knowing what you need to do and not doing it
Below is a piece from my newsletter. There is very little theme to the newsletter and there is absolutely no cadence, so it's like a surprise newsletter. Fun! Sign up for it at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites.Â
A few nights ago, in a hotel room in Sesto, Italy, I woke up screaming. Not the screeching, arm-flailing kind, but the buried and from-the-belly kind of howl that wakes the herd. This has happened a few times, and it’s always because in a dream I’ve been faced with a threat I know I can’t handle alone, so I call for help, only to find my voice is broken. Cries come out as raspy whispers, and my threat comes closer and closer, as I try desperately to get some volume. Somewhere, the wiring in my brain knows it’s a dream and actual screaming isn’t needed, but my body learned to fight back and can now, with enough fear, bring hellfire from deep within, waking up me and anyone around me. To the best of my knowledge, my therapist doesn’t read my writing, but if she did, she’d be leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, face smug. The last time I went to see her, I started to talk about my latest health anxiety and she sighed, putting her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and said, “I don’t care about your anxiety.” Then, throwing her arms into the air, “we know you’re anxious!” Next, pointing at me, “and you’re going to be anxious until you write something.” And, with a collapse back into her chair, “can we please talk about what you’re going to write?” This therapist was carved from the mounds of the earth with me specifically in mind. And she would quickly tell you that I’m screaming in my sleep because I haven’t been writing. Or, more subtly, that I feel trapped and unable to speak. I can’t write without risk. I can’t write about work without risking its health insurance. I can’t write about family without risking its loyalty. I can’t write about marriage without risking its integrity. I can’t write. And in my cabin in the mountains with the low ceilings and high dust, at my silent office with the words “selfless drive” painted on the wall, and on any page it feels like someone might read the wrong way, I feel quiet in a compressed way. “You have a lot of crazy, and if you don’t get it out, what do you expect it to do?” I twisted the ring on my right pointer finger, adjusting it back into the light lines of grime and green earned by cheap jewelry. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. “But I meditate! Like, every day! I eat healthy, I exercise — I even started cross-training to make sure my exercise regimen wasn’t making me plateau. I go to bed early, I gave up almost all alcohol and caffeine. I eat so much salad. I go to therapy once a week, I spend time with friends, I make sure to take time for things like massages and beach days. What else am I supposed to be doing?” “Oh my god, Kelton: writing. You’re supposed to be writing.” And so, here we are. Some nine months to 17 years after the last newsletter I sent, and I am here to tell you my plan to start writing... again. After all, it’s an abuse of the system to know your passion and just actively choose to play DinerDash on your iPad instead of doing it. What a hateable, relatable protagonist. Two nights per week (typically Monday and Wednesday), starting today and lasting until December 22, 2018, I will be taking a self-inflicted and -instructed class on story structure. On Mondays, from 6-7:30, I will do my reading. Then, from 7:30-9, I will work the exercises from that reading. If there is no obvious exercise, I’ll pull an exercise from the internet that offers advice on novel structure and plot. On Wednesdays, I’ll use that same time block of 6-9pm to just write, with the intention of that work going toward the novel or this newsletter, though preferably the former. That’s 26 classes, and I am giving myself three skips to use as I please. The syllabus includes the following: “Wired For Story” by Lisa Cron (Sept + October), “Creating Character Arcs Workbook” by KM. Weiland (Oct + Nov), and “The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller” by John Truby (Nov + Dec). I’m telling you because I see the fallibility in forcing a rigid schedule on myself, and not merely expecting but demanding a result from it. I have done this many times before, but there is a character that has been clawing at my insides to get out, and it's just not fair to keep her trapped in my imagination anymore. Truthfully, I’ve wanted to write to you very badly for months. Not because I have some burning truth to share, some take I think will inform your views and change your mind, but because I miss the feeling of reaching out into something that felt unknown and full of potential. I miss how big the world once felt. I miss so badly that feeling that the best was definitely, without a doubt, yet to come. But with writing, it is. With writing, I can take the serpent that’s strangling me, trapping the blood and expanding weak veins, and I can expand him. I can color him and stretch him and skin him. I can build entire worlds inside him. And if a 40s-something woman named Donna leaning back in her armchair is to be believed, doing so is the only thing that can save me from the ever-tightening whir.
