When I was seven I wrote a three act Easter play involving a girl and an Easter rabbit. I don’t remember the play, save that it was a spectacular success, by which I mean that my mother and father and their friends were blown away by my prowess and creativity.
Despite my wild success wading in the shallow end of playwriting, I have never written another play since. Why, you ask? Well, the only reason I can pin down really has to do with why I struggle to even write stories when I wrote loads of them in grade school and middle school and high school and even college:
I’ve lost my process.
Yes, that link to the great Muse, the glorious sparkling dust of creativity, which so generously blessed me with endless stories and unquenchable drive has left me to rot here in graduate school in Wichita Kansas, with not an ounce of intoxicating inspiration (though I do have a nice bottle of intoxicating single malt scotch).
I visited Mexico as a teenager on a humanitarian mission. Together with several other teenagers, I visited destitute villages and helped them repair their homes and build schools. Motherly village women stuffed us full with fresh-made tortillas cooked on ancient cast iron wood burning stoves and slathered with creamy cheese made from the family goat’s milk and aged in pouches of stomach lining.
Goat cheese ages slowly, curdling first as it festers in the sun. Bacteria spreads, separating the solids, fermenting them. Maybe a bit of salt is added, the pouch kneaded. Maybe herbs or jalapenos are thrown in on occasion for a spicy kick.After the cheese has fermented long enough, its removed from the pouch and strained. pressed. refined.
Cheesemaking is a complex process. It requires knowledge, yes, but it requires experimentation and patience much more. The cheesemaker has to be willing to try new methods, and revise what’s not working. The cheesemaker must wait patiently for the cheese to age -- finish -- refine.
Writing is the same -- There has never been an ethereal muse fueling my mind with inspiration or feeding me with a cosmic umbilical cord to the divine; I’ve just forgotten how to work at attaining what I want. Somewhere along the line I decided my education should make it easier for me to write breathtaking prose without need for revision. Now I stare at a computer screen paralyzed, desperately begging a muse who isn’t there to save me from myself. Meanwhile, the rural Mexican woman are watching their cheeses, kneading them, refining them, turning them into masterpieces. They don’t need divinity to reach down with a dose of inspiration; they just work toward perfection daily, for the rest of their lives.
