My Life, Edited.

If I could use one word to describe the last six months of my life, I'd use the word writer. But if I could use a few more words, I'd say surrendering to story.

Yet going back in time to last August, how easily I stumbled over the word writer. I would not have dared to associate it with myself. Writers were people who wrote books, didn't have full time jobs, wore tweed, drank a little too much, were temperamental, had agents and lived in New York. Or maybe writers were people who got MFA's, worked at hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, gave poetry readings out of their basements, and self published on Amazon. Either way, I'd been quite positive that I wasn't good enough to join their ranks.

Then, through a series of strange miracles, happenstance, and perhaps talent, I became a writer . Not a closeted writer, a secret in-the-middle-of-the-night writer, but a real one.

~

The first lesson I got, almost immediately, was that the title "writer"  has to be earned.  It's not enough to tell people that you are a writer, or for them to think of you as one. Even to actually write is not enough. No. To be a writer means you must surrender.

Surrender to story. Your story. The stories you will tell.

~

From the moment I said I was a writer, the stories in my journals, cross stitched with a lifetime of carefully recorded characters, became the most important things that I owned.

Since then, my mind has been buzzing without ceasing. Words. Paragraphs. Rewrites. Essays. Articles. Pitch Ideas. Chapters.

I wake with stories from dreams half finished. When I drive, I think about simplifying, how to open a window with a word. At work I find myself fuming over the tiniest of difficulties, words refusing to line up in order, wordsmith conundrums. And finally, when I return home at night, I remain distracted by the spurts and stops of stories, which collide with my home life until I put them down on paper.

I don't take these head on collisions with words casually: I am ready when they arrive, armed with the energy of an army and the blind devotion of a saint. I write the words until they run out, sometimes turning them into imaginary 3-d images, turning, twisting, shaping, long after the pen and paper have been put away.

Calculating my weekly writing-to-work hours, I think I spend about 45 hours at my job, 5 hours in writing classes or discussion groups, and 40+ hours writing. That's writing at my desk, all weekend, every evening, and often the entire night. (Like tonight!)

~

Stories ask for all of you. You can't give ten percent, or half, or write when the mood strikes. In fact, I never allow myself to not feel like writing. There is no not writing. The action of writing itself must be learned through self discipline until it is as natural as sleeping, and sometimes more so.  It takes a great deal of self control to ignore everything but words, but if I am to be any good, I have to be focused.

Writing is not for the wishy-washy. Writing is absolute, and nothing less.

This can be quite challenging, and I think many people who could have been wonderful writers stopped writing because they couldn't get over this hurdle, the closest to I've come to an act of faith outside of religion. It took some time before I stopped seeing the self discipline I had to have as a sacrifice.

Now I see it as a gaining, a fleshing out, a deeper fulfillment, partnered with the promise of some sort of redemption purely by process alone.

Sometimes I feel I am on a precipice, a thin sheet of slate jutting out over a deep ravine. I have to tell myself not to look down, not to care where I'm going, not to wonder if the slate will break. I have to remind myself that it is the practice of getting to the destination that I must pay attention to. There is no falling, and there is no failing.

~

My life, edited.

My entire life has been drastically edited in the last six months, everything aligning with my writing life. Nothing remains that does not fit--even the shadows have been nudged out by my inner storyteller.

To be completely honest, at first I tried to fit in the things I'd always had/always done: friends, social life, mornings at the farmer's market, volunteer work, cleaning the house, laundry, dinner parties. I did. I tried to cram it all into tiny spaces, hoping to leave enough time for writing. But the writing demanded more and more of me, and soon I was at a crossroads: I would have to edit my life much more if I was going to heed the call of my stories.

The first thing to go was volunteer work. I'd always prided myself on giving back and being involved in my community, so this was a guilt-ridden edit for me. But I decided that perhaps my stories could of better service than my time, and I pray someday I will be right.

Dinner parties, fancy outings, and handpicked organic produce went next. Enjoyable, but took too much time away from writing, so they had to go. Now I cook something nice only once a week, and have actually grown to like take out pizza!

A big battle was to let go of tidiness, be comfortable with a sink of dishes, the pile of dirty laundry undone. But once my inner Martha Stewart and penchant for order stepped aside, the results were stunning. For example, last weekend I was so distracted by writing I forgot to change my clothes, and when I realized I had on the same turtleneck sweater on Sunday night that I'd worn on Friday morning, I was fine with it. I'd been in the zone, and I'd written thirty pages. Thirty good pages. I'd wear the same thing for a week for thirty good pages.

For me, the most difficult edit of all has been the edit of friends and acquaintances. Being devoted to something completely means that the people around you have to understand that you can't be available all the time. Perhaps coffee once a month. Perhaps only on Facebook. Perhaps never. Sometimes friends have seen writing as a choice, not as a calling, and somehow interpreted my absence from their lives as a choice as well.

Last weekend, a friend was very upset that I had not spent time with her. I had to be honest and tell her that it was unlikely I would have much time to spend with her: I was working on essays and chapters of my book, and I had almost no free time. There was a moment in our conversation when I realized that she was not going to understand my passion and drive, and I had to choose to edit her out. I would not be able to be the friend that she wanted.

~

Yet the gain from this kind of difficult decision making, these often painful or challenging edits has made my life richer in a myriad of ways.Time for writing and writing well. Flowering friendships with writers, editors, and travelers with whom I share common goals. Free time I truly appreciate and savor, because it is so rare and precious. The chance to create something beautiful that makes a difference in how the world may view a place, a people, a culture.

My life, edited. My life, expanded. My writing life.

Amy Gigi Alexander

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