Blasting Through Locked Doors (A Love Letter)
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Hello lovelies,
The Substack experts—and suddenly there are a lot of them—will tell you that it’s a good idea to create an editorial calendar, wherein topics for your newsletters are decided upon and scheduled far in advance. My messy, unscheduled process would drive them crazy. Because these love letters I write are very of the moment, meaning every week I ponder what’s been going on writing-wise for me and my clients. It’s not possible for me to ponder ahead because how do I know what’s going to happen any given week? How do I know what’s going to be happening in my writing zeitgeist?
Most of the time this works well for me. But once in awhile I hit a snag. Like this week. It’s been an ordinary old week around here. Busy and semi-productive. But not particularly inspiring. Same old same old kind of stuff. Writing, reading, talking with clients. All things I love, but nothing new or different that I can turn into a letter.
But then I thought of something that happened to me, or actually more to the point happens to me, on the regular. As I have mentioned here one million times before I live in a multigenerational home. My daughter, her husband, and her three sons, age twelve, eight, and three, live in the main house and my hub and I live in an attached apartment in the back. The thing that separates me from utter chaos is a door. One measly wood door.
When I’m going to be on a zoom call with a client or a group of writers I lock that door. To an adult, a locked door is an immediate sign to not enter. Or attempt to enter. But to children such logic does not apply. To children a locked door is an inconvenience meant to be overcome. And so they do. First, they rattle the doorknob. Over and over and over. If that creates no response, they knock. When I don’t respond the knocking turns to pounding. And if they’re really determined, (or my granddaughter and her brother is over and there are five of them, dear lord help us) they get a paperclip and do the old locksmith trick of sticking it in the lock to pop it. And then—there they are. And if you’ve ever been on a zoom with me you know that every single one of them loves to be on camera.
This is irritating beyond all measure, though I adore each of them beyond reason. But after the most recent time this happened, a striking thought occurred: I want my grandchildren to blast through locked doors. Yes, its annoying. But it also shows character traits that I want to encourage: creativity and determination.
And, of course, the story is also a metaphor for what we need to do as writers. We need creativity to get our words on the page and determination to get to the page in the first place, to trounce those locked door obstacles in our way. My locked doors this week were waaaay too much scrolling through yarn and stitching and clothing sites, feeling the pull to do something, anything, other than sit at my desk on glorious spring days, and a pile of clutter to be sorted and organized. (Though, haha, writing won over that one.) Your locked door might be weariness over the query submission process. Or being stalled on your novel, not knowing what structure to use or understanding your character, or even finding time (and energy) to write.
Maybe, just maybe we all need to take a page from the craftiness and determination of my grandchildren and keep poking until we get through those blocks. Which, by the way, are sometimes real and sometimes imagined. (Mine are most often of the last variety. The obstacles my brain throws up at me are legion.)
I hope that this week when you encounter a locked door, you’ll be the writer who challenges it. The one who first rattles the door knob, then knocks, then pounds, then finds a work-around to let yourself in. So here’s to you—and me—blasting through those locked doors in our writing this week.
Love, light, and good writing,
Charlotte
P.S. Blasted through any locked doors lately? Please do tell.
Books
The Search, by Michelle Huneven. I found this book on my shelf in my desperate effort to pull myself out of my reading slump. It has rested on the shelf, untouched, for at least a couple years. I know this because I have the hard-back edition and a paperback has been released. The novel is the story of a Unitarian Universalist congregation’s search for a new minister, mostly about the search committee. I grew up attending a UU church and my family has a long history with it in ways I will not bore you with so this book interested me. Huneven is a really good writer and I’m enjoying this so far. Fingers crossed it will not be a DNF. Update: I FINALLY FINISHED IT. And it got better and better the closer I got to the end. Really enjoyed it.
The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, by Elinor Langer. I’m a sucker for any kind of mind-body book and this one is great. Langer is the first woman to ever have been tenured in psychology at Harvard, and she’s done some fascinating work. She writes about the old what you think about is what you get, but backs it up with fascinating scientific experiments and studies. And also great stories.
Don’t Look at Me Like That, and Somewhere Towards the End, both by Diana Athill. The first is a novel, her only one, and the second a memoir, one of several she wrote. We’re pairing this books by this Brit author for our England writing workshop. The novel was written when she was a young woman, and the memoir as she approached her death. The memoir made her, at age 91, a surprise literary star. I’m excited to dig into both of these.
Watching
I was out almost every night this past week and I didn’t watch anything. Oh wait, that’s not true, we did finally finish Einstein and the Bomb, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The last 40 minutes of it are intense, and go into the heart of WWII. That night I had nightmares about war. It didn’t click as to why this happened until I was talking to my cousin at a dinner party (one of said nights out) and he mentioned he gets nightmares when he watches intense movies. So you are forewarned. But the movie was pretty good.
Articles and Resources
Take yourself out of it. From Juliana Baggott, one of my favorite writers on writing.
The power of reading. This is why we write.
Some great gems in here, an interview with Lynda Barry.
This is very woo, but I love it because it’s how I feel about writing first thing in the morning.
Events
I keep forgetting to mention that we’ve written several new blog posts about the location of our France workshop and why we love it so much. You can read about art and artists in Céret, the crazy annual footrace there, and best of all, the wonderful local bakeries. There’s only a couple spots left, so nab them now. And stay tuned for an interview with our writer-in-residence, Angela M. Sanders.
If Italy is more to your liking, the details of our Perugia, Italy creativ writing workshop are now up on the website. Reply to this email if you want to learn more.
Also—I host zoom write-alongs on Mondays and Thursdays from 1 to 3 PM Pacific. All are welcome. We’re a friendly group, I promise, and also a productive one. If you’d like to join (its free) hit reply and let me know.
Have a great week, guys, and I’ll see you back here next Sunday. Paid subscribers get a mid-week extra on Wednesdays, too.
