Foolish Things

I read this challenge prompt with a lazy sigh. Less than a month into creating this Vocal account, scarcely a few weeks into the new year, and already I gotta talk about my aspirations? Clearly I’m up to it, otherwise I wouldn’t have opened a word document in the first place, nor would I be typing about it now. True confession, I still don’t exactly know what aspirations I’m going to write about (and here we are, one paragraph in).

We live in a world that demands quantifiable outcomes this way and that, and that I know is one thing I’d like to avoid in regard to these ‘aspirations’. Those rules, like New Years’ resolutions, are designed to be broken, and lead us to disappointment. So, no numeric goals for me, that much I can say. No minimum number of poems per year, no quarterly quota for submissions. Hell, as much as winning a challenge at some point might be an aspiration—it was, after all, the impetus for joining this website—I’d rather leave it as a bonus. Truly, I just want to learn to love the process again.

I sat down last month to tackle the “Whodunit” challenge after stumbling across Vocal by way of a friend, and I’m still not sure why. The vast majority of my adult writing career has been strictly non-fiction; even my casual reading seldom includes mysteries, with the exception of a couple of tawdry Colleen Hoover selections over the past year (with no regrets. Critical acclaim isn’t necessary when all you need is a sultry read to accompany your bubble bath and glass of vino verdhe). However, one light bulb moment led to another, and in-between sessions of tapping the keyboard, my imagination got a chance to frolic in the way it used to when I was a child. Indeed, the last time I entertained notions of fiction storytelling was as an unjaded youngster. That was also the last time I recall being genuinely excited about creative writing, the last time my fingertips were electric with promise. Until last month.

So my aspirations? To find that feeling again, and to keep feeling it. To ritualize a writing practice and tap into that anticipation by hunkering down at the coziest corners in the coffeeshops I haunt, latte in hand. To find inspiration in unexpected places, and churn it until it becomes a poem, a story, or an essay, whether to fit a prompt, or just because. To growl and snarl at my writers’ blocks until they cower and yield to possibility and risk. And to make time for writing, too—because the bitch of this craft, as so many of us know, is not that ideas are not flitting in and out of our buzzing electric mind factories all day long. It’s simply that they’re competing with the day-to-day drudgery of our nine-to-fives, the errands on our daily to-do lists, the demands we convince ourselves we have to meet before we can allow ourselves a small window with which to all of a sudden "be creative!" Sometimes that window syncs up with the idea fairies’ schedules, and sometimes not so much. I want to open up more windows, and get the air flowing. Even if it means two dozen windows open on my laptop.

One of my favorite college professors told me that it’s not so important that one write well, as much as that one writes constantly, if one is really serious about becoming a writer. When he shared this, I heard him well enough to remember it, but not well enough perhaps to say that I listened. At too many points in my life, I have let my passion for writing (among other things) stagnate because not doing it well meant it wasn’t worth doing at all. I guess another aspiration in light of this is, to paraphrase a quote by French writer Sidonie Gabrielle Collette, to do foolish things, but do them enthusiastically.

And so, onward to 2024 we go. I don’t know what this year has in store, and as usual, I’m letting the light of the moon be my guide. Come what may, I hope it has stories for me to turn into messy, weird, and wonderful works of art.