sometimes you should blog about things that actually matter to you

Because sometimes, after you get workshopped, you walk into the night where it is very cold and cry. Not because the workshop was mean and nasty (in fact, it was quite the opposite, a success one could say) but because you just do. Maybe for relief or ambivalence or frustration or all of the above. You walk a little, cry, walk, cry. Then you get a phone call. You pull yourself together. You drive to the bar to meet everyone and everyone is drinking alcohol and eating hot nuts (yes, literally from a machine called "hot nuts") and because you don't drink and because you don't subscribe to eating anything called "hot nuts" you order a burger. A cheeseburger. With e-ver-y-thing on it, including pickles which you usually don't like. You eat the burger. You drink 7 Up poured over ice. Shoot the breeze. Talk about pulled pork sandwiches and the state of technology and haircuts and generally move on with your life.

And of course when I say "you" I mean "me." For those of you who aren't familiar with what I do (which is write nonfiction in a nice Midwestern graduate program where in 2.5 years I will be deemed a "Master" in my field) here is a sketch, briefly: I spend my days teaching, gchatting, reading, walking, writing, walking, not writing, walking, and sometimes writing more. It sounds pretty paradisaical, and it is. But I will say that it is a hard thing, to write well and thoughtfully and beautifully. It rarely happens. But it is so wonderful when it does, and it is one major reason why I keep writing even after pages of crap. Also, I love it.

Sometimes when you write long enough and hard enough, invest a whole lot of your heart and emotions into a single piece, you end up with an essay. Then you pull it apart a few hundred times to see how you can make it better, stronger, healthier. At some point, you print out a dozen copies and disperse it to a group of readers who are, by in large, disturbingly bright, intelligent, witty, talented, and good looking on top of it all--these readers are known as your workshop group. The workshop is generally led by a writer of much renown who you hope to impress. Mine happens to be run by the guy I based an entire thesis on--no pressure, right? Anyway, this group has a week to read your little essay. You come back and talk about it for an hour or so. The catch is that you cannot speak. They talk of you in terms like "the writer" "the narrator" "the subject" and usually pretend that you are not physically present. Good and bad things are said.

In theory, you go home, think about the discussion and revise the essay yet again. It is both fun and agonizing, this workshopping, useful and useless, tedious and mind-blowingly great all at once. This might also account for the inexplicable bout of tears. It takes an enormous amount of emotional energy to sit through one of these sessions, especially after the enormous amount of mental energy you devoted to your essay itself. It leaves you tired and hungry which is why hamburgers and 7 Up come in handy. It also makes, at least makes me, completely sure that this is what I want to do. This is the thing I want to work so hard on that I cry from exhaustion or relief, that I stay up all night to fix a single sentence (because sometimes that is what it takes) and still wake up awestruck by the fact that I am here in a place where I am being paid to do what I love. It makes me dig sitting through these workshops.

So yes, when I write I am unsure and insecure and it takes great amounts of faith to keep on it. But there are moments when I'm writing that I feel like I'm flying and I never want to come back down. There are moments when you are rewarded by your workshop readers, when they approach you solemnly while you lean against walls or tables and they say kind, gracious, thoughtful things. And sometimes you walk up the stairs with your writer of much renown and he stops so you stop, looks over his glasses at you and says kind, gracious, thoughtful things that make you glad, glad, glad. Sometimes, there are moments when you feel like you are capable of doing this and this can also make you want to cry:

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
"Do some flips or something, rip your skis off, then fly away in a wingsuit." So, in short, the moral of workshopping = get yourself a wingsuit. (Thank you, Liz, for sending me this!)