Poetica Magazine

When I took my first writing class in 2001, one of the first things my professor wanted to know was how many of us in the class were in the habit of writing every day.  No one raised their hand.

I have to say that, at the time, I barely could comprehend what she was talking about.  Write every day?  It took me 41 years to get in a creative writing class.  That's how often I wrote:  once every 41 years.  I was already worried about meeting the requirements of the syllabus that she'd handed out.  We had to hand in three pieces over the course of a semester, along with other requirements.  I didn't get it.  What exactly was I supposed to write every day?  A diary?

She said we should buy a writer's journal of some type, it didn't matter what kind.  Some people like the elaborate ones sold in bookstores, others like spiral notebooks, and in that writer's journal we should write something, a poem, a story, a snippet, a description - everyday.  

The habit took.  Right now, almost 8 years later, I am working out of my 37th spiral notebook.  At about 120 pages each, this means that I've handwritten about 4000 pages.  

There are times that writing means things other than producing new material.  When I work on my memoir, any work towards it counts, like compiling the chapters, or working on the narrative arc.  Also, with the amount of work I produce, sometimes I just have to say, "Enough," and stop freewriting because I have too much material.  Organizing this much material can be a problem.  Finding specific stories once they're written and lost somewhere in 37 notebooks can also be a problem.

Also sometimes life intervenes.  Before my son's Bar Mitzvah last September, things were pretty crazy.  I was the Mom, the schlepper, the assistant speech writer, the party planner, the shopper.  Let's put it this way:  in the week before, I was down to one Haiku a day.  It counted though.  Those Haikus, no matter how limited in syllables they were, no matter that they will never find their way into a book, remind me that even harried, crazed, time-crunched mothers can write every day.

Time passes swiftly.  I can't let 41 more years, or even 41 more months, pass by during which I forgot to write again. 

Not even 41 more days.   

Thanks for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor