Louise Erdrich has a poem called Advice to Myself which I read each New Year’s Day as I set my intentions in motion for another trip around the sun. It’s a delicious poem and you can read it in it’s entirety here. What I love is the encouragement to step back from the culturally-driven urge to tidy things up and reflect on what will support the vocation of writing,
Here are two of my favorite bits.
“…don’t worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another…”
“…–decide first what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos…”
Louise Erdrich, Advice to Myself
So I’m reminding myself again this year to set aside the clutter of my desires for my writing and the pressure of my publishers’ desires for my books, and take a moment at the beginning of each working day to bless the blank page and light a candle for the child who will read it some day, and then forge ahead as best I can with the light of that child reader first in my thoughts.
Barbara Kerley is the author of Following Baxter a sweet story for anyone who has ever gotten a crush on a dog. She will be sharing her strategies for using research in your writing.
Emily Whitman is the author of THE TURNING, a fabulous story steeped in the selkie mythology of folk who can shape sift into seals. She will be kicking off the year with a look at what really makes a setting sing.
