Your Infinite Words

“The world's a stage and everybody gots to play their part

God works in mysterious ways so when he starts

The job of speakin' through us we be so sincere with this here

No drugs or alcohol so I can get the signal clear as day

Put my Glock away I got a stronger weapon

That never runs out of ammunition so I'm ready for war, okay”

– Outkast “Atliens”

Hello and welcome to Sitting in Silence. I’m your stalwart guide to writing craft, worry, joy, and worry. I hope you’re enjoying spring, the season of undying hopes.

Announcements: next week I’m teaching a fun online class called Craft Seminar: Introduction to Fiction Writing. If you’re looking for a starting point for new work, this is the place. We’ll also have plenty of time for question and answer sessions about fiction writing.

Also, have you ever been to Maine? I have. It’s quite beautiful. And it’s even more beautiful because I’m teaching a class there called The Joy of Text. We’ll cover everything you need to know to write compelling stories and have them published. Spend your free time seeing the sights and replenishing yourself.

Furthermore, this very week you can find me in Tallahassee, FL at the Word of South Literary Festival.

As always, welcome to new followers and thank you to premium subscribers who make Sitting in Silence possible. Premium subscribers have exclusive access to bonus features, including original posts and occasional craft discussions.

Now, for today’s topic: Your Infinite Words.

Let’s go back 19 years to when my day job kept me in a skyscraper until the sun went down. Following a string of deaths in the family, I often felt like I was searching for…something. Once or twice a week, I started going to a coffee shop near my house to clear my head and write. I’d order a big dessert coffee with whipped cream (and a cherry on top) and write for a couple of hours.

Some days, the writing went fast. I’d look up and the baristas were already flipping chairs onto the tabletops so they could close. Other days, my mind ground to a halt almost as soon as I sat down. Did I leave my car unlocked? I wonder what my cholesterol level is? What is a gerund, really?

Fortunately, most days were somewhere in between, and I dealt with more mundane questions. What to write about? How to write it? What should my next sentence be? I was often surprised at how my subconscious worked against my efforts. One of the most obnoxious and self-defeating games my brain would play involved my best ideas.

You see, sometimes I’d come up with a really clever line or a fantastic plot twist. “Maurice, you should save that one for later,” my brain would say, “it’s too good to use here.” Immediately, I became covetous. I’d written a page of pennies and suddenly found myself holding a sparkly, gold coin. What if I saved these coins for the future? What if I saved my best writing for my best writing? Even as I write this the circular logic makes me uncomfortable at that earlier version of myself. What a goofus! Surely, you’ve never thought anything like that, right?

I literally can’t tell you how many times I did this. Certainly, more than one, but less than a million. I suppose this attitude would have been harmless except that when the thought hit me it usually meant my writing session was over. When mining for valuables, it’s greedy to keep digging.

One of the running themes in this newsletter has been the idea of destructive thinking. Destructive thinking is anything that stands in the way of your writing dreams and goals. Destructive thinking renders you ineffective and inert. Long time readers know that, in this space, I try to keep things honest, but light. So, here I’m supposed to say I eliminated all my destructive thinking. To which I respond with a string of laugh of emojis. Are you kidding me? Last night, I had to talk myself into sitting down in silence to write this post. I wrote this post although writing always involves ultimately flawed effort. (I guarantee you there’s a typo in here somewhere. You get a NoPrize if you find it.)

I’ve talked in earlier posts about self-doubt, negative self-talk, and a lack of focus. But what I was dealing with in these situations was a strange kind of hubris. Some small part of me looked at those sparkling sentences as the piece a puzzle that formed the key to my future. If only I found the hole in my writing that was missing that puzzle piece, I would complete the puzzle and write the perfect story. This story would lead to my big break with Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and the Nobel Prize Literature Committee showing up to my doorstep to explain how I’d cracked some code and made the most transcendent piece of writing of all time that would save humanity by ushering in a new age of communication and empathy.

Look, I’m a writer. I know I’m not the only one of us to have these kinds of pie-in-the-sky thoughts. I know there’s a good chance that something has stopped you, is stopping now. So how do you overcome? Well, there’s everything from therapy or just talking to someone who cares about you. But I must give credit to the art we love.

Out of the 1,000s of stumbling blocks I’ve had to overcome or at least negotiate, this problem was solved by reminding myself of the lyrics to a rap song I first heard while driving to visit my buddy who was stationed at an Air Force base in Middle of Nowhere Texas. It’s that Outkast song I quote in the intro. I learned that the mind is infinitely powerful and never runs out of ammunition. Unlike the weapons of man, you always have more imagination at your disposal. But you can’t get to the best of your imagination if you’re always holding yourself back.

As with most of these breakthroughs, it took time (about a decade, if I’m being honest) to fully implement. But once I let go of the best lines I once clutched in my sweaty, trembling fingers and threw those lines into the saucepan of my work, everything changed. I can’t speak for other writers, but once I let my weirdest, wildest words win, my stories finally came to life. The patient I thought was dead all those years was merely comatose. If you ever read any sentence of mine that you liked, it came from the practice of letting my best work shine unfettered. What are you holding onto? What work are you afraid to write? Ask yourself what happens if you let it shine.