Writing

Writing as a Practice

Writing is a practice, an exercise in meditation. By taking the thoughts, ideas, and rest of the jumbled mess swirling between my neural synapses and putting them somewhere else, I can set them aside. They’re less dangerous on paper.

So I’ve learned to always keep somewhere for them to land. Sometimes that means setting pen to paper in a journal or scribbling something on a sticky note; other times, it requires furiously recording a memory, a line of dialogue, or a fleeting idea in my notes app. Whatever the form, I try never to wander too far from my ability to capture something before it disappears.

In the fifth grade, my teacher went on maternity leave. In her stead was a stern woman who relished throwing chalk at those of us cutting up in the back of the room. But one day, this evil substitute teacher brought her joyful, hippie daughter into our class to teach us about poetry—about how to think and write in poetic prose.

It was like a lightning bolt to my still-developing mind.

She introduced me to Langston Hughes—who remains my favorite poet and writer to this day—and to James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Audre Lorde. Their words showed me that writing could have rhythm and beauty, but also weight; that it could give language to identity, injustice, love, grief, and the complicated business of being alive.

She also told us about her own practice: she kept a notebook near her at all times. Several of them, actually. On the nightstand. In her car. In the kitchen. In her bag. She never wanted to lose the next great line, or the next great sentence that might unlock the world.

I immediately began doing the same.

And so, my practice was born.

Look at my desk, inside my bags—even my camera bags—and you’ll find pens, scraps of paper, and little notebooks everywhere. The tools have changed a little over the years, but the impulse hasn’t. I still want somewhere to put the things I notice before they disappear from view and from memory.

Sometimes I’m on a train and a stranger catches my eye—the way they’re dressed, the way they carry themselves—and suddenly I can see a character more clearly. Sometimes an actor comes to mind and unlocks something in a role I’ve been writing. An advertisement on the street might spark an idea for a client, just as an overheard sentence or an unexpected turn of phrase might find its way into a screenplay, a poem, or something I haven’t figured out yet.

So I write it down. Over time, those fragments have become a kind of catalog of what I see: an attempt to take something visual, fleeting, or half-formed and give it language before the moment passes.

That practice has carried me through the dark days, the happy days, the sad days, and all the little joys and aha moments in between that have defined my life thus far. It has given me somewhere to put not only what happens to me, but what happens around me—the people I encounter, the things I notice, and the ideas that arrive without warning.

There is something reassuring about knowing I don’t have to understand an idea the moment it arrives. I can write it down and let it simmer. Sometimes I return to those ideas and tend to them; others sit untouched from the moment of their creation. A few words scribbled years ago can become a scene. A passing observation can become a character. A memory can become a poem. Sometimes the act of writing is simply an act of preservation.

While I don’t miss the chalk, I remember that one day with fondness and reverence.

I don’t remember the substitute’s daughter’s name, but I remain grateful for her presence that day. She taught me a new way of seeing myself in the world. She gave voice, language, and texture to the complex feelings of a weird adolescent.

She taught me how to record the lyrics of the song of my life.