The writer on hold…

There is a curious HOLD pattern to the writing life while one’s novel is being, uh, considered by strangers. It’s accompanied by a mute marvel: did I really do it? Did I actually complete an entire book? And someone is really concentrating on it enough–I really got this far with the whole thing? This is not just a figment of the twenty-year-old I used to be’s imagination, the one that loved books and saw fit to try to write one of her own?

I wonder if the spec home builder feels this way once the walls are up, siding is on, the whole thing sitting there gleaming in the sun for people to walk by and, yikes, maybe bid on….leaving himself open to comments like, uh, is there any way you could switch the bedrooms to the upstairs? Or, more devastating: You really should have put the kitchen on the opposite side of the house where  the light is strong. If you could make that (catastrophic) change, you’d get plenty of bidders…

It’s not that I don’t like my other projects or lack the energy for writing. Last February when a friend–not a stranger, but an ally–was reading the manuscript I blew through a freelance editing job and then sat ringing my hands. Now is better than then. Then I needed to pack the car and flee to Wyoming in order to blow out my mind. I thought of Faulkner (Hey, many writers use Jesus for a stand-in comparison; I didn’t go that far) after The Sound and The Fury, which he wrote in three weeks and then went AWOL. He was found days later, passed out drunk in a motel room in New York City. What is the significance? That writing a book really takes it out of you? That telling a story for a long time, concentrating that long can freeze the brain? We know that, or assume it, if we don’t write. All people know writing is one of the most piddling, squiddy little endeavors a human being can get up to. And trying to do it in some kind of order that might prove entertaining for an audience, not just satisfying for a teacher — its own form of misery–just adds thorns to the already knobby branch.

And so there is writing’s opposite: parenting. In summer. Summer parenting is the antithesis of writing, for many obvious reasons, not the least of which is that the weather is better. Good weather is an enemy of writing anything. But kids and birthdays and toys and sports. Well, that does tend to turn the brain off, especially the focus function. I’ve said elsewhere that not nearly enough is made of the mental toll taken by this aspect of parenting: the absolute failure to complete a thought, let alone a conversation. One can only tolerate so many interrupted ideas in a day before the brain begins to fray. Names slip through the cracks. Titles, of books, movies, songs, anything. Engagements occurring anywhere beyond the following three days. I actually contend that this is part of the reason for the ridiculous display of animalistic competition, the frenzy of parental indignity seen every Sunday on the sidelines of soccer fields everywhere. It doesn’t matter if they are only five and its their first year ever playing, you still see your overzealous mother coming out of her chair when the ball trickles in between the posts, or the dad ramming his fist through the air when it’s pounded in from mid-field. I myself have been driven to cry out in a gladiator yell as these little kindergarteners literally battle over the ball, six of them crowding it, kicking randomly, sweaty faces gleaming, hair sticking up, boys and girls locked in agony over a stupid, thick heavy ball.

Yes, dear readers, this is the antidote to the intensely focused mind. I can say it in one simple word that transcends ages and genders:

Sports.