Frozen gravy

A blurry tree reflected in a frozen pond

A blurry tree reflected in a frozen pond, a short walk from my house. I had no idea what to write about for today’s note, but this image felt like it was calling to me somehow, so why not start here? See what emerges, or what comes into focus.

At first, nothing! Oh dear, deadlines looming. I tried a few other images, to see if they might spark something. One of them nearly did. But this one kept calling me back. So I came back to it.

Coming back to frozen ponds brought me to Robert Frost, and a quote of his I often share: “how do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Except that it isn’t Robert Frost, I now remember, it’s EM Forster. Although the fact that ‘frost’ is in Forster suggests that the thread I’d following might lead somewhere.

Which is here: what if I let go of the idea that “I” am trying to write anything? Could I for a few sentences at least accept the proposition that I am simply a vessel or conduit for something that wants to be heard in the world?

In which case, my job is to stop trying to control what’s being written – get out of the way and allow it to flow into whatever form it wants to take. Then I can polish and tidy a bit, but not too much, because too much causes delay and stops the next step in the journey – which is for the words to find their way into the world.

Here a second proposition might be useful. What if there were one person – and just one is enough – out there for whom these words are just what they need to receive today? Everyone else can ignore the words, delete them, send them to spam, or unsubscribe – but not that one person for whom they are almost the perfect medicine, inspiration or tonic?

Perhaps neither of these two propositions are true, but when I accept them as working hypotheses – allow that they might be true – everything softens, relaxes and flows.

How do I write something that matters to me? How do I bring more of myself to my work? How do I find my voice? Your writing becomes more satisfying when you’re holding questions like these. But we can get caught up in the work of trying to answer them, blocking our efforts to write anything. Can we make it less about the I?

If there is more than one reader, that’s a delight. But just one, just the possibility of one, is all that it takes. Make the words you are called to make. Channel the words that need to come through you into the world. Release them. And your work is done. What wanted to be written has been written. Anything else is a bonus. What Raymond Carver might call gravy.

Once the ice melts, the reflection of the tree will be clear.