Finding Stories Here and There

I have my laptop open in front of me. To my right, a glass of soda that my husband poured and never finished (I’m sipping it now), a large, square, plastic container filled with watermelon, and a plate that once held a piece of peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cake. To my left, a mason jar part-way full of water with a gray lid on top, and a pan of cake. A bronzed napkin holder just touches the edge of my laptop. The napkins lean to one side. At some point, I’ll probably refill them.

Small translucent drops of melting snow slide off the roof in front of the window above my kitchen sink. It’s a very gray day here in the Midwest. If it wasn’t for the brown trees on the horizon, I wouldn’t be able to tell where the sky ends and the snow begins. Either the snow reflects the gray clouds in the sky, or the gray clouds in the sky make the snow look grayer. Only the pine trees retain their summer colors: dark green, sprouting into hard tufts, standing stately amongst the white.

On days like this, I want to write, but I don’t know how. The gray makes my brain sleepy. It drives me to curl up in a soft blanket, drink cinnamon tea, and watch a show that makes me laugh. Or, it drives me to spend a couple hours reading a book about people who go on adventures in warm places, or interesting places, or places that don’t look like gray. And still: I want to write.

I walk around the house humming to myself: putting things away, tidying the kitchen, listening to my children play with their toys in the basement. My minds drifts to new places: what if I wrote a story about a solar system that only has two planets, and someone could travel between them? What if I wrote a story about me, except in another dimension, living an exciting life on a beach? Pirates might attack at any moment, so I carry around my sword and shield, prepared for their next strike. The sea breeze lifts my hair and swirls it around my ears, whispering a thousand secrets. I could learn them if I only listened a little closer. Instead, the sound of snow mobiles breaks through my imagination and shatters my dynamic daydreams.

Why is writing so hard? I have so many stories in my mind–swirling, dancing, rushing in and out and between each other. Somehow, they can’t seem to ride from my brain all the way down my fingertips. Maybe, if I just hit on that one good idea, the words will flow like melting snow in hot sunshine. Or maybe, I just need to sit down and do it. Type, type, type. Stop. Think. Delete. Rewrite. Move forward. One paragraph down, hundreds, even thousands to go.

Writing is hard, maybe, because I make it so. I like to edit as I type, but sometimes my initial thoughts are better than my edits. I must learn to trust myself–to trust that I know how to take those abstract words, ideas, and images and make them come to life: black on white, concrete, living in the world instead of in my head. Stop re-reading, and just move forward. The editor in me–the perfectionist in me–wants desperately to fix all the mistakes. I think that sometimes the beauty is in the doing–not the thinking, not the planning, but the actual writing.

I hope that, someday, I learn to trust myself.

Meanwhile, the world stays gray. What adventures lurk under the pine trees, quietly waiting for me to discover their plots? What hidden treasures lay, buried under inches of snow, waiting in the bright green summer grass? Can I find a story right here, with the cake and the watermelon and the snow?

Instead of strapping my shield to my arm, I arm myself with grace. Instead of a sword, imagination. Grace and imagination can get you far when you’re a parent, or a writer, or a teacher. I stand ready to follow Jesus, my commander and my friend, wherever he might call me, whether that be to wash dishes in this world or design space travel in another. I bring my children along on the adventure–can we make a fort under the prickly pines? Can we dig until we find the waiting, sleeping grass? Maybe we can tell each other stories, and laugh about them when we get older. The story happens here, right now, in this moment in time. And may we never forget that.

Photo: The view from my dining room window