Write what's ripe

On the danger of hesitating when you feel excited.

Our Kitchen Bouquet by William Harring

I have a client who is deeply invested in verisimilitude. When she reads a book, she gets distracted and annoyed by details that make no sense — things she knows are wrong. As a result, she takes details seriously in her own writing, and research is paramount to her.

Recently she started to write a chapter she was excited about, and after the first scene she paused to read more about the setting and the time period to make sure she was getting the details right. A few weeks later, with no new scenes written, she said, “I think I’ve lost interest in this chapter and need to move on. Here’s what’s pulling my focus.” She went on to describe a story about a tree and interrupted herself to say, “Of course, I don’t know much about trees, so I’ll need to do some research to make sure I get the details right.”

I could see this cycle about to play out again and it dawned on me that there’s more than one kind of verisimilitude. Texture and details matter, but so do energy and emotion. If the research is perfect but the energy is missing, not only will it fall flat to the reader, it will fall flat to the writer.

This client is an accomplished gardener and an incredible cook. I wish I had said: when you find a perfectly ripe tomato, richly colored and warm in the summer sun, you know it’s not the time to focus on the store-bought kale you have in the refrigerator. You can’t spend hours or days looking for the perfect tomato recipe, considering gazpachos and tarts and caprese salads. Because when finally you finish off the kale and find the dish that sounds the most delicious, you’ll walk back out to your garden only to discover that beautiful shining fist of a tomato split open in the dirt, spilling its juicy abundance to the worms.

Nothing will taste as good as a thick slice of that tomato, on the day you notice it, between two pieces of toasty sourdough slathered with mayo or salty butter, eaten directly over the sink to let the juices run wantonly down your chin and arms.

Eat what’s ripe. Make what sparkles. When you have the luxury of no deadlines, follow the energy and worry about details later. The research will always be waiting, the errands will always be waiting, the things you “should” work on instead will always be waiting, but the energy will grow stale or rotten if you don’t tend it immediately.

With other clients I’ve noticed an interesting second layer to this. It’s not just the assumption that the sparkly thing will stay sparkly even if you turn away from it; it’s an active guilt at following the sparkly thing. For many of us, we’ve been taught our whole lives that we can’t do the fun thing until we do the boring thing first. Now, suddenly, there is no inherent value in that. But doing something just for fun, when there are other things you could be doing that are less fun, feels dangerous and wrong.

There are a couple ways to look at this. One is: what is the point of making art if it doesn’t feel good? (Or feel bad in a good way?) If it’s not making your belly warm and your fingers tingle? What is living, if not following that tingle? The message of that one wild and precious life quote is about how to be “idle and blessed,” not productive and bored.

Another is way to look at this is: it feels dangerous and wrong? Be dangerous and wrong! An artist’s life has always been dangerous and wrong. Don’t try to convince yourself that you’re being virtuous by doing what you want; embrace the lazy devil inside and try things their way for a while. It is a distinctly American virtue to deny yourself pleasure in favor of a dull and practical life. And in this day and age, what artist wants to be distinctly American?

And the third way of looking at it, which is perhaps the only honest way to look at anything, is: we’re all going to die. Probably sooner than we want. Eat the ripe tomato.

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Next time: how I missed the ripeness of this newsletter, how I found it again, and the story behind the name Belly Spark.