It Has to Get Done

At the SF Writers Grotto about twelve of us are in this mutual goal-setting group. We meet every other Wednesday, tell whether we met our writing goals for the previous fortnight (you get a star on a white board if you did, you have to kick in five bucks to a group kitty if you didn't), spend most of an hour sharing thoughts on why we did or didn't and how to improve our work habits, then set new goals for next time. We call ourselves the Borstians, because it's a spin-off of a workshop we did with a great coach and consultant named Martha Borst. Our basic operating principle is that if we're having trouble getting work done, it's not going to help to keep beating ourselves up about it, worrying about it in solitude, or thinking endlessly about "what's wrong with me." The way to get something done is to decide what we're going to get done by when, tell other people about it who we trust not to let us off the hook, and do it. And if we don't do it, take responsibility for that and move to the next set of goals.

      It's pretty basic stuff—but it's infernally hard. For some of us, at least. Yesterday's meeting was full of wisdom, a lot of which boiled down to "Stop thinking about your book and just sit down and write it," and everything anyone said shot through me with an "Of course!" I talked about how I was feeling a bit overwhelmed or intimidated by new insights into the theme of my book, and Ethan Watters said how the only really effective thinking for him occurs in an interaction between his thoughts and the words on the page. You can bring head-stuff to the work, but nothing really happens until you try this, discard it, try something else, discover it works, keep going from there.

      Then Caroline Paul said, "Sometimes you just have to approach writing as a thing that has to get done. Like cleaning the toilet."

      We all jumped instantly on that one. So humbling, so quotidian, so elegantly inelegant; no false glamor or self-aggrandizing agony could survive it. A way better than Sisyphus—no French novelist ever wrote an existentialist essay about cleaning toilets, as far as I know. We all reminded each other of the importance of just taking action and not chewing over why we weren't taking action, and when we adjourned I felt lighter and ready to work.

      But then a feeling of familiarity stole over me. How many times had I said and heard phrases like that? Never as elegantly apt as Caroline's toilet, but still—the words are all around us. Advertising says it: "Just do it." Recovery programs say it: "Act as if." "Do the next right thing." Entertainment says it: "Don't think. Throw." (My friend Karen Green reminded me of that line from Bull Durham the last time I was fretting about my inaction.) We say these things to each other all the time, not just writers, everybody. And why? Because we can't fucking get it, that's why. Because the excitement of realizing yet again that action is the answer is such a big mental thrill that it alone can take the place of action for hours. And by the time the thrill wears off, we're back in the thinking again. Why am I unable to apply that epiphany about the toilet bowl again...?

      It is true, though, I know that. And when I wake up and start work again, it's Caroline's analogy I'll reach for first. I have to confess, though, when Caroline said that about the toilet bowl, my first thought was to wonder if I can get my cleaning lady to write my first draft.