March 28, 2022
Don't wait to be ready
I am home again from my MFA residency, feeling as exhausted and exhilarated as anyone might after a ten-day intensive experience. I kept company with writers, read their stories of love and grief and longing for home, and talked about books. These writing colleagues also workshopped pages of a current project I’m working on—and not yet ready to tell you about.
One good reminder from the residency was this: that it’s ok if I’m not yet willing to tell you about this current writing project. I don’t even have to understand it myself. Writing is immersive and exploratory; it involves rabbit-trails and dead-ends and deep-dives. It is rarely linear and efficient and at its best, might look like Honorée Fanonne Jeffers publishing The Age of Phillis after 15 years of archival research about the American poet, Phillis Wheatley. (Jeffers had originally intended to spend one month writing one poem about Wheatley.)
We could all wonder: what might God do if we had the patience to wait?
I’m coming home with lots of titles to read, more creative work to do, and I’m excited—and terrified—by all of it. But as Ralph Waldo Emerson would tell me, “Whatever abilities I [have] brought to my task, with those I must finally perform it.” That seems like sane and sober advice for all kinds of vocational callings, if you ask me. If you’re a mother, you must mother with your current capacities (and limitations). If you’re a general contractor, you work with what’s presently in your truck and tool belt. And if you’re a writer, you must write, not waiting for the future day when you’ll be ready for the risks and vulnerabilities of the job.
Don’t wait until you’re ready to begin, in other words.
Here was something that I admitted to my writing cohort this week: “Writing feels like the thing I’ve risked on the most.” What someone else pointed out, somewhat disconcertingly, is that the risks of the writing life are ongoing. They’re never once and done. It’s not as if I will somehow magically arrive beyond the point of risk, beyond some invisible line that divides self-doubt from self-confidence.
Perhaps most importantly, I’m not meant to be beyond this imaginary line. Because if I only attempted what I felt sure about, imagine how much learning I would short-circuit. I think of my own children in this regard. Learning—to crawl, to walk, to ride a bike—was always a courageous practice of putting the body in motion.
So, here’s your small life charge (and as preachy as I ever hope to get in these pages): take the risk of admitting what you don’t know. Throw your shoulder against your own ignorance. Don’t be afraid. Maybe the door won’t budge, at least not right away. Maybe you’ll feel a bit ridiculous and slightly bruised in the process.
And maybe, just maybe, the door will widen, and light will escape. Maybe when it does, you’ll be glad you kept trying.
Jen
PS: Speaking of waiting, there’s a whole chapter on waiting in my next book, In Good Time (December 2022, Baker Books). And by the way, the book is now searchable and available for pre-order. Don’t consider this the official announcement but rather the official pre-announcement—a difference, I know, of degree.