my mindset has changed and the ugly words people may say to Me Today are not about Me Today at all. That truth is still important, because there are people who are in the place we were yesterday, and they will find value in our truth-telling.
4. Start a confessional.
Not publicly, of course (unless you’re really feeling brave). Write your confessions in a journal and tuck it away in a private place. Pick and choose from this, and see what you might be able to share with others. It’s true that some people don’t enjoy sharing the darkest secrets of their lives (and, also, some stories are not ours to tell), but even if we can’t share all the deepest and darkest secrets, we can try to share more than just what’s all peachy and golden in our lives. The world has enough of that. I just have to look through my Facebook feed to remember.
5. Never tell the truth for the wrong reasons.
These would be reasons like vengeance or anger or to try to prove a point. We have to be careful when we’re telling our truths that we don’t have some ulterior motive in mind. We should only choose to tell the truth so that others will find their own healing in words. I always try to tell my truths with the deepest love in my heart for all the people involved. The best kind of truth telling is truth spoken in great love.
Unfortunately, no one can tell you what or how much to share or not share. You have to make that decision yourself. Only share what you’re comfortable with. Only share what you can share in love. Only share the story that is yours to tell.
Leave the rest alone.
This week’s prompt:
Write a story about an embarrassing moment as if you are a character in a book.
Being a parent changes you in ways you may never have expected (or even wanted). It is undeniable that they destroy us completely. Mostly, though, they make us better people in a way that only caring for illogical human beings can make us better people.
But they also change us in other ways—ways that I, myself, did not notice for quite some time.
Did you ever think that when you were out to dinner with some new friends and your kid suddenly started throwing up mashed potatoes with the exact consistency of vanilla frozen yogurt, you would catch it in your hands? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
It sounds gross when I say it like that, but you never know what you’ll do under pressure. Sometimes you’re so desperate to make a good impression on these new people you’re meeting, because you desperately need some adult interaction, that you will not even think about sticking your hands out to catch your son’s puke so it doesn’t dirty the floor. You will watch in horror as it fills your cupped hands, and you will wonder what in the world you’re going to do with it now—let it drip all the way to the bathroom? Release it onto your plate of fries? Let it slip out through your fingers onto the floor? WHAT DO YOU DO WITH IT? You will, of course, not even dare to look those new potential kidless-friends (it was over before it even started) in the eye. You will only look your partner in the eye, and from his will be coming the same words that are pounding in your head. “They’ll never call us again.” And they won’t.
When you’re a parent, you suddenly find great satisfaction and pride in pulling a gnarly booger from a kid’s nose.
Sometimes you’ll hear that little infant breath wheezing, because his nose is so stopped up with snot that you know it’s time to bring out the trusty old nose sucker. And you’ll crack your fingers and stretch your neck and shake out your hands, and you’ll lay him on the floor and go to work. You’ll exclaim over every “schhhhhleppp” that issues forth from that nose sucker, and sometimes you’ll turn around and show your partner, who is trying her hardest not to notice. And then, when an especially massive one comes out, and you say to that infant in a triumphant voice, “Now you can BREATHE!” you will turn to your partner and say, “Check this one out,” and it will be on your HANDS. Because you’re proud. Your partner will throw up a little in her mouth.
Or maybe that’s just how it goes with Husband.
You will also begin to notice every person who speeds through your neighborhood.
You didn’t used to be this nitpicky, but my gosh. You will now have the most well trained ear around. You will know the road noise of every car going faster than 20 miles an hour in your neighborhood, and you will give those drivers the evilest eye they’ve ever seen if they’re speeding. Because you’re walking your kids to school, and the lives of your kids are important to you, and you don’t really care if the driver is late to work or the airport or gym class, the life of a child is NEVER worth a few extra seconds.
If a driver happens to be going faster than 30 through the school zone while you and your kids are walking to school, you will bravely step out into the road and tell them to slow down. You don’t even care what they think. They should pay attention. They should stop looking at their phones. They should watch out for the nails you just dropped. Nothing slows a person down better than a slow tire leak.
You see? You get a little crazy when you’re a parent.
As a parent, you also get really good at eating delicious food in secret.
Maybe it’s a little cliche, but it’s also true. You will order food and eat it in secret, because you know it’s not the stuff you want your kid eating. Well, really, it’s because it’s too dang expensive to take a whole family out to eat, especially when you’re my family. So you’ll call it a “date night” when the kids come knocking because they smell the fries all the way upstairs. They’ll ask you why you didn’t just get a babysitter, and you’ll tell them it’s because neither of you felt like going out tonight, and then they’ll ask why you have dates three or four times a week (It’s not really that bad. They’re good at exaggeration. Have no idea where they get it.), and you’ll say it’s because you love each other, which is a good enough answer, now get to bed so I can eat my delicious food in peace, while it’s still hot.
I wish I could tell you it wasn’t true, but when you’re a parent, grocery shopping becomes your treat (or break or vacation, whatever you want to call it).
Unless, of course, you’re taking the kids. Then it’s a hellish nightmare. I don’t have the luxury of grocery shopping without my kids, but, hey, enjoy that. If I do get a day, I bet I’ll think it’s like a vacation to Disney World, except with more affordable food. And no fun rides, unless you ride the cart to the parking lot, which I’m totally going to do next time I go kidless.
When you’re a parent you also don’t really care what your home looks like anymore.
You’ll fight it for a really long time. You’ll probably still care, just a little, what your house looks like, but you just won’t care as much. You’ll try harder to not let it bother you, because you’ll know how inevitable the destruction of it is, and you’ll mostly get tired out trying to clean up every day and watching your kids undo it in 3.4 seconds of being in a room.
There’s a hole in the wall? Eh, well, you’ll get around to fixing it, eventually. There are drawings on the doors? Well, it’s like a kid-art mural. Now you look like the really cool parents who let their kids make art on the walls. The couches are sagging in the middle? Welp. You’ll just have to deal with that, because you’re not buying furniture until the kids are grown and gone. You’ll give them all the broken stuff to furnish their first apartment.
And, probably the biggest and most drastic change: You could fall asleep anywhere.
You’re so tired all the time that you really could fall asleep anywhere. Waiting in the doctor’s office? There’s a fish tank to entertain the 3-year-olds. Sat down on the couch for “just a minute to rest?” You’ll be out in no time, even while the kids are having a dance party around you. Sitting on a cement bench out at the park? Doesn’t matter. You’ll still close those eyes and enter dreamland in 30 seconds flat, especially since the other parents are watching your kid. You’ll just pretend you’re a homeless person if they ask whose kid that is.
The truth is, there are many, many more changes that happen when you become a parent, but there’s not space for them all here. Besides, I’m standing at my standing desk, and I’d really like to take a nap real quic—aioer’kowcls;,
I discovered poet Mary Oliver last year around the time that her newest poetry book, Felicity, came out. I read poetry continuously, because I believe that poetry is the cornerstone for good writing; if you have a good grasp of poetry, you have a good grasp on language and diction and all the pacing needed for good writing. So I was delighted to discover Oliver and, quite immediately, fall in love with her poetry.
Oliver has been writing poetry since 1963, when she published her first poetry book at 28 years old. Her American Primitive collection won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Other books have garnered countless awards for their beauty and simplicity.
It’s plain to see why Oliver’s poetry is so celebrated. She has a singular style that provides a window into the natural world that is not only a lovely experience but also a transformative one. In many of Oliver’s poems, one could imagine her sitting beside a pond, enjoying nature, or walking her dog through a park or resting on a bench, watching the sky. She takes the most ordinary circumstances and makes them come alive. Her images are spectacular. Take this passage, from her poem, “Spring:”
“Even before the sun itself
hangs, dissattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.”
The picture she gives us is beautiful in its clarity, the rising of the sun like a yellow ocean.
Here’s a passage from her poem, “Wings:”
“But my bones knew something wonderful
about the darkness—
and they thrashed in their cords,
They fought, they wanted
to lie down in that silky mash
of the swamp, the sooner
to fly.”
What fantastic imagery. Oliver is telling us that there is something good in the dark—flying, being able to soar above the earth without any attachments—something we cannot find in the light. This is something only a body would know, not a brain, because the brain is afraid of the dark.
This passage from “The Kingfisher” tells us, again, the good (beauty) found in the bad (dying):
“I think this is
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?”
It’s the daring challenge of nature: find a “splash of happiness” in every day of our lives. Oliver uses the natural world to remind us that even though the flowers pass away, we can still find the happiness of having watched them bloom.
In “The Deer,” Oliver theorizes about what happens to the body after death:
“When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.”
I found this image lovely, that we would break apart, back into the natural world, and our essence travels on, climbing a hill, still entombed in nature.
In “The Loon on Oak Head Pond,” Oliver showcases her ability to craft a beautiful turn of phrase:
“You come every afternoon, and wait to hear it.
You sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines,
in the silence that follows.
As though it were your own twilight.
As though it were your own vanishing song.”
She is writing of someone she has observed, it seems, someone old, and the someone watches and waits in the silence of the afternoon, as if awaiting his own death.
Oliver explores more the question of death in “What Is it?”
“Of the transforming water,
and how could anyone believe
that anything in this world
is only what it appears to be—
that anything is ever final—
that anything, in spite of its absence,
ever dies
a perfect death?”
It’s clear that Oliver can hear the communication of the natural world; she hears the words it speaks about death and life and hope. She captures that perfectly in her words.
I loved her commentary on sorrow from “The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water:”
“But the lilies
are slippery and wild—they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest
spurs of their being,
what they are impelled to do
every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you.”
In “Snake,” Oliver echoes another great natural poet, Emily Dickinson, in writing about hope:
“There are so many stories,
more beautiful than answers.
I follow the snake down to the pond,
thick and musty he is
as circular as hope.”
Hope is circular. It never ends. I love that she took something–hope being forever–and put it in her own words, by watching a snake.
I enjoyed her musings in “Roses, Late Summer:”
“If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.
I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn’t mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.
Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
or any other foolish question.”
She is essentially saying that the ordinary human worries and wonderings do not occur to the natural world—and that gives them a peace and a beauty that we cannot achieve ourselves.
Here’s one more passage, from the poem “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field,” in which Oliver writes of death. I found it beautifully phrased:
“And then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows—
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us—
as soft as feathers—
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow—
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.”
Mary Oliver’s poetry is transcendent and spiritual and beautiful, and I’ve since picked up many of her other books, to study a true master at work.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I worked full-time as the editor of a newspaper produced by The United Methodist Church. Every week I’d write all the articles (because the staff was…nonexistent) and I’d take all the pictures and then I’d edit what few articles came to me, and after all that, I’d design the entire newspaper single-handedly. I don’t say this for kudos. I know well enough that I did a great job with what I had. But there was a man at my workplace who expressed, quite bluntly, that once I had that baby in my belly, I was not going to be a very good worker. I would be less desirable as an employee, he said in so many words.
He made his point in many different ways. With commentary on how once a mother has a kid, she can’t really focus much on her work, because there’s the kid competing with her work for attention. With little asides about how much children change a mother’s life. With point-blank reasoning that he couldn’t be sure I’d even work once the baby came, even though they were paying me to produce a newspaper every month. (What exactly would I do? Sit in my office and daydream about sleeping? Well, yeah, that’s probably true.)
And then I had the baby, and guess what? I did the same exact job the same exact way, except I learned how to juggle more efficiently. I put systems in place. I didn’t get sucked into time vortexes, because there wasn’t time to get sucked into them. I did exactly what I was expected to do and then some. I found a way to be a good mother and a good employee, like many women before me have done.
So now I have six kids. And it’s still the same old story.
Husband and I, in a former life, were traveling musicians, and recently we were asked to share our music at a church venue. And then, at the last minute, we had to bail because the people asking us to lead—who also were not paying us for our time—could not take it upon themselves to provide childcare that would keep our kids safe while we led others into a worship experience.
Now. I know I have six kids. I know it’s my responsibility to take care of my kids. But when you ask me to do you a favor, the least you can do is make sure my six kids are cared for while I’m doing it. I’m happy to do favors. I’m not happy to let two 3-year-old twins run around a sanctuary and flip over pews and put their fingers in light sockets just to “see what happens.”
Sadly, this attitude—the one that says once you become a parent you’re no longer very useful to us—is not as rare as you might think. We see it in our churches that don’t provide the relief of childcare for young parents and in our workplaces that make us work grueling schedules instead of flexible ones and, also, in our very streets. When my family is out and about, people walk up to us at random, as if it’s any of their business, sharing delightful comments like, “These all yours? My God,” and then roll their eyes and walk away. (My favorite is, “Wow. What do you do? You must make a lot of money to support all these kids.” Nope. We just work hard and do our part, and money takes care of itself.) People regularly see us (because we’re quite a spectacle—two parents dragging six boys away from the curb so they don’t get run over by the cars speeding through town) and shake their heads and dismiss us as “those people.” They ask what we do and hear that I’m an author and they look at my kids and they can’t let themselves believe it (glazed eyes are the telltale sign), because no one could possibly get any work done with six kids at home. Husband tells them he’s a video marketing guy, and they dismiss him because he was that guy crazy enough to have six kids.
Well, you know what, world? Just because we have six kids doesn’t mean we’ve lost our value to the world.
I’m still the same person I was, give or take a few pounds. Actually, scratch that. I’m not the same person at all, because in their living, these children have scraped and shaped me into the person the world needed me to be, so that girl I used to be nine years ago? She’s not nearly as cool as this person I am today.
Not only that, but my children have value. They’re little people who care about bugs getting smushed and the trash people throw on the side of the road and the way their friend got really sad at recess today, and, if you’re the 3-year-olds, plunging the toilet before every flush. If the world is going to just dismiss us, it’s missing out on a helluva lot.
So next time you see me out and about with my entourage of children, don’t assume you know who I am or what my intelligence level is. Don’t assume you know anything about me at all. Don’t assume, most of all, that I have traded my value as an individual person for becoming just a family unit from here on out. Of course we’re a family unit. But we’re individuals, too.
Parents don’t lose their value just because they have kids. Please don’t treat them like they do.
Maybe we’ve been expecting it for far too long, this stoicism. This bravery. This “everything will be alright” as long as you can act like it will be.
You sit on your great white horse, holding on for dear life, like the knight, like the savior you are, and every time we have a problem, or every time we feel bent, or every time we are afraid, it is to you we look. We pressure, and we expect, and we define what cannot, in fact, be defined. We don’t let you feel what you need to feel, and we don’t permit you to walk through the depths of depression and come out on the other side, and we don’t invite you to share what’s hidden in your heart, because it’s scary, and it’s dangerous to see someone who’s supposed to be strong act so weak and vulnerable. What do we do with it?
We pretend it doesn’t exist. We expect you to solve all the problems, not be the problem, and it’s too much, too much, too much for anyone, especially you, brothers. I know why you’ve tripped into a place where you cannot stand vulnerable, because that vulnerability pushes your sisters away. It makes your wives uncomfortable and it makes your daughters afraid, and no man wants that, does he? You must be the pinnacle of a superhero, and you must be able to handle everything and you must have all the best ideas for how to lead a family and how to support their livelihoods and how to pick up the pieces when the whole damn world has fallen apart.
And what about when you can’t?
Well, then you feel like less of a man.
Maybe it’s your sisters who have made you feel like less of a man, or maybe it’s your fellow brothers, but it doesn’t really matter who’s done it, because we’re not pointing fingers here. The only thing that matters here is the what, because it’s only when we can point out the problem and speak freedom over the chains, breaking them for good and forever, that you can begin to find your feet again.
[Tweet “You know what, brother? It’s okay to fall of your white horse.”
I know you’ve been told all your life that crying is just for sissies and that showing who you really are at your greatest depths is just for pussies and that doing what it is you dream of doing is for men who are not really men at all. But the truth is, the best thing you can do is fall off your white horse and land in the mud and dirt and let it cake your face, and stand up, face to face with the people of your world, and say, I need help washing this off. Because then we’re able to help you to your feet. Then we’re able to get your boots unstuck from the mud. Then we’re able to walk you back home.
And if you don’t fall? The mud will still find you, except this time it will be quicksand, and it will close over your heart and your arms and your head, and you will be only a small shell left, writhing in bed, or writhing while you walk, trying to hide what you think is your weakness, because you don’t want the world to see you, since they won’t understand. You will implode, but you will not even show it, because showing your implosion would mean proving you’re less of a man.
The truth is, saviors sometimes need to be saved. Heroes sometimes find themselves in a whole lot of trouble and need a little help. You don’t have to pretend that everything is okay, and you don’t have to push those emotions down into a deep, dark place where they threaten to explode another day at another time in another place.
There is no shame in falling off your white horse. There is no shame in failing. There is no shame in showing your weakness. Because then you can show your real strength.
It’s a skewed world in which we find ourselves, where the definitions for strength and success and courage look so much different than they should. What is true strength but unveiling the dark parts of your heart, the fears you hold, the sadness you carry, the anger that simmers to nearly boiling? What is true success but the recovery from failure, time after time after time? What is true courage but the ability to say This is who I am and I am unashamed and unabashed, and I don’t care what you think?
But these are not the attributes that the world celebrates in its men, and it has you bending, cracking, splitting clean apart with the pressure it takes to “just be a man.”
When I was a girl, I watched the world tell my brother what kind of man he needed to be. I watched it say that he shouldn’t cry, because this was not something men do, and if he ever wanted to be a man, he would have to nip that in the bud, he would have to close himself off to the things that could hurt him, he would have to deny that there was a part of him that fell into sadness, hard. But sadness turned inward is depression, and so it is that you, my brothers, find yourself drowning in the merciless waters of depression, and you can hardly lift your head, and you have walls all up and around, but they don’t work to dam the tide, no matter what, they just close you off from all the people around you, because it’s too risky to let them know this you.
But the thing about closing yourself off to the things that hurt you is that the more you love and the deeper you open yourself to love, the greater risk involved. You will get hurt if you love. It’s just a fact of life, and, sure, you can close yourself off to that but you will, essentially, push away love in its greatest manifestations. And it is not a life worth living if it is a life without love.
So go ahead. Fall off your white horse. My sisters and I will be there to help you back up. We will lend you a hand, and we will think nothing less of you. We will let you fall, and we will dust you off, and we will walk with you along the road to deeper understanding of who you are and who you were made to be.
In this episode, Rachel talks about a nonfiction journalistic read, a middle grade memoir, a new book launch resource for authors, the craziness of life with sports and the importance of brainstorming settings.
Me: How do people show their love to each other?
5-year-old: They tell people.
Me: Does anybody at your school love you?
5-year-old: Only my teacher.
Me: Do you love anybody?
5-year-old: You. And myself.
Me: It’s good to love yourself.
6-year-old: Well, that’s just something that I did not know.
Me: What is love?
6-year-old: Nothing.
Me: Love is nothing?
6-year-old: I don’t want to answer right now. I’m getting too embarrassed.
Me: Does anybody at your school love you?
6-year-old: My teacher.
Me: Do you love anyone?
6-year-old: Everybody in this family.
Me: Last week you told us you didn’t like being in this family. You said you would be glad if we left.
6-year-old: No, I didn’t say that.
Me: You did.
6-year-old: That would just be not kind.
Me:
6-year-old:
Me:
6-year-old: I’m always kind.
Me: What do people do to show their love?
6-year-old: Maybe they hug or something?
Me: What do you do to show your love?
6-year-old: Hug.
Me: Can I have a hug?
6-year-old: No.
Me:
6-year-old:
Me:
6-year-old: What?
Me: Twins, what do you think love is?
3-year-old #1: I smell smoke.
3-year-old: #2: Me too.
Me:
3-year-olds:
Me: Do you think it’s your brains on fire?
Me: What do you do to show your love?
3-year-old #2: I don’t know. I’m cold.
Me: Do Mama and Daddy love each other?
3-year-old #2: Yeah.
Me: How do you know.
3-year-old #2: Close the door.
Me: Okay, random man.
3-year-old #2:
Me:
3-year-old #2: I not random man. I Zadok.
Me: What do you think love is?
3-year-old: [points at ceiling]
Me: The ceiling?
3-year-old: Yeah.
Me: Wow. And you think you know everything.
9-year-old: Love is when someone loves you.
Me: How do you know they love you?
9-year-old: They hug and kiss you.
Me: Do you love anybody in your school?
9-year-old: No. I would be super embarrassed.
Me: Why?
9-year-old: It would be a secret until she found out.
Me:
9-year-old:
Me: Okay, you know too much about love.
[Tweet “One of the worst enemies of a writer is the need to produce perfect art.”]
Of course we want to produce perfect art. It is, after all, what we’re sending out into the world, and we can’t just send something out that has glaring mistakes and smells of poor execution and looks like a 5-year-old got a wild hair. Of course we will try our hardest to make something beautiful and legendary. Of course we will do everything we possibly can to make sure the world notices and agrees, Yes. This is good.
We’ll spend days that turn into weeks that turn into years revising and touching up and fixing this one little thing right here because it’s still not quite right, still not quite perfect. But the reality is, if we want to move forward in our writing career, we are going to have to put a stopping point somewhere. We are eventually going to have to launch our writing out into the world.
Don’t get me wrong. Revision is a grand thing. I love revision, even though it takes me much longer to revise than it does to simply write. But if all we ever do is revise until that old story we felt so passionately about is lost under this newer, maybe-better-maybe-not story, we won’t be moving anywhere. We will stagnate. We will be writers with thousands of unfinished manuscripts we never had the courage to stamp “finished” on.
I know writers who have been sitting on manuscripts for years, because they’re still revising. They’re afraid of letting a public see something that they think is imperfect. They’re afraid of good enough.
The thing is, most to the authors who actually make a living at this writing thing launch projects that are good enough. And most of the writers I know (including myself) look back at their earlier work and can point to every single thing they would change to make it better now. We are always growing an evolving and improving as writers, which means that what we produce today is much different than what we will produce five years from now.
[Tweet “We have to let our works of art go. We have to let them out into the world. They are good enough.”]
There is something fantastically beautiful about looking back at earlier works and marking the evolution of our lives as writers, how much we have grown and changed and (hopefully) improved over the years. We’ll never be able to do that if we’re hiding our half-finished manuscripts in a file cabinet or a secret drawer or in a buried box out back. We have to write “The End.”
Here’s how I like to think of it: The world is not served by our hidden manuscripts. But it can be served by our good enough manuscripts. I know it’s scary. Sending a book out into the world is one of the most vulnerable things we can do, because sometimes it isn’t received well, and we aren’t sure what we’ll do if it’s not. And sometimes people don’t even care, so it just sits on shelves and gathers dust and no one ever picks it up to see if what’s inside might resonate with their deepest places. And sometimes we can see every single part where we would have changed a word or a sentence or a plot line mere days after publication, proof that we probably weren’t ready for this and shouldn’t have done it in the first place, until we had fixed that one thing.
The truth is, we’re always going to find something that needs fixing in our manuscripts. I’ve launched three books into the world now, and I don’t even want to go back and read them, not yet, because I know that what I’ll find will make me want to take them off the market, and I can’t do that as a writer. I have to be moving forward. The only way I can move forward is to publish.
I have to be okay with good enough.
This need to produce perfect art will keep us from writing faster, and I believe that the faster we write, the closer we will find ourselves to our true “voice” and not someone else’s we’re imitating (which makes it harder to write, too). We’re not overthinking things when we’re writing fast. And the faster we write, the less likely it is that our internal editor will hijack all our progress. It’s a forward-motion cycle that can also turn into a downward spiral, if we let that perfection-demanding voice in.
It’s important to produce good art, but it’s not so important that we don’t let ourselves just get that crappy draft out. Revision is a magical process, when all the random words become better-aligned words, a collection of paragraphs and pass that look like it could really be SOMETHING. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make it pretty and finished. Sometimes it takes more work than we ever thought it would, because some stories are harder to tell than others. But the point is that even those stories that take a lot of work could demand a whole life of work, until we put a stopping point on what we’re doing.
If we’re overthinking, trying too hard to be perfect, all we’re really doing is killing the story. We’re trying too hard. Most of us intuitively know how stories work. Most of us know how to tell them in an effective way.
So we should trust ourselves to do it.
How to let go of the need to produce perfect art
1. Set yourself a deadline.
Sometimes it helps to know that the project has an ending date, that you must have all your writing done by the end of that deadline. I usually give myself a month or so to write the rough draft, depending on my projected word count. And then I give myself no more than three months to turn that rough into a final draft, because I know if I give myself more time than that, I’ll overthink it. My art isn’t that great when I’m overthinking.
Deadlines can work in many different ways. You can set an actual date—March 31, 2016, say. Or you can set a deadline like “no more than 30 days.” Whatever works for you.
2. Read a story critically.
Mary Karr, a memoirist, claims that what has helped her become a better writer is examining the writings of other memoirists. She keeps a reading journal where she copies passages and writes commentary about places she likes or techniques that were effective. When we train ourselves to start reading this way, we’ll also notice the places that stick out as don’t-like passages. The discipline of analyzing other people’s stories will help us more quickly analyze our own. Stories also help deepen the pool of story inspiration, giving us all kinds of resources to draw from.
3. Ban perfectionism.
I know it’s hard. I’m a closet perfectionist, and right before a book launch, I always hear the same voice telling me it’s not good enough. It’s not even good.
Perfectionism will drive us crazy. We have to loosen its grip on our throats, because it will not serve us in any way. It will only set up unrealistic expectations, and it will show us how to improve our work until the very end of time. We’ll never move forward if we’re constantly looking back.
4. Put down the red pen.
It sure is tempting to go back and look at a manuscript “one more time,” but if you find yourself sneaking back to them, give yourself a number of drafts. If it’s not fixed by this particular draft, then that’s it. That’s all you get. Limiting the number of tries we have helps us to just let it go.
5. Launch and move on.
Let your project do its work. Let it shine for a couple of days. And then get started on your next work, because it will most likely be better than the last.
Before I became a parent, I was an uptight woman who tried to achieve perfection in every single thing I did. If I made a 97 on a test, I would cry because it wasn’t a 98 (I was dramatic in every sense of the word). When I forgot the words to a song during the middle of a set, I would beat myself up for it, because this was imperfection of the worst kind. When I tried anything at all, I had to do it the best that I could possibly do it.
And then I had kids.
There is something about kids that wrestles control right out of your hands. There is something about them that turns us into different, better people. There is something about them that destroys everything we have known and builds it all back up better.
What I didn’t know about children before I became a parent is that
They will destroy a world.
We have this nice little picture of the way we want things to be, and we know the way we want to parent, and we know what will work for us and we have it all planned out—we’ll put them on a schedule immediately and they will eat when we want them to eat and sleep when we want them to sleep and play when we say they can play. We think we’ll be able to take him to all those outings, all those gigs, that he will sit there all nice and happy, and we’ll be able to continue life just as it’s been always.
And then we have a strong-willed child, and we realize that we know nothing about parenting, because here is a heart that still needs to be valued and protected and shaped by hands that are gentle yet firm, and it’s not an easy task, because he takes our definitions and our schedules and all our expectations and tears it all up in our face so those tiny little pieces float out on the wind and don’t have a hope of finding each other again. And then we take that destroyed world that we thought we wanted, and we build another.
They will destroy a home.
Everywhere I look there are holes in the walls and nicks in the furniture and bookshelves with drawings on them and doors with crayon art, and I don’t even know what to think sometimes when I walk into the 3-year-old twins’ room and there’s another cave painting in chalk I didn’t know they had or when one of them walks into a room I’m in with a permanent marker in their hands and I know I’m probably not going to like what I find. They have no idea what they’re doing to this home, and that used to bother me, because they needed to respect our home, and they needed to take care of stuff, and they needed to be different, mostly.
And then the 8-year-old started having problems with anxiety and depression along all the edges, and we had to visit a counselor, and he remembered this time after I’d just had one of his brothers, when we had a glass ball in his hand and thought, as a 3-year-old, that it was just what it looked like—a ball—and he threw it to me as if I would catch it. And I stared at him with an open mouth and probably murderous eyes, and I stood in the kitchen and screamed. Just screamed. Because I was sleep deprived and stressed out and that was it. That was it. I couldn’t do it anymore.
He taught me that things aren’t as important as hearts, and just because a heart thinks it would be a good idea to doodle a name all over a little shelf, doesn’t mean that a heart should be broken, only taught, and so this destroyed home, every time I look around it, reminds me that a home is not made of perfection but imperfection, mostly—memories in unintended murals on the wall and cracks that tell a story, every one of them, and broken lights that shatter expectations.
They will destroy a heart.
It’s when they forget who they are and we are challenged with trying to remind them, even though they have fallen so far from “good” that we don’t know if we’ll ever remember, either, those are the time a heart snaps clean in two. It’s when they’re afraid someone is bullying them, when they have a fight with a friend they really love, when they feel alone because they’re not sure anyone at school really likes them, since no one ever plays with them at recess, because, you know, kids can be cruel just like we can be.
But it happens other times, too. When they smile at me. When they hug me. When they look at me. Every single moment destroys a heart, and we learn that we are worthy of this great and brilliant love that is like a hurricane, rooting up all the parts of us that don’t belong. We learn that they are the best teachers we have in the whole wide world.
We will let them.
I did not know that I could possibly reach a place where I would let my children destroy a life and a house and a heart like they do and be perfectly okay with that destruction. I did not know that I would ever reach this moment in time where I could give up my grip on a life that mattered so much to me but doesn’t any longer. I did not know that I would ever come so far on my own, only to be led by the children into a completely different life, one that is much greater and wilder and truer than the old one.
We will like it.
Who would have thought that one day I would look around my house and see a broken toilet paper holder and think about how that was the time when one of the twins was trying to change the roll out themselves and used a little more force than necessary? Who would have thought I’d see the life before kids and sometimes, in my frustration moments, wonder if it would have been better to just keep it kid-less and then, in my saner, less angry moments, realize that I could never have created a life even close to this one without all these boys tearing everything apart? Who would have thought that I would feel this destroyed heart and think it looks so much better, so much more whole, today than it ever did before?
Kids have a way of changing lives and homes and hearts in ways we might never imagine, and I am so glad I have six of them destroying everything I’ve ever known and building, in their place, a better me.
I love it when I find phenomenal nonfiction picture books that tell the story of some amazing person who overcame obstacles and still achieved their dreams. We own a few of these, but recently I discovered more to add to the mix.
1. A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin, written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet.
This one was one of my favorites. Horace Pippin is a black American painter. He grew up painting, but he grew up poor and had limited resources he could use to pursue his passion. This book tells the story of how he got his first paint set: sending off to an old mail-order contest. It tells of Horace’s growing up and going off to war, and then it tells about how he was shot in his right arm and lost the ability to paint.
For a while, Horace did hard labor, after marrying a woman he met upon his return to the states. But the art would not leave him, and, eventually, he taught himself how to hold a brush with his right hand but use his left hand to guide his right hand’s painting.
It’s an incredible story of wonder and imagination and hope and overcoming all the odds. It’s inspiring for kids to not only read about people who overcame odds like a man who lost the use of a painting arm and still produced some of the greatest art we have in history today, but it’s also valuable for them to learn about people who overcome poverty to become who they dreamed they’d be. Horace Pippin was a great man whose story will surely live on in the hearts of the children who read about him.
2. Abe Lincoln: The boy who loved books, by Kay Winters and Nancy Carpenter.
This is a book I got for my 9-year-old, who always has his nose stuck in a book, one Christmas. It tells the story of Abraham Lincoln, who started as a poor boy and became one of the most beloved presidents in American history. The story is told lyrically and beautifully, with references to books and the knowledge that books can give you threaded throughout. Lincoln’s peaceful and honest nature was also emphasized through a story about a fight with another man and another story about Lincoln chasing down a customer to give them the change they forgot to take at the end of a transaction.
My boys ask to hear this story all the time. It’s another inspiring read for children who wonder what they have to offer the world.
3. Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova, written by Laurel Snyder and illustrated by Julie Morstad.
This is another nonfiction book that was written lyrically and with beautiful pictures. It captivated my boys, though it was a story about ballet. But Pavlova is another story of poverty-to-brilliance and overcoming overwhelming obstacles. The book tells of how Pavlova was, at first, not quite accepted as a true ballerina because she was too thin and she could not dance on her toes as she should. But Pavlova overcame those objections to become one of the most celebrated dancers in our history.
The book follows Pavlova from the time she was a little girl, hanging clothes on the laundry line for her mother, to when she danced her last dance and died. Kids will love this book not only for the gorgeous illustrations but also for the theme threaded throughout: that people may doubt you, but you have the last call on who you become.
4. Enormous Smallness: A story of E.E. Cummings, written by Matthew Burgess and illustrated by Kris Li Giacomo.
Enormous Smallness is a nonfiction picture book that is very dear to my heart—mostly because e.e. cummings is one of my favorite poets.
Cummings, unlike the characters in the other stories, grew up in a well-to-do family, but he, too, was often overlooked as simply a “dreamer,” a boy who could not focus. No one knew the greatness that lived in him, though his parents understood it. There were stories of his mother writing down his early poems and his father letting Cummings ride his back to bed, asking Cummings to elaborate on the world they were traversing through.
The book included several of Cummings’s most popular poems, which I thought was fantastic. I’m always in favor of introducing my boys to the beauty of poetry, and this was a great way to do it.
5. Me…Jane, by Patrick McDonnell.
This book was a fantastic read about the life of Jane Goodall. It spanned her childhood, when even then she was highly interested in animals and the natural world. The illustrations were quirky and delightful, some of them containing animals, some of them containing field notes that Jane would pen when she was out in the natural world.
What I liked most about this one was that there was a personal note from Jane Goodall in the back of the book. Goodall urged her readers to become advocates for the natural world and the preservation of wildlife and natural resources. I found it incredibly inspiring, and as I read her message to my boys, I could already see their wheels turning. They loved to think that they could possibly make a differences in preserving the animals they already love.
6. On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein, written by Jennifer Berne and illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky.
This was a book that told of Albert Einstein from the time he was born to the time he was an old man. In a charming and endearing way, it highlighted the eccentricities of one of the greatest American minds to ever live. Any kid who has ever felt different or weird or discouraged by their seeming limitations will find this book a great relief. Einstein did not speak when he passed his second birthday. He lived in his head, where great questions swirled. His parents loved him unconditionally, and Einstein was able to overcome himself and achieve what no man had ever achieved at that time.
At the end of the book, there is a picture of Einstein strutting through his town where other people walk. The text says: “In the town where he lived, he became known for wandering around, deep in thought. Sometimes eating an ice cream cone. Always recognizable by his long, wild hair, which by then had become quite white.” There’s the Einstein we know, that strange and brilliant mind. My boys found this picture humorous and entertaining.
One of my favorite parts of the book was the dedication page, where the author wrote, “To the next Einstein, who is probably a child now.”
These books are all fantastic reads that introduce kids, through both lyrical and sometimes humorous text and beautiful illustrations, to some of the most inspirational stories in history. My boys are already asking to read more nonfiction picture books, because they, like most people, are inspired by the stories of real people. It’s important for kids to know the stories of hard work and grit that live in the people whose names they learn in science or writing or mathematics or history or, even, dance. Picture books telling those stories are the perfect way to nurture their interest in something real and true. I found these books to be a wonderful place to start.
