drmstream[writing]

Recently I’ve been offer­ing guid­ance to a young woman on Pur­pose and Structure.

These two con­cepts sound more lofty than they are.  When I talk about Pur­pose, I’m describ­ing the sense of hav­ing a thing to do, a rea­son for mov­ing for one spot to the next. Struc­ture is the sense that you are account­able to being some­where and doing something.

This young woman is set­ting off on an uncon­ven­tional path; she’s moved away from the direc­tion that her old friends have taken and is tour­ing the mar­gins of life. The expe­ri­ence says some­thing to her, and she’s gain­ing con­fi­dence in the idea that the con­ven­tional way isn’t for her.

My guid­ance is that with­out a sense of pur­pose and struc­ture, her life will start to wan­der and she’ll lose the oppor­tu­nity to build a happy and rich set of experiences.

The advice might sound daunt­ing, but it’s really pretty basic.

This young woman is a very tal­ented writer. Her voice sparkles and she sees the soft human­ity in the pathos that can weigh peo­ple down.

What­ever you do, don’t stop being a writer. Don’t look to any­one else for val­i­da­tion. Don’t doubt your worth just because you’re oper­at­ing out­side of the tra­di­tional venues of achieve­ment and recognition.

Every day write 1000 words. Let this be your pur­pose and your struc­ture. Let your curios­ity carry you into life, but don’t ever turn your back on your gift.

Because you are out­side of the norm, are defy­ing con­ven­tion, peo­ple will chal­lenge you with doubt and fear. Don’t let their doubt, their dis­ap­proval, their lack of under­stand­ing build a chasm between you and your work, your words, the things that you see and write.

I’m con­fi­dent in this guid­ance. If she can find this one anchor and wedge it strong against the foun­da­tion of her imag­i­na­tion she can build a life that lets her expe­ri­ence rich­ness and excite­ment, a feel­ing of free­dom and engagement.

And, just as I am con­fi­dent in my words, I am frus­trated with my own actions.

Over the past two months, I’ve lost my way on a longer project that I have been work­ing on. It’s a story about love, mis­for­tune, anger and shame from the early part of the last century.

I’ve fin­ished the base research that I needed to tell this story and have a broad out­line of the nar­ra­tive flow. Now I need to just write it out, bit by bit, a 1000 words every day, until I get to where it makes sense to stop.

But I’m not. Last night, for instance, I got back to my hotel at a rea­son­able hour and planned on re-engaging with the project. I don’t even need to go back to what I’ve writ­ten. I know the last image — a young girl walk­ing with her father down a crowded city street to a new place of busi­ness he’s opened, excited by her father’s sub­dued energy and the sense of a new begin­ning — and just need to hit the return on the type­writer and get the next line going. When I got to the room though, I drifted off task, read a lit­tle, watched a show, lost the time, feel­ing weary, just plumb tired.

That’s the frus­tra­tion: that I can offer guid­ance with pas­sion and con­vic­tion to my young charge, but have so lit­tle abil­ity to apply it myself. That my project sits there so clear in my imag­i­na­tion and so far away from my self-discipline. That I can’t offer myself the grace of a true pur­pose, an affair with the imag­i­na­tion and the con­fi­dence of structure.