Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

A Letter to an Aspiring Writer

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I am writing this for an anthology to appear in October. And here is my first version, which I have decided not to use. I include it here for those who might be interested.

A Letter to an Aspiring Writer
Hi Anita,
So when you were twenty-one, you decided to become a writer.
If you could have looked forward through the mists of time, and seen how relatively little you have written twenty-nine years later, would you still have set your face to become a writer?
* * *
Oh, yes! There was nothing else that really interested you, you see.
You read that Rajiv Gandhi, later Prime Minister of India, said, “I had rather create history than study it.” And you felt like that about literature.
* * *
 Ah, but Anita, how many wrong turnings. I wish I, having discovered my first grey hair, could have counselled you. Many did —and their advice slowed you down—for advice is a double-edged sword.
Not everyone who has failed wishes you to succeed. The successful are not necessarily cheerleaders. There is a fine line between a mentor and a tormentor. Advice can be offered from malice and envy. Remember Iago.
Accept no advice without praying through it. For the most important, the vital, voice you need to learn to hear is your heavenly Father’s.
                                             * * *
Theories abound in quasi-magical fields like writing or creativity or prayer. You must find, by trial and error, the right ones for you.
You learn writing by studying the masters, but, if you have the ear for it, the gift for it, you ultimately learn to write by writing. Reading and practice, that’s all it takes, though good teachers save you time by the embarrassment of their criticism, and the encouragement of their praise!
Did you overdo the education and classes in the days of abounding energy, when you should have been writing?  A BA and then an MA from Somerville College, Oxford; an MA in English and creative writing from Ohio State; Ph.D classes in Creative Writing at SUNY-Binghamton; more graduate classes at the university of Minnesota. Working with famous writers, one on one as with Carol Bly, or at the Loft Literary Centre in Minneapolis, or at writers’ conferences and colonies.                                                                                                          * * *
What was that silly thing you heard? About connections being the third wing of the writers’ life: reading, writing, and connections. That stressed you out, for you were living in small, boring Williamsburg, Virginia. And so you wasted time going to conferences–Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, Wesleyan, Chenango Valley, Mount Holyoke, hoping to learn yes, but also to meet other writers.  And for magic.
Ah you had a mental script for the writer’s life, which involved a fairy tale–discovery by fairy godmothers: an editor and an agent. And a happily ever after,
But Anita, good writing leaps off the page. It makes its own connections, its own magic.  Write the rabbit for the magicians to flourish.
Christianity is a fairy tale filled with surprises, reversals, redemption, and happiness ever after. And so I believe you will see a fairy tale in your writing, because a good God who loves you and called you to write is ultimately writing the script, not you. And that fairy tale will include an essential element of fairy tales—surprise!
                                                  * * *
You attended writers’ groups for praise and camaraderie, when you should have been holed up writing. Your writing conditions weren’t bad, but seeking validation and the stimulation of creative people you applied for fellowships to writers’ colonies–Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Centre for Creative Arts.
Colony life is magic, is paradise–lunch brought to your door at VCCA; organic deliciousness eaten with artists at Vermont, and you read and wrote all day, but oh, how you missed your husband and young ones.
And you learnt that, though long uncommitted hours obviously increase the odds of getting work done, art that flows from a life grounded in home, garden, family and friends is more sustainable in the long run.
·      * * *
Seeking validation, you entered essay, creative non-fiction and memoir competitions for cash but more–the glory. And you won some, including a magical $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts award, $6000 from the Minnesota State Arts Board, travel grants and essay prizes.
But all those successful applications for prizes, grants, awards and fellowships to writers’ colonies and conferences meant that the showcase chapters got polished to perfection before the rest of the manuscript was written.
Oh, privilege the first draft. Keep it moving. “First get it down, then get it right,” is sage advice, but sadly you need to get each paragraph—even those you’re later going to jettison—somewhat right before writing the next one. It’s not the most efficient way of writing. But it’s yours!!
And, please learn to outline before you write. It will save you hours in the long run!
                                         * * *
How badly you wanted validation, glory, and general impressiveness to slip into conversation to explain what you spent your time doing.  You yearned to publish a big successful book to prove how special, interesting and gifted you were. Justification by writing!
But how much better to just relax and be yourself, and be appreciated and accepted for who you are, not what you do.  And prolonged failure taught you this.
If you seek validation through fame and success, you will need more and more of it. Instead, as Rilke says,  “Draw close to those things that will not ever leave you.” Learn to find happiness in simple things: ingardening, nature, travel, family, friends, reading, writing and God.
                                                      * * *
Things changed when you learned to soak in the love of the Father, and his love strengthened and healed you, and gave you the validation you needed.
Things changed when you began to love writing for itself, when you were willing to self-publish to get the work out there, when the possibility of self-publishing made failure lose its terror. Your work wouldsee the light.
Perhaps the desperate longing to succeed had to die for you to discover the deep play of writing. To learn you had to write
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Whát I do is me: for that I came, Hopkins imagines everything crying. And writing was you, the way you discovered what you thought and felt. Writing was natural and instinctive as breathing.
                                                      * * *
Blogging was the best thing that happened in your writing life.
When your writing stalled, and you despaired of finishing your big book, and despaired of finding a publisher; or readers if you self-published, you heard God suggest blogging on April 10th, 2010.
After trying to write unassailably well for so long, the discipline of daily blogging taught you to write swiftly and to make peace with imperfection. You gained more readers, and made more connections in two years of blogging than in two decades of publishing in magazines, journals and newspapers.
And your first twenty-eight months as a blogger have been full of stimulation, creative breakthrough, increasing confidence, affirmation, connections and new friendships.
                                                      * * *
Henry James famously said, “If one desires to do the best one can with one’s pen, there is one word you must inscribe upon your banner, and that word is Loneliness”.’
And so you passed up church, school and neighbourhood social events. And when loneliness hit—and you remembered the healing power of social support–you went to everything, and then regretted the stiff forced smile, the pretence of interest, the uncomfortable bored encounter when you could have been home, reading and writing.
It took experimentation to learn the right amount of friendship and social life for you. Two intense lunches or coffees with friends per week are ideal. For deep conversation sparks your creativity. Less than that, and you begin to get a bit bored and restless with just family and writing. More than that is distracting, and you enjoy social life less.
Once you have more friends than you can keep up with, as you now have, pass up group events for one-on-one conversations!
                                                   * * *
“Be patient with the seasons,” everyone tell young mums–but no ambitious young mum wants to hear that. You could not accept this necessary slowing down when your children were little, and so worked, and worse, worried yourself into exhaustion.
You refused to wait for time to become spacious again—as it now has. You limped on with your writing while Rome burned. Wrote on amid marital discord and domestic mess. Ah, but one is far less productive under such conditions—and what a psychological price it exerts!!
Far better to put first things first. Now that you are at peace with God and man, words flow easily, like honey.
                                                      * * *
Though you were a Christian for twenty-three of your writing years, how long it took for the Christian and the writer to be one and the same!
To learn to lean on your heavenly Father, and to let his creative power flow through you. To learn to do things through Christ who strengthens you. To entrust your writing to God. The great laws of the spiritual life operate in writing: Do not be afraid. Trust in the Father.  Trust also in Jesus.


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  4. “After trying to write unassailably well for so long, the discipline of daily blogging taught you to write swiftly and to make peace with imperfection”.

    Beautiful. Thanks for sharing this Anita

  6. Your writing is great Anita – your stuff really interesting, and meaty and thought provoking – I love seeing what you have been mulling over…

  8. How touching… A post that will give a young mum, wife, writer and christian like me a three course meal for thought. Thanks so much for your honesty, I'm really glad to have discovered your blog through reading your interview on christian.co.uk.

  10. Oh Anita!

    I love you and I've never met you, except through your blog!

    I can so much identify with this whole entire article, including writing to your younger self!!!!

    I love it – such a delight to read and re-read!!!!