i

The thing about being an artist, a creator, a maker – you’re never really alone.

What a gift that is. A quiet moment, a lull, a boring party, your friend 20 minutes late for a coffee meet. A notebook, your sketchbook, the laptop. A few minutes for your creative practice. Don’t doom scroll. Describe the cafe. Imagine a backstory for  the person at the next table. 

Write a bad poem.

(All first drafts are your worst drafts, they’re supposed to be bad.)

ii

I’m too literal to be a poet. I write to be grounded. I like words and sentences to be unambiguous. Clear.

But here’s the thing – even the most unambiguous phrase is open to interpretation.

Even the most clear-cut sentence needs to make room for the reader’s reaction.

iii

We come back from the poetry reading full of thoughts about self-confessional poetry. You blame Sylvia Plath. I love Sylvia Plath – but I dislike, with passion bordering on hate, amateur self-confessional poetry.

It needs a ruthless editor. It’s too much about the poet – it has no room for me.

And I, like all readers – all people – am at my core a narcissist.

Why is that poem about you and not about me?

iv

You want to make art. Make art. Dream big.

But start small. In those unexpected spaces. Listening to a poem that doesn’t engage me, I start playing with an idea that does. I wish I had a notebook – why didn’t I bring my notebook?

I commit the idea to memory, anchor it to the moment. It will be there, waiting for me, the next time I have a lull.

v

I try to explain lulls to the “aspiring” writer who doesn’t have time to write.

I show her how much she can write in five minutes. Fifteen.

Her: I can’t do that.

Jane: Practice.

vi

Nobody wants to practice.

vii

I practice in the morning with my Morning Pages. They’re messy and chaotic, whiny and often bad. They’re not art. But they’re preparation for art. They’re part of my practice.

viii

Upstairs, my son is sewing. I hear the intermittent hum of the sewing machine. A short pause. A long pause. I smile. There’s a maker upstairs, practicing. Creating.

ix

It took me a while, as a writer, to recognize that my children – my sons specifically – create in different ways. One cooks. Designs on a 3-D printer. Daydreams about tattoos. 

The other hot-glue gunned and taped… everything. Now, he sews. 

Different technique.

Same end goal.

To make something, create something out of the flotsam and jetsam of life.

Desire, dreams, ideas given form.

What a gift.

x

The sewing machine whirrs. I write. 

My son and I are together and alone, but not.

We practice.

I’m full of gratitude for the gift.

xoxo

“Jane”