Tag Archives: Writing Process

When the Well Runs Dry: Writers’ Fears about Running Out of Ideas

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“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944; French writer, aviator, and philosopher, best known for The Little Prince. His works explore themes of human connection, imagination, and the search for meaning.)

Knife raised in the air, just a few inches or so above the kitchen counter, I stood there nearly motionless. I’d like to say that it was one of my better knives, maybe my Shun or my Wüsthof. But it wasn’t. I’d like to say that it was about to land on one of my better cutting boards, maybe my Boos or my Ironwood. But it wasn’t. And I’d like to say that I was about to execute some fancy-schmancy cut, maybe Chiffonade or Julienne. But I wasn’t.

I was just standing there with ordinary carrots, celery, and onions arranged on an ordinary cutting board as I minced them with my ordinary paring knife for an ordinary pasta sauce.

But as I stood there, something extraordinary happened in that ordinary moment.

Just as my knife was coming down, Billy Collins’ “I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey’s Version of ‘Three Blind Mice'” seemed to shimmer across the blade. Maybe that was to be expected. I love Billy Collins’ poetry, and, after all, there I stood chopping, and in Collins’ poem, there he stands chopping parsley and dicing onions.

But get this. As he wields his knife, he’s not at all concerned about how or why, in the nursery rhyme—the supposed thrust of his bluesy poetic mirepoix—the mice managed to be in the direct path of the farmer’s wife’s blade. Of course, he’s not. We all know how that story ends. But at that moment, standing in my own kitchen, I had no idea how mine would.

But Collins does something I’ve never seen anyone else do. Instead of focusing on how the mice lost their tails, which we know already, he sets up his own minor tragedy filled with blues and tears by raising questions about their blindness:

Was it congenital?

Was it a common accident?

Did each come to blindness separately,

How did they manage to find one another?

After posing those weighty questions–ones that I dare say most of us have never even vaguely contemplated–Collins gets emotional as he thinks about the mice without eyes and without tails running through moist grass or slipping around a baseboard corner.

Actually, he’s brought to tears, but don’t worry. He has two good covers:

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for wet stinging,
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard’s
mournful trumpet on “Blue Moon,”
which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

There you have it. Just as the end of Collins’ poem trailed across the blade, my knife landed once more on the veggies, and I remembered what I had been thinking before Billy Collins had the nerve to drag the farmer’s wife’s mice and Art Blakey’s music into my kitchen uninvited.

I was recalling Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, best known for her A Humble Romance and Other Stories as well as A New England Nun and Other Stories. At the start of her acclaimed literary career that spanned nearly a half century, she commented:

I wonder if there is such a thing as working a vein so long that the gold ceases to be gold. There is no use in worrying, for another vein might open.

Despite her concerns, her literary canon powerfully demonstrates that more than one gold vein opened for her. She went on to write 3 plays, 14 novels, 3 volumes of poetry, 22 volumes of short stories, over 50 uncollected short stories and prose essays, and 1 motion picture play.

Freeman’s literary output never ceases to amaze me. As soon as her fears and successes bubbled up in my mind, it seemed that every time I lifted my knife to continue chopping, I thought of other writers and their fears about running out of ideas.

As a writer myself, and especially as a former Creative Writing professor, I’ve always paid attention to the ways writers wrestle with their fears. I always managed to sprinkle writers’ fears and their successes throughout my classes, and these days, I try sprinkling the same reminders throughout my own days of doubt.

What about Stephen King, one of the most prolific and celebrated writers of our time, who has openly feared creative depletion? He once admitted:

“Sometimes I wonder if I’ve already written my best book. And if I have, I’m all done.”

But King’s fears didn’t stop him. He continued to write, producing novels across multiple decades, from Misery to The Green Mile, 11/22/63, and Billy Summers, proving that the well of creativity runs deeper than we sometimes believe.

What about Margaret Atwood, best known for The Handmaid’s Tale, who has openly acknowledged her anxiety about running out of ideas? She once said:

“I live in fear of running out of ideas. I tell my subconscious to keep the pipeline full.”

But Atwood’s fears didn’t stop her. She has continued to produce groundbreaking fiction, essays, and poetry well into her later years, including The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize decades after her first major successes.

What about Isaac Asimov, the visionary mind behind Foundation and I, Robot, who, despite his prolific output, still feared creative emptiness? He once asked:

“What if suddenly I can’t think of anything? What if the words stop coming?”

But Asimov’s fears didn’t stop him. He went on to publish over 500 books across multiple genres—science fiction, history, and even chemistry—proving that creativity is not finite but ever-expanding.

What about Louisa May Alcott, best known for Little Women, who felt the pressure of creative exhaustion, particularly because she wrote at a relentless pace to support her family? She once confessed in her journal:

“I can only wander and wait, wishing I could rush into a new book with the old eagerness.”

But Alcott’s fears didn’t stop her. Despite her anxieties, she went on to write Little Men and Jo’s Boys, along with numerous other novels, short stories, and essays that secured her place in literary history.

What about Neil Gaiman, the imaginative force behind American Gods and Coraline, who has openly admitted that the idea of creative depletion haunts him? He once said:

“People ask me where I get my ideas from, and I feel like they should be asking, ‘How do you keep from running out of ideas?’ Because that’s what terrifies me.”

But Gaiman’s fears didn’t stop him. He has continued crafting captivating stories across novels, graphic novels, and television, proving that creativity is a muscle that strengthens with use, not one that simply wears out.

What about Maya Angelou, the legendary poet and memoirist, who feared that one day her words might simply stop? She once admitted:

“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

But Angelou’s fears didn’t stop her. She continued to write, speak, and inspire, producing Even the Stars Look Lonesome, Letter to My Daughter, and numerous volumes of poetry that touched lives around the world.

And what about Christopher Isherwood, best known for The Berlin Stories (which inspired Cabaret), who worried about creative stagnation, especially as he aged. He once wrote:

“I kept asking myself: What am I really doing? Do I have anything left to say?”

But Isherwood’s fears didn’t stop him. He went on to write A Single Man, one of the most important gay novels of the 20th century, as well as an acclaimed series of autobiographical works well into his later years.

My reveries into literary fears and successes could have lasted forever. But just as I finished with Isherwood, I looked down at my ordinary carrots, celery, and onions arranged on an ordinary cutting board, and I realized that I had finished mincing them with my ordinary paring knife.

In that moment, I remembered that my reverie had not started with Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Billy Collins at all. It had commenced with me standing there, wondering: What would I do if I ran out of ideas? What would I do if I worked my literary vein so much that whatever little gold it might have ceased to be gold?

But I can’t worry about that right now. I have a few book titles to my own credit, with two more to be added this year. For now, I’ll continue to contemplate the ordinary truths that surround me in my ordinary world.

Who knows. Maybe one day, history will add my name to the list of writers who feared running out of ideas—but never actually did.

In Defense of Memoir Writers

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“The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882; American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Known for his influential essays including Self-Reliance and The Over-Soul.)

Memoirists writers are shamelessly self-centered, and I ought to know. I’m one of ’em. And of course, I know that you really want to know why I used ’em instead of them.

You do want to know, don’t you? You don’t?

Well, this is where things start to get dicey, because I’m going to tell you anyway.

I chose ’em instead of them because the former seemed more casual and playful and, in my mind, it makes me feel comfortable bashing the hell out of ’em since I’m bashing the hell out of myself at the same time. Now you know.

Aren’t you glad that I told you? You’re not?

No problem. Like I said. We’re shamelessly self-centered.

Now that I’ve cleared the air about that one teensy-weensy word choice–it was a choice, of course, though I’m not sure ’em should count as a word–let me tell you how the title of today’s post bullied its way to the top.

You do want to know, don’t you? You don’t?

Well, I’m betting that you know exactly what’s coming next. You’re right. I’m going to tell you anyway. Like I said. We’re shamelessly self-centered.

Originally, today’s post was titled “An Apologia for Memoirists.” Clever, no? I thought so, too, despite the way the word apologia looks. It may look like an apology, but it is not an apology at all. Au contraire. It is a staunch defense of something.

Let me give you an example of an old and famous apologia. I’m thinking of Plato’s Apologia Socratis, the legal self-defense that Socrates spoke at his own trial for impiety and corruption. He was defending himself against the charges of corrupting the youth and of not believing in acknowledged and accepted gods.

After thinking about that example, I decided that apologia was a poor word choice for inclusion in the title of today’s post. As I have just demonstrated, its meaning is easily misconstrued. Beyond that, its pronunciation is not easy either.

Is it “a–puh-low-jee–uh?”

or

Is it “a–puh–low-jee-uh?”

Damned if I know. And if I don’t know how to pronounce a word, I’ll be damned if I’m going to use it.

So, in a touch or two on my Smartphone, I struck right through An Apologia and replaced it with two words that are easily pronounced and readily understood: In Defense.

There. I’ve straightened out Apologia. Now, let me explain why I scrapped Memoirists. I suppose any reader who knows what a memoir is would know–or quickly deduce– that a memoirist is “a person who writes memoirs.” Don’t you detest circular definitions like that? I do. But you can’t blame me for it! Blame dictionary.com. That’s where the definition came from, and that’s why I put it in quotes. I may go ’round in circles, but I would never give you a circular definition. I’d spit it out exactly as it is. A memoirist is someone like me who takes the raw material of their life—its triumphs, trials, quirks, and quiet moments—and shapes it into a narrative that not only reflects their truth but connects with the truths of others.

That definition is mine, and I like it. However, I scrapped Memoirists for an entirely different reason. If you think pronouncing Memoir is an exercise in tongue-mouth calisthenics, try pronouncing Memoirists:

● mem-wahr-ists

or

● mem-wawr-ists

Well, maybe it rolls off your tongue just fine, but it gets stuck to the roof of my mouth. And, I don’t know about you, but when something sticks to the roof of my mouth, I get rid of it as quickly as possible.

That’s just what I did with Memoirists. I got rid of it. Quickly. In just a touch or two on my Smartphone, I struck right through part of Memoirists and replaced it with Memoir Writers. I know. Two words instead of one. Fine. What I lost in word count, I gained in mouth feel.

It took a while, but now you know–even if you had no desire in knowing–everything you never wanted to know about the origin of the title In Defense of Memoir Writers. Like I said. We’re shamelessly self-centered.

Now, I’m certain that you want to know why I feel the need to defend myself and other memoir writers. You do want to know, don’t you? You don’t?

Well, I’m betting that you know exactly what’s coming …

Like I said. We’re shamelessly self-centered. Right? I mean, after all, we share all of the intimate details of our lives with the entire world as if they give a rat’s ass about our world. But we do it anyway. Is that self-centered or what?

Take me, for example. I may have one-upped Anne Sexton who commented, “I tell so much truth in my poetry that I’m a fool if I say more.” I don’t know how many words are in her canon–she does have a canon, you know, though I shudder at the thought–but since 2021 when my blog shifted focus from research to memoir, I’ve spewed out nearly 300,000 words. My God. I’m taken aback. How is it possible that I have shared so much about me, especially when I tell writers that there’s no me in memoir. If they looked closely, they would see for themselves that there is a me in the word, and, like I’ve said all along, memoir writers like me are shamelessly self-centered. This post proves it. After all that I’ve written who would think that I could write more, but here I am, dragging you along to somewhere I think you might want to be for a few minutes–perhaps leading you to somewhere you might even want to stay a while to rest, perhaps to heal.

I shudder at the things that I have shared with you. I do. You know as much about me as I know about myself, and if you don’t know it off the top of your head–and that’s how certain I am that I matter to you–you can find it by foolin’ around in my blog. Let me zing you with a few things, and as I do, I wonder–I just wonder–whether you would put yourself out there for all the world to know.

You know that I’m so full of myself that I fully believe that I helped my Mother give me birth so that I could start charting new territories in my brand-new world.

You know that as my mother preached I wiped away the tears that fell from women’s eyes, some of them slain in the Spirit and hopping from the back of one pew to the next, all the way up to the front of the church and then all the way back again, never missing a jump and never suffering a fall.

You know that when I hold out my right hand to you, you’re grasping the hand that my Father held tight after he nearly cut it off accidentally while butchering a chicken.

You know the challenges that I faced as a gay guy born in the Bible-Belt in the late 1940s, growing up there in the 1950s and 1960s, trying my best to stay true to my authentic self.

You know that I chase dreams and never let go, even if it takes me 50 years as it took me to become an English professor.

You know that the praying hands my Mother and I witnessed in the lid of my Father’s coffin took us both by surprise with the words, “May God hold you in the palm of His hand until we meet again,” holding for me, and me alone, a lasting message.

You know that after my Mother’s burial, I took my hands–strong from the strength of hers–and released from their cage three white doves, flying upward, perhaps at that same mysterious moment when my mother found her way back home and celebrated her arrival with outstretched hands.

You know that when I wrote my late partner’s obituary, it was as if angel wings brushed across the page, just as magically as Allen brushed across and touched our life together.

Equally important, you know that I sometimes ignore dust bunnies and cobwebs; that I get ideas for writing everywhere, even when biking or weeding; that I notice smells like dill and black snakes; and that when I’m not having real guests, I’m conjuring up imaginary ones.

You know all these things and so much more about me because of one thing that I keep on doing right here in my blog post. Week after week after week, I take my bony index finger, hook the side of my metaphorical homespun curtains, and pull them back gently so that you can see through the fragile glass pane and catch glimpses of my world–past, present, and future. Creation. Faith. Survival. Authenticity. Perseverance. Grace. Transcendence. Love. Imagination.

From that perspective, it occurs to me that maybe memoir writers like me aren’t shamelessly selfish after all. Maybe we take our triumphs, trials, quirks, and quiet moments and try to shape them into a narrative that not only reflects our truths as we know them but also connects with your own truths as you glimpse into your world–past, present, and future.

Maybe memoir writers like me aren’t shamelessly selfish at all. Instead, maybe, just maybe, we’re shamelessly selfless—willing to sacrifice our private selves so that something universal can emerge from the personal. Even if the greater good is one solitary soul, needing an oar to stay afloat, it’s in the act of revealing our individual stories that we reflect something far larger than ourselves.

Maybe that’s our truest calling—not selfishness, but selflessness. And perhaps that’s the best defense I can offer for memoir writers like me.

Stillness in Motion: How Ideas Find Me

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“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”

— Attributed to Albert Einstein (1879–1955; physicist whose theory of relativity revolutionized modern science, making him one of the most influential figures in physics.)

“Professor Kendrick, where do writers find their ideas?”

Without a doubt, that’s the question that students in my literature and creative writing classes ask most often. I suppose they think that if I can provide them with answers, they can somehow chart the mysterious path to their own ideas.

I’m always glad to answer the question. Why wouldn’t I? Aside from being an educator, I’m also a writer. I love talking about writers and writing. However, whenever I tackle this question, I do so playfully. I like to tease my students into thinking on their own, so I start out with whimsical suggestions:

● Ideas fall out of the sky.

● Ideas drift in on a breeze, like an uninvited but intriguing guest.

● Ideas pop up while you’re brushing your teeth, hiding among the bristles.

● Ideas sneak in on the back of a grocery list when you’re not paying attention.

● Ideas are delivered by the most unreliable carrier: a stray dog that follows a writer home one day, and voila! A bestseller.

● Ideas arrive like magic—or madness—depending on the deadline.

Of course, there is some truth in my exaggerations. To prove my point, I share with my students what writers themselves have to say. Ironically, writers rarely discuss the origins of their ideas in detail. They prefer leaving them behind a shroud of mystery. Or they discuss their sources in ways that reflect the unpredictability of inspiration.

Fortunately, I know a good number of writers who have been outspoken about how they get their ideas, and I talk about those writers with my students. More often than not, I’ll start with Mark Twain, who wrote about what he knew best: the world around him. Students seem to like that possibility–of working with what they know–and most of them have read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain didn’t hesitate to let the world know that he based good ole Huck on a real-life person:

In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person–boy or man–in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy’s. (Twain, Autobiography, 1906)

Twain’s contemporary Mary E. Wilkins Freeman–who shared with him the distinction of being two of America’s most beloved writers at the start of the 20th century–used real life as the springboard for lots of her fiction, too. She focused on what she knew best, and she fictionalized it. She once wrote to Sarah Orne Jewett:

“I suppose it seems to you as it does to me that everything you have heard, seen, or done, since you opened your eyes on the world, is coming back to you sooner or later, to go into stories, and things.” (December 10, 1889, Letter 50, The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, ed. Brent L. Kendrick, 1985)

Apparently, lots and lots came back to her, enough that she has more than 40 books to her credit.

As an example of her ability to take the mundane and elevate it to the universal, when I teach Freeman, I generally focus on one of her best short stories, “A New England Nun,” and I share what she wrote to her editor Mary Louise Booth:

“Monday afternoon, I went a-hunting material too: We went to an old lady’s birthday-party. But all I saw worth writing about there was a poor old dog, who had been chained thirteen years, because he bit a man once in his puppy-hood.” (April 28, 1886, Letter 13, The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, ed. Brent L. Kendrick, 1985)

Freeman gave “the poor old dog” new life, a name, and heightened symbolism in “A New England Nun,” one of the most poignant explorations of sexual repression in nineteenth century American literature. Students–and readers in general–are fascinated to see how Freeman elevated a commonplace observation to a symbol upon which one of her most famous short stories depends.

More recent writers suggest similar sources for their ideas. Ray Bradbury, for example, once said:

“I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.”

His ideas included overheard conversations, dreams, and life’s other magical moments.

Or what about Toni Morrison? She maintained that her ideas were rooted in memories and the people around her:

“The world you live in is always being rewritten; it’s your job to find the narrative.”

From her point of view, stories are all around us, waiting to be discovered through deep observation.

More playful than any of the other writers I’ve mentioned is Neil Gaiman:

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”

I like his notion that the writer has to be aware of those fleeting moments of inspiration.

Those are just a few of the writers I call upon to help my students discover their own pathways to their own ideas.

If I were teaching today, I’d continue to explore those writers, but I’d include several more, notably Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for her Eat, Pray, Love. From her point of view, ideas in all aspects of life–not just writing–are all around us, looking for homes.

“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us — albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.” (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, 2015)

I’m fascinated by Gilbert’s way of thinking. Her magical complexity attracts me, as does Robertson Davies’ straightforward simplicity about ideas:

“I do not ‘get’ ideas; ideas get me.”

And without a blush of shame, if I were teaching today, I’d talk more fully about sources for my own writing ideas. I did that in years past, but my focus was always on research ideas, unless I happened to be writing creative nonfiction essays with my students. In those instances, I’d workshop my essays with them, always sharing the backstories.

However, writing with my students was a luxury that I enjoyed on rare occasions only. I was too busy giving them feedback on their own creative flights. I suppose my professorial situation was comparable to the cobbler who has no shoes.

These days, though, as a master of reinvention, I’m able to focus on my own creative nonfiction essays, totally separate from my ongoing Mary E. Wilkins Freeman research. As a matter of fact, since starting my reinvention in January 2022, I have two collections of creative nonfiction essays to my credit. In Bed: My Year of Foolin’ Around (2023) was followed by More Wit and Wisdom: Another Year of Foolin’ Around in Bed (2024). And in case you’re picking up on a pattern, I’ll have another book coming out in 2025, tentatively titled The Third Time’s the Charm: More Foolin’ Around in Bed. All of those books–and others that will follow–are part of my The Wired Researcher Series.

I’ve written a lot already about writers and writing. I’m thinking about several posts in particular:

● “The Albatross Effect: How Letting Go Set Me Free”: Sometimes, we need to let go, not necessarily abandoning our responsibilities or aspirations, but releasing the grip of our ego, our fears, or our need for control. By doing so, we create space for new ideas, new experiences, and new growth to emerge.

● “In Praise of Break-Away Moments”: In a world that often pulls us in different directions, these break-away moments are the compass that steers us back to ourselves, to our shared humanity, and to the magical power that transports us to places unseen and emotions unfelt.

● “It’s Not a Corset. Don’t Force It”: My greatest discovery about my own writing is my everlasting need to unlace the corset that constricts my thoughts. It’s my everlasting need to let my ideas breathe and expand freely, whenever and however they wish.

● “Writers: Our Forever-Friends”: Maybe, just maybe, the need to have writers who are our forever-friends, boils down to nothing more than this. They come regardless of what we are facing. They reassure us that goodness and mercy shall prevail. They remind us to grapple with our soul, to grapple with our spirit.

● “Directions to the Magical Land of Ideas”: For me, it seems that whenever I lose myself–whenever I’m doing something that takes me away from me–a door opens and an idea enters, hoping for home and for honor.

In all of those essays, I’m doing what a number of writers whom I’ve mentioned do: exploring my own world. Like them, I also do my best to find in my personal experiences truths that might touch the heart and soul of my readers, whoever and wherever they are.

But one day last week, while doing my indoor biking, listening to Gospel music rock the rafters, it occurred to me that I had never written extensively about the sources for my ideas. But here’s the thing. I didn’t go looking for that idea. I mean, I was just biking and listening to music. Nothing more. Nothing less. And lo! In that ritualistic moment of pedaling and listening, the idea for this post took up residency in my mind.

The idea found its way to me. The idea chose me to be its human partner, just as Gilbert and Davies maintain their ideas find them.

I, too, believe that ideas find their way to me. I’m fascinated by that belief, not so much because that’s how my ideas arrive, but more so because of what’s going on with me when those ideas choose me for their partnership.

I’ve given the “what’s going on with me” a lot of thought, and I’m coming up with some common denominators.

Almost always, I’m engaged in an activity. Biking. Lifting weights. Listening to music. Cooking. Gardening. Hiking.

More often than not, when I’m engaged in those and similar activities, my world stands still. Time stops. Nothing exists except whatever it is that I’m doing. If I had to pick one word to describe what I’m experiencing in those times, I suppose it would be stillness.

Maybe the ideas “out there” looking for human partnerships sense my stillness. Maybe they sense my lostness. Maybe they sense my emptiness. And maybe–just maybe–they believe that I can escort them “out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.”

For now, especially in the absence of any other explanation that I can provide, I’ll hold fast to that belief since it has proven itself true time and time again in my magical world of words. For now, I’ll also hold fast to a smidgen of satisfaction in knowing that what I told my students really is true, especially for a writer like me:

“Ideas drift in on a breeze, like an uninvited but intriguing guest.”

Circling Back (Again, Again, and Again)

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“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”

–Joan Didion (1934-2021; renowned American Essayist and novelist whose distinctive writing style and introspective approach earned her a lasting place in contemporary literature).

Maintaining friendships can be a delicate dance, and I’ve learned that silence is golden when it comes to my own writing. My friends–especially those who are writers–know that I abide by Robert Frost’s sage counsel:

“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second ” (Letter to Sydney Cox, 3January 1937; quoted in Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship. By William Richard Evans. 1981).

Rarely, then, do I talk with friends about what I’m writing in my weekly blog posts. Talking about it diminishes my focus and my belief. Oh, to be certain, I may tease by divulging a topic or a working title. I love teasing. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again right now by telling you the working titles of some future posts:

● “What My Father Saw.”

● “Packin’ Up. Gettin’ Ready to Go.”

● “My Right to Know.”

● “Somewhere Called Home.”

● “What If Artificial Intelligence (AI) Makes Us Even Better than We Are?”

● “Grappling with Unknowns.”

● “The Cake Stops Here.”

● “When Did Tomorrow Begin?”

See there. I didn’t mind sharing those titles at all. Like I said, I’m a tease.

Truth be told, though, that’s all that I can share in advance because I’m clueless as to how those tentative titles will play out. I never know the end of a post until it leads me to its ending.

Clearly, I am not one of those writers–of whom there are many–who align themselves with Edgar Allan Poe. I’m thinking now about his focus on “unity of effect” and that a writer must know the intended effect from the beginning:

[…] in almost all classes of composition, the unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. […] If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design (Poe’s review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, Graham’s Magazine, May 1842).

A few years later, he reiterated that point:

Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention (“The Philosophy of Composition,” Graham’s American Monthly Magazine, April 1846).

Poe’s way of writing is not my way of writing.  Mine is just the opposite. Mine is the Frostian way:

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it (“The Figure a Poem Makes,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1939).

I am not trying to compare my writing to Frost or to Poe. Yet, as a writer, I have every right to align my methods with someone. I choose Frost for alignment, and I choose Frost for ally.

Like Frost, I am unwilling to talk about the content of what I am writing: opening the hydrant [talking] lessens the pressure on the upstairs faucet [writing]. At the same time, I am more than willing to talk about my writing methods: melting like a piece of ice on a hot stove, carrying me away with it.

Actually, I have talked about my writing process extensively in several blog posts. I’m tempted to suggest that you browse my posts and find them for yourself. But that would be mean spirited. So let me recap the main points here.

1. I write my posts in bed–every day, seven days a week–starting at 8:00 pm and continuing until I decide to stop, usually around 9:30 pm or so. Sometimes, I ignore my body’s call for rest, and I write until 11:00 pm. I don’t think that I’ve ever written past 11:30 pm. (However, I do recall writing until 12:30 am once, just to prove to a friend that I could stay up that late.)

2. I write my blog posts exclusively on my smartphone. Yes. On my smartphone. I hold it in my left hand (as I am doing now), and I touch type my text, letter by letter, with the index finger of my right hand (as I am doing now). I know: it’s slow. I know: it’s tedious. But guess what? It works.

3. I write my blog posts while sipping on a Bunnahabhain Scotch, neat.

4. I have a large number of drafts in progress at any given time: everything that I experience is copy. Right now, for example, I have 29 drafts in various stages of development.

5. Whenever I have an idea and start a draft, I develop it enough so that I can leap back into the idea whenever I return to it, even if it’s weeks or months after the idea leapt into my head.

6. Usually, one draft among all the others calls to me and demands my attention. I listen. I focus on it for seven nights, hanging on tight and never letting go.

7. On Sunday of each week–the day before publishing a post–I read it out loud by telephone to my oldest sister, Audrey. Reading it aloud gives me the opportunity to find any remaining mistakes. (Inevitably, I still miss a few.) More importantly, however, it gives me the opportunity to hear the rhythm, and if I have an off-key passage, my ear speaks to me. Sometimes, I pick up on a rhythm, and I decide to play it more fully in one final revision before going to bed. But here’s the important thing: it’s the hearing aloud–what Frost would call the “sound of sense–that allows me to know my degree of accomplishment.

Those are the main steps that I follow in writing my posts.

Recently, however, I noticed a recurring practice that I’ve been unintentionally following. Let me share it with you.

As I open a draft, I revisit the beginning instead of scrolling down to where I left off the night before. This practice offers a fresh perspective on my words and ideas.

I circle back to the beginning, I start from there, and the Frostian melt starts anew.

As I circle back, I take my time. I savor every word. I savor every nuance. I savor all the possibilities, including the white space between words where so many meanings live–and hide. And, as I circle back, I change whatever it is that calls to be changed.

To be sure, circling back flies in the face of the process that I and other English professors are hell-bent on teaching our students. Generally, we teach a straightforward, linear process without much room for deviation, except for an occasional reminder that writing can be recursive, especially when we need to do additional research to strengthen content. The process that we teach goes something like this:

First. Prewriting (Topic, Audience, Brainstorming, Research, Thesis, and Outlining).

Second. Drafting (Creating an initial version).

Third. Revising (Reconsidering content and context).

Fourth. Editing (Looking at grammar and mechanics).

Fifth. Proofreading (Taking a final look to discover mistakes, including formatting).

Undoubtedly, the 5-step method works, especially for beginning writers who often have no method.

It works for seasoned writers, too, but as we gain more and more writing experience, we follow that method subconsciously. For example, even though I write my posts in bed, I’m well aware that whatever I’m working on is simmering on my writer’s back burner throughout the day and throughout the night as I sleep. My ideas and insights come unexpectedly and without invitation.

For me, then, as a writer–especially a writer of Creative Nonfiction Essays like my blog posts–I’m tapping into the tried and tested steps of the writing process, but I’m really unaware that I’m doing so.

Yet, I am exceedingly aware of my circling back, and I find that keen awareness fascinating. It’s a conscious choice that I make every night when I open my WordPress draft to pick up where I left off. The starting point is always same: I circle back to the beginning. Most nights, I spend half of my writing time revisiting, rethinking, and modifying what I’ve written already.

I’m not suggesting that the “circling back” part of my writing strategy is revolutionary or unique. Perhaps lots of writers circle back in like manner.

What I am suggesting, however, is this: Circling back becomes a dance of words, a waltz with sentences that have already found their footing. It’s a writer’s serenade to their own creation, a harmonious echo of ideas that resonates and refines. Circling back is an invitation to linger in the labyrinth of language, to savor the richness of thinking, and to let the journey unfold in its own enchanting way. In the quiet act of returning to the starting point, I find my path illuminated by the wisdom of Frost and by the freedom of my narrative.