Drafts

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about drafts (money too, but that's another story). A friend of mine is working on a personal statement, and this friend is not a student of writing. She asked me for help, as a student of writing, and so I edited her very capable personal statement. I know that she is smart and what's more, I know she deserves a place in any grad school she applies to. With that in mind, I gave her a very serious edit.

When she got my comments, she was upset. She felt that she'd finished the statement, that she had sent it to me for last-minute comma clean-up. I explained to her what it means to draft a piece of work, how I had written around 11 versions of my own personal statement last fall. (Note: maybe this is the reason blogging is inherently crap - a blog is the "shitty first draft" of any piece of writing, as Anne Lamott would say.) I took what I thought was a decently advanced draft, after 5 or 6 incarnations, to a fellow writer, who looked at it, underlined one sentence, and said, "Try freewriting from this to get where you need to." Disappointed, I started over, and over, and over. Finally, I found the one that worked, and I went to town on it, dissecting every sentence. I sent it off, and I felt good about it.

On days like today, when the sun is shining and I am not, I feel like drafting is a great gift and a great challenge. If I am my best piece of work, and my friends/loved ones are my editors, how lucky to have people to underline the good, to encourage me to get where I need to. They don't know where I need to get, I don't know where I need to get, but between us we'll figure it out. All these different incarnations of self: sister, daughter, friend, writer, secretary, supreme blues dancer, chef, driver, lover, courier - all of these are drafts. Some we'll keep, and work on, and some we'll throw out entirely. Others, we'll hide at the bottom of a drawer until we find them, years later, forgotten but full of promise.

Here's something I wrote last Halloween as part of the drafting process: (PS, tonight, I'm really holding out for that teenage feeling. Neko Case is gracing Lawrence, and I have an early-purchased ticket to a sold-out show...)

Why go to grad school? Why spend the money and the formative years?
I write because I want people to know that the streets of Spain smell like garlic at mealtimes. I want them to know how I felt when I climbed a church tower in the small town of Friedburg, Germany, and rang a bell that was the oldest thing I have ever touched with my hands. I want them to know that the weight of the bell frightened me, a shocking two tons. I inhaled dust there and I sneezed, because that’s what happens when people inhale dust. Everyone sneezes. Everyone sneezes, but no one makes the same noise when they sneeze as I do. It’s high pitched and sharp.
What happens when you don’t write? I already know this. I know that you wake up every day, and you take a shower, and you go to work. Work can be anything – a smoky restaurant, a doctor’s office, a messy desk in someone’s reception area. Work is sitting at a computer, staring at a computer, navigating a computer and sometimes – answering the phone. Every moment at the desk is a moment lost, because you aren’t writing or creating. Also, every moment at the desk is a medal, something you’ve won by doing it for yourself. You’ve done it, you’ve survived the life of a nonwriter. You’ve done it, you’ve given your time and your best efforts to a tiny not-for-profit who wants to make your city a better place to grow old in. You’ve done it, you’ve worked out a patient’s problem with an insurance company and saved them money. These things are all victories. Yet every night, you go home and avoid the dull fact that you are not where you should be. You are not writing. You are not documenting or synthesizing things that really matter. Correction: things that really matter to you.
I am a writer. I make drafts. My next draft will be a continuation of academia.