The box is not full

Recently, after reading many, many mystery novels, I wondered: Should I be reading something with a little more weight? Am I reading things that come too easy, and fade too quickly? Specifically: Are these things I'm reading (and enjoying, don't get me wrong) having an adverse effect on my writing?

I have had East of Eden on my shelf for years and years. I've attempted it before, and each time, I've gotten stuck at the dedication page. The dedication has so moved me that I found myself leaping away from Eden and to Journal of a Novel, Steinbeck's diary about writing Eden.

This time, I got stuck on the dedication again, which reads:

Dear Pat,

You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, "Why don't you make something for me?"

I asked you what you wanted, and you said, "A box."

"What for?"

"To put things in."

"What kind of things?"

"Whatever you have," you said.

Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts—the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.

And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.

And still the box is not full.

JOHN

I got stuck on this page, and had something of a realization: I have been writing The Dark Age for years and years now. Five? Six, almost? And there is a lot to like about what I have written, the many drafts and restarts and footnotes and such. But I think that this book is a box, like Eleanor was a box, and I have not put nearly enough of myself into it.

Oh, how I wish I could come to these realizations far earlier in my writing.

The Steinbeck dedication—particularly Nearly everything I have is in it—brought to mind James Salter's notebooks. Salter wrote his books longhand, and wrote hype notes to himself on the inside cover of his notebooks.

From another post by Austin Kleon, an excerpt of those notes:

Prominently recorded on the inside cover of Salter’s first notebook for the 1967 novel A Sport and a Pastime is an instructive quote by André Gide: “Write as if this were your only book, your last book. Into it put everything you were saving—everything precious, every scrap of capital, every penny as it were. Don’t be afraid of being left with nothing.” This advice must have been especially poignant for Salter. He succinctly and emphatically reinforces this sentiment within his notebook for Light Years: “SAVE NOTHING.”

Into it put everything you were saving.

Save nothing.

Again: I have not put my all into this manuscript.

This realization came a few weeks ago, and nearly every day since I've written a new draft blind. I've outlined this novel a dozen times, written six drafts. I know the things that are supposed to happen. So I'm writing without my outlines, just writing to see what might emerge if I loosen my grip a little bit on perfection, and just write into darkness. Sort of the way E.L. Doctorow famously reported:

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

Today Felicia gave me a gift, a little box of devotions drawn from Mary Oliver's poetry. I do love Mary Oliver so. I shuffled the cards a bit—they aren't date-specific—and the one I drew read this:

From "The Summer Day," House of Light, 1990

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

And then I drew a card from my box of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, a little toolkit for looking at one's creative work from a new angle, or in a new way. And the card read:

Only a part, not the whole

I only realized today just how much these things mean to me, how instructive they are to my current work, and how much they might save me from overthinking myself into absolute drudgery.

The last few years have not gone exactly the way I thought they would. There has been sadness, hurt, shame, fear and worry. More than enough confusion for a lifetime. All of it, I think, must go into this book. All of me, messy as it all might be.

This one wild and precious life.

I think if I can do that, I might write something true. Might write something that's only for me, but maybe something that's for someone else, too.