On Writing (or not) Part Three: What I’m Doing Now, and Will Continue To Do
The writing needs to be the point.
Now I have, unfortunately, the major subjects that roll together some of life and art’s most important issues: life, death, and love. Because Jake’s life is ending, and because we love each other, we’re both trying in our own ways to articulate how we’re dealing with the premature end of life, and how love is in many ways luck and skill (not enough people talk about love as the skill that it is), but in other ways love makes the end bitter.
Jake says he’s lucky to have loved me for so long, and I say the same to him, and yet I want more. More love, more writing encouragement, more of everything—but that is not in Jake’s power to grant me, and it likely isn’t in the power of science, either. Science is the other great human subject, though it appeared later in the literature and in human development than life, death, or love—all of which are quite old.
For a long time, I wrote too infrequently to figure out what works. Now I’m writing continuously, and forcing myself to go on, all in the service of figuring out what works for me. Writing little pieces and trying to string them together doesn’t work, or, rather, sometimes it works, but only if I am discerning about the actual connectivity between two or maybe three parts. I need to write from beginning to end. Having a focal observation or point works for me. Trying to create transitions among ideas without some central point doesn’t. Writing my way into a central point, and then getting rid of wide swaths of material that no longer relate to that point, is also okay. It’s a process. Discovery can be a part of it. Removing the parts that don’t work, as Jake would say, is a major point of editing.
Maybe some of you are writers and in reading the preceding paragraph you’re shaking your head because it seems obvious. Fair enough, but I’m fighting not just to write but with my own anxiety. To judge by the number of people who write, compared to the number who could, a lot of people are, for reasons similar or dissimilar to my own, not writing. Many people don't want to write, and that’s fine, but there must be many who do want to yet don’t execute, or don’t execute their other create pursuits.
I was among them. The prospect of Jake’s death forces me forward. It gives me that deadline. When I’m not working on clinical trials or taking care of Jake, I hit the keyboard. TV isn’t appealing any more. A little bit of social media, but that little goes a long way. Social Media is a place to share the essays we’re writing. It’s a way to connect with each other and with an audience. What better motivation to write than connection, and find out that what we’re saying resonates with people. The readers’ thoughts need to be absorbed in small, motivating amounts. Because the praise can’t be the point. The writing needs to be the point.
Jake tells me: Pick something to write, a prompt or whatever. Then execute. If I don’t like something, rewrite it. Once or twice is fine, but text is cheap and I can re-write it ten times if I’d like to. I was once debating a sentence or two with him, trying to understand what it meant and whether it fit. He told me that, rather than wasting a ton of time, I should rewrite the sentence or two until I like them. Which is faster and often leads to better outcomes, and it’s easier than spending too much time parsing something that could be too mangled to be comprehensible. Use my writer energy intelligently, he tells me. Now I’m doing that, and it turns out Jake is right. What else will he tell me? I have to write more to find out.
When I’m just writing and not thinking too hard, the words flow. When I start to feel Resistance over whether or not a section I’m writing, is “right” or feel myself struggling against it, I now think about the flow of writing for myself, and the ease with which I say “oh, I’ll just edit that,” and accept that writing for myself and writing for others aren’t separate. When I think about things like “how do I structure this?” or “how do I connect these pieces together?”, I freeze. I’ve heard men say that when they go up to chat with an attractive woman, something similar happens: they think too hard about her or how beautiful she is, and they freeze. But if they can get out of their head, and not worry about the outcome—if they can have outcome independence—then the chat-up is much more likely to succeed. The men who never learn to chat with unknown women have worse relationship outcomes or wind up struggling against the eldritch horrors that is online dating. Even now, as I’m writing, I realize that some of these sentences could be tighter, or shorter, or more evocative. But instead of stopping, I’ll come back later and edit (as will Jake).
If I have an idea, I have to execute it then and there, or I don’t remember it. Now I’m executing it. Pressfield describes his morning rituals, and how he writes for four hours a day. At the end of the day, “The office is closed. How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good. I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.” That’s what I need to do. It’s what Jake is telling me to do. It’s what he’s encouraging me to do. He’s here, on this planet right now, to edit me, and to encourage me. I want to work in the office with him, and he’s the one who said we should go to a used office furniture shop to get me a desk. He believes in me. “I’m proud of you as a writer,” he said to me the other day. Since we share a brain, I must think it too, even when it’s hard for me to.
Jake has been telling me for more than a decade that people are fascinated by doctors and hospitals, and I’ve been inured to the stories all around me. I want to write about something else—but what? And why? I don’t know. I can’t articulate why I don't write about the easy, obvious subject that is interesting to everyone else. I’m like a gay man who can’t figure out why beautiful women fascinate people. And now I’m writing about medicine, and incorporating medical anecdotes into my writing.
Sometimes, if you can’t be kind to yourself, let the people who love you be kind to you. Believe them when they drown out the negative self-talk. Find a way, no matter how tired, or grumpy, or unsure to do the thing that’s important to you. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the ways I come up with ideas. Mostly through talking with Jake. I’ll tell a story, or make an observation and he’ll say: “Hey, that’s a topic.”
I often feel like, without him to do this for me, and to help me, I won’t recognize those ideas. But that’s another form of Resistance. There will always be something getting in the way; the grit of life is universal. But I won’t wholly lose Jake motivating me. If I get my ideas from talking to him, then I will talk to him, whether he’s in the room or not. Long after his corporeal body has been cremated and his ashes mixed with plants and mushrooms, I’ll talk to him.
At the end of a given day, I’ll ask myself if I had any interesting patients, I’ll write in my notebook anything that might be worth exploring. I’ll have conversations with friends who are nerdy and wonky and want to deep dive into things I don’t know about. I’ll quote them. I’ll let other people make me better. Smart and strange people, like my friend Kate, who can’t replace Jake, but who can jumpstart the idea factory that is my brain. When my kneejerk reaction to writing this says that no one will be able to jumpstart my brain like Jake, I will hear him in my head saying “That’s ridiculous, you have a ton of ideas, write something for me, I will still help you.” He’ll be on the other side, watching me and cheering me on.
I’m trying to get into the habit of writing so that I love to write, and overcome Resistance. I wonder: If I write out of love for Jake, what happens when he is gone? I think the answer to that is simply that I will write out of love for Jake. Because he’ll want me to.
If you’ve gotten this far, consider the Go Fund Me that’s funding Jake’s ongoing care.