llbwritesto.me

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The Writing Life

Thundersnow, Energy, and Creativity

By

Dear      ,

Today the world is magical.

Yesterday it was thundersnow.

Today it looks like Walt Disney sent his team of animators to transform the maples, the pines, the mountains beyond the river, anything that sits on the ground or rises up into the air—white, and white, and white, thick-painted, delicious white. The sky is the barest blue. The soft, amorphous clouds are fleece blankets spread across the heavens.

I have never been in a thundersnow storm. Only 6.4 (how do you get half a storm?) thundersnows are reported each year in the U.S. My eldest daughter looked that up last night, after, for the first time ever, we saw lightning in the dark and driving snow.

Lightning!

I wish you could have seen it.

There was no audible thunder. The snow is a buffer. So you would have seen the lightning, but you would not have heard the thunder. It was there, though.

Have you read the book The Geography of Genius? I love that book. It helps explain thundersnow and it helps explain the wind storm that destroyed my windshield (via the beautiful maple who now stands transformed in this magical today-world). It helps explain why someone just my height (tiny lady) can reach the top of the Rose of Sharon tree, which is otherwise inaccessible to me. (She is bent so low in the layers of snow that are leaning her towards the little rock garden.)

Of course, Eric Weiner speaks of none of these things directly. He talks about wars, famine, plague, and, surprisingly, the genius that came of them. It’s complicated. Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. Conditions had to be right. But part of these conditions were a few very unwelcome elements that upended “the way things are.”

When I saw the galaxy of glass-stars inside my car, I knew that at least one part of my life had been upended. For some reason, as much as shattered glass troubles me, it also attracts me. It looks like so many millions of diamond boats upon a silver-blue sea. I asked my younger daughter to please take a picture. The next day, I started this blog. I felt such an unexpected surge of creativity. I can’t explain it.

Thundersnow is so rare because of the way the air currents need to organize themselves. You need a certain kind of void, a certain kind of cold and colder air collision, a certain kind of physics. Then the energy exchange begins, and—lightning!

If thundersnow were a city, we’d have to call it Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. Nature’s rare and beautiful genius.

But back to you and me.

If you are feeling a certain kind of void today, or cold and colder air colliding, if lightning is striking and upending “the way things are,” I wish you a galaxy of stars in return—creativity and genius that otherwise would not have been yours.

I know it doesn’t always work that way, and I also know that we still have to deal with the destruction. But I can wish upon a glass-star for you. And so I am.

As Always,

L.L.

No Email and the Energy of Envy

By

Dear      ,

Have I told you I don’t work on Wednesdays? It’s true, in the sense that I don’t do any of my ordinary work on Wednesdays. And I don’t do email, except on the rare occasion. I adapted the no email idea from someone I admire a great deal—someone I have occasionally been envious of, who has (mildly, or maybe differently) come back to email in the way I have come back to blogging. (You thought I was immune to envy? Not possible—remember our discussion of my humanity yesterday. And not preferable, either.)

There are times I’ve been envious of my dear Jane Friedman as well—someone who has been so marvelously good to me. I think she would find this amusing (the envy part, not that she’s been good to me).

I believe these realities are quite telling. Because there are people I am definitely never envious of. Like, I’d have to say, I am not envious of the dentists, shopkeepers, and academics who Neil Gaiman met in refugee camps—people who just want to go home, to reclaim lives that are lost forever and places that are destroyed. From what he said, I think he’ll write about their plight in his next Neverwhere book, when he gets to it. At the moment, Neil is envious of writers who are not show runners, because they can write their next Neverwhere’s in quiet settings where their wives are not getting grumpy about (still) being in South Africa with a writer who is grumpy because he is show running for the BBC’s version of Good Omens, instead of writing.

I was not envious of Neil. I sat in that room of 200+ people and I felt so grateful that I was not the one on stage, talking about the death of my very best friend, because someone publicly asked me to do this, and that’s what famous writers get to do—sit onstage and answer questions that are often too personal—because when you are a famous writer, people can get to feeling they own you and have the rights to your heart and soul. In fact, you don’t even have to be a famous writer to experience this. You could be one of the brightest people living in poverty, who, because of your brilliance, becomes almost a kind of “commons” and brings on the kind of devotion (especially because you are poor) that ultimately tries to take you away from you.

There are a lot of other people I’ve occasionally been envious of (and this has led to things like jealous poem stacks), and there are a lot of other people I have never once been envious of.

The envy is a form of Energy. I wouldn’t give it up.

But here’s the thing. Energy goes somewhere, always—or at least it wants to (think of all that energy bound up in atoms, just waiting to explode). I know I should have paid better attention in Chemistry class (I envy those who did), but I was a bit bored and didn’t realize I might need to be able to understand the concept of energy exchange someday, so I could write more intelligently to you about the green-eyed monster. I really dislike that phrase, and I don’t know the history of it, which suggests I should have paid more attention in Metaphor Class too, but it’s a useful phrase. And I think it can be parsed without the aid of history.

Green = plants (often) = life = energy.

Eyed = seeing = wanting = energy.

Monster = unbridled physical power = energy.

If the green-eyed monster were in a test tube, it could have been much more interesting in Chemistry class. All that energy in a little glass tube, just waiting for our brilliant ideas about what to mix with it or where to pour it!

There are things I do when I experience the energy of envy. First I get irritated. Sometimes I even get angry. Occasionally, I’ve thrown myself an indulgent little pity party.

But, since I am a scientist at heart, it doesn’t take long before I start making hypotheses about my envy, as experienced in relation to any given person or group. The hypotheses spring from simple questions. (Why her? Or him? Or them? Why now? Is it logical? Of course it is, in the sense that everything has a logic! So. What’s the logic? Does it hold up? What is it asking of me? Or, what am I asking of it? What should I do with this energy besides squander it by simply pouring out the test tube—and hurting myself or someone else in the process?)

As I write to you today, I am not sure what to wish you. I believe it was Julia Cameron who taught me the tremendous revelatory power of envy. She didn’t discuss plant life, per se. Or test tubes. She may have mentioned monsters. Should I wish you any of these?

Maybe I’ll just wish you the power of questions (and the hypotheses that can spring from them, and the positive actions that can then follow), the next time envy comes your way.

As Always,

L.L.

P.S. I’m sorry I never got back to telling you about why I don’t email on Wednesdays. It wasn’t very writerly of me to not come back ’round to that. Another time, yes? Or maybe we can discuss it somewhere, sometime, over tea.

P.P.S. I quit Physics class even though I had an A+ in it, because the teacher was so mean to a girl I didn’t like (she was mean, too) but who I was envious of because she was so beautiful and popular and had nice clothes, so I understand that I should have probably placed Energy in Physics class rather than Chemistry class, but I wasn’t in Physics. And, anyway, Chemistry and Physics have a good deal of overlap. And I’ve always liked test tubes.