“I live, often, in the days-that-never-have, caught in the threads-of-not-yet.”
When you can create such magical sentences, no matter what you’re writing about, Nathan, then this will always be enough. The flame is always inside you. It’ll never be extinguished, but sometimes it just needs fuel to bloom again. That fuel will come from somewhere. That somewhere is a place that we wished we could easily find, but it is too gossamer and fleeting to be tied down, but yet seems to seek us out when we most need it
The Scottish band, Big Country had a great lyric :-
“Some days will stay a thousand years
Some pass like the flash of a spark
Who knows where all our days go?”
These are things we all ponder trying to make sense of where we’re going
And as Kung Fu Panda says, “Today is a gift, that is why it’s called the present” 🙂
Enjoy the gift of days and nurture the flame. It’s all we can do. And that will always be enough 👍🏼
You manage to write about something eloquently while lamenting not writing. I often think it helps to write why it is hard to write (fiction) and that sometimes new ideas form. It reminds me of parts of Solenoid I have been reading (nearly finished).
This part - there is a tension so personal and interior - one that only a writer can be aware of I think --
"I sit and watch and listen to the enthusiasm and vigour with which they speak, confused that I can, when needed, wear that hat, that the milliner of my mind could, in a mere moment, proffer it up for me to wear and allow me to move about the room as though I wore something that truly fit.
But it doesn’t. I worry that it doesn’t. Not anymore. The material frays. It is lopsided, obvious.
The engagement I desire is of words and worlds, the brilliance of the page, the quill and the ink."
This slice of life delights me, Nathan. I think there’s nothing more satisfying and interesting and beautiful than an honest human voice trying to understand itself. The sea photo is breathtaking. It’s quietly letting you know that something new is coming ashore in your work. Rest while you can. You’re going to need a deep well of energy to keep up with it all soon.
Ahh the muse, fleeting, kissing strangers, while absent we long for her return. And return she will. It’s good to write, fiction or not. A writer always writes even when not writing! ✍️
The second part of the post speaks to me so much! I never think about law when I’m alone, but when I find myself in a room of fellow legal professionals, a sort of excitement I don’t recognize creeps up from a place I’m not familiar with, and I find myself matching their glee, only to return to not caring about it one bit once I leave the room. Weird.
Oh I’m so envious that this is a rare state for you! And that from it, you managed to write something so beautiful. Before I’d even reached the picture, your words had me feeling as though I were looking out to sea, longing for something tangible, but just out of reach. I don’t there has ever, ever been a time between posts where I haven’t sat down to write and my body has gone cold and the only thought I can summon is, “Nope. Nothing to say.”
I can’t help but wonder whether us writing folk are in a very precarious and delicate relationship with something that is separate to us, but is nonetheless ours, and ‘things’ (to be annoyingly vague) have to line up in a certain way for the relationship to be a communicative one. As I write I realise I’m talking about the Muse. And realising that I need to start treating mine a little more respectfully... 💛
Reading through the comments, I see I am not the only one who felt a connection to this little piece (which I can't believe prompted unsubscribes! It's not even long - isn't that the cardinal sin?)
Anyway, really beautiful writing as usual and I must say there's something both pleasurable and pure about sitting with someone in a moment of melancholy without needing an answer. So thank you for letting us sit with you in that moment.
Nathan, enjoyed your writing about not writing. The writing that resonates the most with me is that which comes from a place of discomfort and truth. It is essential that our writing is honest, clinging to the truth of who we are, good and bad.
I am in the final stretch of a 24 year military career. As I sit in meetings I encounter the same experience you describe, listening to the cacophony echo around me but my interest has waned and my mind is elsewhere. I have no regrets, it is simply time to move on.
I relate to this so much. Wondering what would have happened if I just wrote from the beginning instead of pursuing a career I have no passion for. We write anyway don’t we? Beautiful piece.
You made writer's block read so exquisitely, although I know it can be painful and worrisome to experience. I've been there. It happens once in a while. Worry not, your words and worlds are there and will be written when you're ready. Stay strong and take care, my friend!
I I deeply identify with the feeling you describe about your”work” self. It’s so strange to live your life knowing you are not the animal of the skin you wear but a completely different animal that cannot survive in the world without that skin. Give yourself some grace this week. As Kate already pointed out. You just wrote something and it was good. You have that muscle.
What Kathleen said. Plus, wasting time is never a waste of time for a writer. Ideas form and coalescence and dissipate into foam, like waves on the shore. But without that process, one's writing would be shallower. That's what I think anyway.
This is poetry in prose, but are you struggling with fictional writing characters, or with the desire to say something else? Maybe a little William Butler Yeats might be in order -- his writing only what is in his mind: “Come, let us go to Innisfree . . . And I shall have some peace there . . . I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” From “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”
“I sit and watch and listen to the enthusiasm and vigour with which they speak, confused that I can, when needed, wear that hat, that the milliner of my mind could, in a mere moment, proffer it up for me to wear and allow me to move about the room as though I wore something that truly fit.”
This resonates with me so much. I think this signals some sort of transition for those that are willing to stay in this tension and believe this tension is life…
Keep taking steps with your words. They’ll come!
And perhaps this was the message that was supposed to come this week, for you to keep looking back on and this audience to absorb.
This :-
“I live, often, in the days-that-never-have, caught in the threads-of-not-yet.”
When you can create such magical sentences, no matter what you’re writing about, Nathan, then this will always be enough. The flame is always inside you. It’ll never be extinguished, but sometimes it just needs fuel to bloom again. That fuel will come from somewhere. That somewhere is a place that we wished we could easily find, but it is too gossamer and fleeting to be tied down, but yet seems to seek us out when we most need it
The Scottish band, Big Country had a great lyric :-
“Some days will stay a thousand years
Some pass like the flash of a spark
Who knows where all our days go?”
These are things we all ponder trying to make sense of where we’re going
And as Kung Fu Panda says, “Today is a gift, that is why it’s called the present” 🙂
Enjoy the gift of days and nurture the flame. It’s all we can do. And that will always be enough 👍🏼
You manage to write about something eloquently while lamenting not writing. I often think it helps to write why it is hard to write (fiction) and that sometimes new ideas form. It reminds me of parts of Solenoid I have been reading (nearly finished).
This part - there is a tension so personal and interior - one that only a writer can be aware of I think --
"I sit and watch and listen to the enthusiasm and vigour with which they speak, confused that I can, when needed, wear that hat, that the milliner of my mind could, in a mere moment, proffer it up for me to wear and allow me to move about the room as though I wore something that truly fit.
But it doesn’t. I worry that it doesn’t. Not anymore. The material frays. It is lopsided, obvious.
The engagement I desire is of words and worlds, the brilliance of the page, the quill and the ink."
Also, what a subtitle!
This slice of life delights me, Nathan. I think there’s nothing more satisfying and interesting and beautiful than an honest human voice trying to understand itself. The sea photo is breathtaking. It’s quietly letting you know that something new is coming ashore in your work. Rest while you can. You’re going to need a deep well of energy to keep up with it all soon.
Ahh the muse, fleeting, kissing strangers, while absent we long for her return. And return she will. It’s good to write, fiction or not. A writer always writes even when not writing! ✍️
The second part of the post speaks to me so much! I never think about law when I’m alone, but when I find myself in a room of fellow legal professionals, a sort of excitement I don’t recognize creeps up from a place I’m not familiar with, and I find myself matching their glee, only to return to not caring about it one bit once I leave the room. Weird.
Happens to the best of us, Señor, and you are the best of us, so no worries. Unsubscribes? 🙄 Good grief, and good riddance... 🧡
Oh I’m so envious that this is a rare state for you! And that from it, you managed to write something so beautiful. Before I’d even reached the picture, your words had me feeling as though I were looking out to sea, longing for something tangible, but just out of reach. I don’t there has ever, ever been a time between posts where I haven’t sat down to write and my body has gone cold and the only thought I can summon is, “Nope. Nothing to say.”
I can’t help but wonder whether us writing folk are in a very precarious and delicate relationship with something that is separate to us, but is nonetheless ours, and ‘things’ (to be annoyingly vague) have to line up in a certain way for the relationship to be a communicative one. As I write I realise I’m talking about the Muse. And realising that I need to start treating mine a little more respectfully... 💛
Reading through the comments, I see I am not the only one who felt a connection to this little piece (which I can't believe prompted unsubscribes! It's not even long - isn't that the cardinal sin?)
Anyway, really beautiful writing as usual and I must say there's something both pleasurable and pure about sitting with someone in a moment of melancholy without needing an answer. So thank you for letting us sit with you in that moment.
Nathan, enjoyed your writing about not writing. The writing that resonates the most with me is that which comes from a place of discomfort and truth. It is essential that our writing is honest, clinging to the truth of who we are, good and bad.
I am in the final stretch of a 24 year military career. As I sit in meetings I encounter the same experience you describe, listening to the cacophony echo around me but my interest has waned and my mind is elsewhere. I have no regrets, it is simply time to move on.
I relate to this so much. Wondering what would have happened if I just wrote from the beginning instead of pursuing a career I have no passion for. We write anyway don’t we? Beautiful piece.
You made writer's block read so exquisitely, although I know it can be painful and worrisome to experience. I've been there. It happens once in a while. Worry not, your words and worlds are there and will be written when you're ready. Stay strong and take care, my friend!
I I deeply identify with the feeling you describe about your”work” self. It’s so strange to live your life knowing you are not the animal of the skin you wear but a completely different animal that cannot survive in the world without that skin. Give yourself some grace this week. As Kate already pointed out. You just wrote something and it was good. You have that muscle.
What Kathleen said. Plus, wasting time is never a waste of time for a writer. Ideas form and coalescence and dissipate into foam, like waves on the shore. But without that process, one's writing would be shallower. That's what I think anyway.
This is poetry in prose, but are you struggling with fictional writing characters, or with the desire to say something else? Maybe a little William Butler Yeats might be in order -- his writing only what is in his mind: “Come, let us go to Innisfree . . . And I shall have some peace there . . . I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” From “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”
I think my mind when it comes to the current WIP is more like mudlarking along the Thames. May something stumble into your pristine beach!
“I sit and watch and listen to the enthusiasm and vigour with which they speak, confused that I can, when needed, wear that hat, that the milliner of my mind could, in a mere moment, proffer it up for me to wear and allow me to move about the room as though I wore something that truly fit.”
This resonates with me so much. I think this signals some sort of transition for those that are willing to stay in this tension and believe this tension is life…
Keep taking steps with your words. They’ll come!
And perhaps this was the message that was supposed to come this week, for you to keep looking back on and this audience to absorb.