Morning Pages: A Writer’s Prayer For The Next Life…
Please God, in my next life…
Give me more courage to focus only on writing, storytelling first, imagining, following my true North. I do not want to read, as I have throughout my life, about the lives of authors who attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, who got MFAs at Radcliffe, Smith, or Stanford, who thank in their acknowledgments, all the wonderful, supporting people, professional and personal, in their lives without whom they could not have advanced their talent and passion, and feel the wretched shame, the devastating sense of loss, of having had the potential for the same, or like, options, and not seeking them out. The greatest of all Fears Of Missing Out, past tense.
Next time, please give me the sense of self-protection that I didn’t have this time around until it was nearly too late. Let me blossom from the womb of some unsuspecting, but delighted, mother, my eyes wide with wonder, my ears open to the smallest, most insignificant sounds, my hands eager to touch and feel, and then to pick up a pen. Always to pick up a pen, to record, document, detail, to journal. To keep a diary of life, from which I can draw like a self-sustaining wellspring. Every day a surprise. Every season an education. Every year a spiral to the next, and every event notable in some way, no matter how slim or overweight its importance in my mind at the moment.
If I’m so fortunate as to get another ride on the carousel, I want to choose the black horse, and not be abashed. I want to fling my hair over my shoulder and wave my hands, close my eyes as the merry-go-round spins, open my fingers like starfish, feel the wind rake through them as it rushes past. And then I want to write about it. Not about me, my experience, but in the context of the character I imagine. Let me remain hidden, the shadow only of the people of my stories. Let me only be the computer that holds the database.
Fashion me in the next life to be quieter, more observant. More dedicated to listening, thinking, reading, experiencing. None of these things requires speech. I have talked my way into and out of so much in this life. And let’s not even get into the talking in my head. A kind of crazy that hears all the voices and doesn’t let them out. Maybe writing it, them, down was the medicine I needed all those years. Like the steam of a boiling teakettle, I blew when the pressure got to be too much, screaming, wailing into a vast silence. Or into a silence that contained others nearby, who heard, who were damaged, or who discreetly turned away. A few tried to help, but for the most part, they were not thanked for their trouble. And they left, eventually.
I don’t take full responsibility for all my behavior, as I suppose it might be better received to do: I came by some of my crazy honestly — abandonment and great, early loss contributed to my formation, and it is only honest to say that. If I can’t piece together motivation and resulting action, how can I divine plot? How can I make characters who speak the truth, or lie with or without guilt? If I can’t learn from my own experience what makes the stuff of grief, the gristle and pus and semen and blood of life, how can I build a story that people not only read but feel?
These are my responsibilities. To make of my own life an experiment, to be a scientist who is precise, didactic. Who doesn’t blanch or wince or turn away in the face of undesirable or unexpected research results. Who has the guts to notate, document, categorize even the most insignificant or gruesome of outcomes. To be unflinching in the face of truth. To become empty of expectation to begin with, so as not to be disappointed or distorted to the outcomes. To carefully notate the lies, the defacements, the betrayals, the unexplainable, the divine, each with the same rigorous standards.
And last, dear Lord, if I am deemed worthy, in the next life let me rise to my full potential, to feel a super-human strength and courage to fight off petty diversions and let my power flow freely onto the page, or the screen, or whatever surface the future might have waiting. I acknowledge that not everything one wants may be given in a single lifetime, and I have come to a state of peace about this. I have become comfortable with the idea of work being accomplished “in my next life.”
I also have to acknowledge the opportunity I have had in this life that I have grabbed onto, and be grateful for the work I have done. Much of it is good, some have been published. I can’t say that four books, hundreds of magazine/newspapers article, two albums of original music and scripts, short stories, and novels in progress are nothing. They’re something. But I still feel so much has been untapped.
I could do more good with my writing, I’m working on that now. I have learned so much in this life that will benefit me in the next, should I have the ultimate opportunity for a do-over. Or maybe, more accurately, a do-forward. For whatever it may be worth, I re-dedicate my remaining days, however many or few they are, to the pursuit of those truths and to the work of becoming a better artisan of words, the best I can be, before my story ends, or this chapter of it, at least. On the chance that I may get another opportunity, I want to be as ready as I can be.
With gratitude,
Me
