On Passion and Constraints (A Love Letter)
Hello lovelies,
Two things happened to me this week. (Okay, lots of things happened to me this week but these two are the ones I’m choosing to write about here.) The first was that agrandson discovered gardening. The second was that I discovered (more like rediscovered) my unconscious constraints. And that led to something else (so I guess it’s really three things that happened this week). I realized (again, re-realized) that passion and constraints go hand in hand.  Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s not.
So here’s the story. We had a run of especially lovely weather lately and let me tell you, there’s no better place than the Pacific Northwest when the sun comes out. (Part of the reason it is so special is that it rains a lot here, which makes the sunshine even sweeter.) All the blossoms popped last week, so there are pink cherry trees, cream-colored flowering plums, star magnolias, yellow daffodils and tulips, lots of red tulips. The daphne is blooming (very, very late and ragged from our ice storm) and rhodies of all hues are about to pop.
And my grandchild #3 discovered a passion for gardening. (This is also the boy who loves baking and makes up his own recipes.) We had Easter brunch at my sister’s house and she was giving away free plants—which Owen quickly nabbed for himself. He planted them that afternoon. The next day, Owen rushed home from school to tend to his plants, pulling grass and weeds from the dirt and surrounding them with a rustic brick circle to keep the dog out. I watched him run back and forth from my desk and every time he rushed past I smiled.
Because there’s nothing cooler than somebody following their passion.
But one flip side of passion is constraint, that horrible state whereby you refuse your passion because it scares you or you don’t have time or you think you’re no good at it. Where your words long to burst forth but you won’t allow them to. When you long to express yourself but just can’t. That kind of constraint is a horrible feeling.
Even if we manage to write regularly, we all live under other constraints and I came head to head with mine this week. Session Two of A Year of Writing Dangerously has begun and so I’m back to writing brief bits of non-fiction before I dive into my fiction every morning. One day this week I wrote about finding money on the deck of a ferry. It was many years ago, and we were always broke so finding this money was like a miracle. And this memory turned into a journaling session on constraints.
The constraints I live under are about time, money, the food I eat, and the wine I drink, if I’ve moved my body enough or not. Oh, and the constraint that doing all this hard work of writing is not going to lead anywhere. Probably you have similar ones. And half the time I don’t even think about these constraints. They just are: I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough money, or the flip side, I’ve eaten or drank too much. My writing is not going anywhere. I can’t move my body today because it will hurt.
They aren’t even have conscious anymore. Instead, they just are. I’m no longer that broke young mother who could not believe her luck at finding one hundred dollars. (Though I’d happily grab it if it happened again.) I do tend to let my work overpower me but I have free will and can pick and choose jobs and also schedule my days anyway I want. The residual pain from my surgery is fading—slower than I’d like, but fading. And so on and so forth.
Here’s the other thing I realized, amid all this serious pondering. The upshot of all my pondering is the most important thing, and that is this: half most of the time, my constraints are of my own making, and furthermore, I can scramble past them at will. I can choose not to believe them. The biggest constraint is the one that tells me not to believe that. And I’m positive the same is true for you as well.
Our most important job, besides writing, is not to believe them and instead let passion rule.
Love, light, and good writing,
Charlotte
P.S. I’d love to hear what your passions (writing for one, obv) and constraints are. Leave a comment or hit reply and respond to this email.
P.P.S. Scroll down for a poll!
Articles and Resources
An interesting writing contest with great prizes. Imagine 2200: Writiing the Future.
Page 98. Donald Maass strikes again with an article well worth reading.
Here’s a place to get inexpensive covers.
My mid-week extra on using physical beats and interiority.
Books
Lorna Mott Comes Home by Diane Johnson. Besides this book being proof that you don’t have to be a millenial or gen-z to write relevant contemporary fiction (Johnson is 87), I love the close-in viewpoint that she manages in this story. When Lorna Mott leaves her husband and their idyllic life in France to return to her family in San Francisco, she gets a bit more than she bargained for. Family and other dramas ensue. Update: Yes I’m still reading this. Johnson has a dense style that can be slow. Plus I admit I got a little bored three-quarters of the way through. But I’m almost to the end and I’m still going because I’m curious to see what happens.
The Bookshop by the Bay by Pamela Kelley. Ordered this one on a whim and it should arrive today. I need something light and easy after Lorna Mott (which is not terribly heavy just dense). Pamela Kelley’s books are uber-light and you know exactly where they’re going. But I try to read them periodically because Kelley is hugely popular (seriously, like her most popular books have almost 20,000 reviews) and she got there by self-publishing. So I’m fascinated and try to parse out her appeal as I read.
Watching
The Miracle Club. Yet another random Netflix find, but they had me at Kathy Bates, Maggie Smith, Laura Linney, and Stephen Rea. Set in 1967 in a scrappy section of Dublin, the characters are a group of lifelong friends who long to win a trip to Lourdes, France. Each is hoping for a miracle. Into their fold arrives Linney’s character, who is the long-estranged daughter of their recently deceased friend. We’ve only just watched the first half but the acting and the scenery are fabulous.
Events
Overseas Workshops
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 creative writing workshop are now up on the website. Reply to this email if you want to learn more.
Write-alongs
Also—I host zoom write-alongs on Mondays and Thursdays from 3 to 5 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 or comment and let me know.
Poll: change resource section?
I had an idea. (My husband’s four most dreaded words.) Instead of including the articles and resources, books, and watching features, I could round up more of them and make them into a post of their own called Links Love. It would run every other Friday and be available free to all subscribers. Please weigh in below.
See you next week! And paid subscribers get a mid-week extra that comes out on Wednesday-ish, though it might be moving to Thursdays, stay tuned.
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Thanks for the heads up on The Miracle Club! What a cast. I've been looking for my next binge-watch show.