WAITING


There is something very special about the waiting process as it pertains to writing. Waiting for charachters to show up. Waiting for theme to reveal itself. Waiting for tone to take over. Waiting to understand. There is nothing in our American life that encourages waiting. We are a "give-it-to-me and give-it-to-me-now" society. We are a people who expect every question to own an answer. We want what we want when we want it and when we don't get it we suspect, in some major way, that we've failed. We feel rejected. We feel that we've been slighted ... cheated ... hoodwinked ... bamboozled. But my argument is that good things come to those who wait. And I've been heavy into the verse: "The race is not to the swift but to him that endureth." Waiting. Wait-ing. Wait: 1. To remain or rest in expectation. 2. To remain or be in readiness. I am in a state of waiting.


I started this short story about, gee, maybe nine months ago. It's a snapshot of a woman post-911 preparing to go to the city medical examiner's office to identify what the data has declared are her husbands bones. The story is told in the Omniscient POV, no dialogue. It's brief. I wanted to show the process, pain and freedom in moving on ... the tenderness of memory and the necessity of action. The picture was clear to me from the beginning and so was the theme. I took this thumbnail sketch to Iowa this past summer and received excellent feedback from the other workshoppers and the instructor. But still I had to wait. The picture was too fuzzy. I was content to wait .... there is my novel to finish and other stories to polish and an essay about the political-ness of hair that I want to finish. Anyhow, as I approach the last few chapters of my novel, here comes the most clear and vivid picture of this story, the words just flowing to me like a son-of-a-gun while I was at the light the other day. And what's funny is that somehow I knew it would come ... eventually. And in that moment of flow it became clear to me why Alice Walker talks about the necessity of patience. Learning how to wait. And how useless it is to forge ahead in a story when things truly aren't clear and present. I mean, she's right. What is the use in writing something that is so fuzzy, so unclear. It reminds me of what the Buddhists teach about mindfulness. So tonight, as with last night, I will work on this story. I think I'm going to take it with me to the open reading this weekend.
:::peace:::