On Currents and Writing and Focus

 

For the past few days, I’ve had an image in my head of a flowing creek, with a large but smooth rock sitting right smack dab in the middle. Currents flow around it, the water streamlined and purposed; this implacable boulder gives the appearance of being, by all rights, an integral part of the flow rather than an obstacle, as one would tend to think of a huge rock in the center of a moving path.

I didn’t come up with this image in a vacuum. Recently, the writer Lauren Groff tweeted about celebrating her 20^th anniversary of “taking writing seriously.” She clarified: “By taking writing seriously, I mean that a thing happened that made me decide to make writing the immovable boulder at the center of my life. Everything else—family, friends, other work—has to find a way to flow around writing.”

Have I done that, I wondered, either consciously or subconsciously? In the creek of my life, what does writing look like and has that been working for me? This image stayed with me, her words lingering until I was forced to come up some vision of my own stream, my own boulder. And what I think is that for me, for now, writing is more like a collection of smaller rocks, haphazardly arranged. The water still flows, around and over these less-imposing obstacles, but it’s harder for a person to navigate, should she choose to swim or walk downstream. If she had a small boat—a canoe maybe—it would be very challenging to steer a clear path.

If your stream looks like mine, others can visit and they will experience it much like you do. They, too, will have a hard time navigating around those smaller, randomly-placed stones. But if there's just the one, large boulder, if you have made writing a central, essential part of your stream—well, that’s pretty clear, isn’t it? They can see what to do, how to proceed.

One day, I’ll have to put on waders and some sort of sturdy backpack. I’ll have to gather those smaller rocks and stack them in the very center. Over time, with any luck, this mound of craggy stones will become smooth and unified by the currents. And if I’m very, very fortunate, the new, imposing structure will be big enough to climb and rest on, high enough to see around the next bend or further towards the horizon, but still low enough to dip my toes in, allowing for an easy transition back into the water.