embodied journaling

HERE GOES NOTHING

Dani Shapiro

 

To begin, begin, Wordsworth said. So simple in theory, and yet so elusive in practice. The writer facing the blank page has her toes curled around the edge of a high board. Perhaps she doesn't know how to dive. Perhaps she doesn't even know how to swim. Perhaps the pool below has been drained of water. To launch herself into something new—whether a novel, a memoir, a story, an essay—she must first gather up an unreasonable, unearned confidence bordering on lunacy.

 

It doesn't matter how many books she's written. When it comes to this new piece of work, she is in uncharted territory. Voices emerge from every part of her: Who are you to think you can pull this off? You know this has been done by (fill in intimidatingly brilliant author) already, right? This time, you're going to fall flat on your face. If she's just starting out, she might be subject to a younger, halting tirade that finishes each sentence with a question mark. Maybe you should have gone into marketing? I mean, come on, how many social media followers do you have? You do know that's what matters? If she's been writing for a long time, she might hear a noxious whisper: You're done, honey. You have nothing left to contribute. Hang it up. Whatever the voice says, make no mistake: It is not here to help you. Its aim is the total annihilation of the creative process.

 

On my computer desktop, amidst a clutter of folders containing the quotidian, one folder is filled with short pieces I've written over the last decade. Essays, craft talks, keynote addresses, book reviews, short stories. Some of these were assignments. Some began with my own exploration. But all started with the same three words: Here goes nothing.

 

Those words spring from a feeling that there really should be a complicated German word for, a combination of desperation and abandon. This is how I feel when I finally set out. But before I get to that phrase, that high board, first I must navigate a fallow period—either blessedly brief or mercilessly long—in which I get in my own way. Eleven books into my writing life, and I still haven't managed to avoid it, which leaves me with the reluctant belief that it must be fertile in its own fallow way. It might look like doing laundry, checking email, filling out health insurance forms better saved for a time when my brain is already fried. Or it might look like falling into various fascinating rabbit holes in the name of research, or politics, or the Instagram shopping algorithm that knows me so well. Regardless, when it goes on long enough, it leads to a state very close to despair.

 

This despair-adjacent state is when things get interesting. A while back, I had been hard at work on my memoir, Inheritance, when I realized the two hundred pages I had accumulated were nothing more than a false start. "I know I would tell anyone in my circumstances this is creative despair," I told my husband. "But it just feels like despair." I was pretty close to hitting bottom, which is the exact spot where true beginning happens. To get to here goes nothing, first a writer must feel she has nothing to lose. And truthfully, what is there to lose? To begin, begin. What's the worst thing that will happen? You'll get it wrong? Write pages that make you cringe the next day? Ball them up and toss them out? To begin, begin again.

 

For writers, a day spent writing is a good day—always. A day spent writing is de facto better than a day spent avoiding writing. It means a writer has successfully silenced the voices, summoned that wild confidence, transmuted it into courage, and faced down the contents of her deepest interior, because that is where our sentences are formed. And if we put together a string of days like this, eventually we will notice that we have begun.

 

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT:

What would you write if you weren't afraid? Set a timer for ten minutes. Don't worry. No one's going to read a word. You can shred it. You can burn it. You can keep it. It's entirely up to you. Ready, set, go! Begin.

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