I Had a Breakthrough

Turns out that Bird by Bird is a Little Like Bloom by Bloom

I was working on a chapter of my book, and I was stuck. Depressingly stuck. I didn’t like where the story was going, and I’d accepted the fact that it was the most boring chapter ever written.

Not one to give up, however, I reached out to a trusted writer friend who’s offered to read my chapters as I finished them. I told her my dilemma, and (thankfully) she was busy, but would have time in a week. This was good news! Now I had a deadline, and I work better under pressure. This is one thing I know.

Next, I went back to the basics and I just sat my butt in that chair. The chapter wasn’t going to magically fix itself, I muttered to myself. But then…it actually did. Well, some kind of magic was involved.

Emulating Margaret Renkyl and a part of her process that she shared in The Comfort of Crows, I let the words lead me, typing whatever thoughts came to mind—chunky bits, meandering threads, descriptive blobs, lovely phrases—that didn’t yet have a home in the narrative.

Then I left it alone for a few days. I closed my laptop to allow the story to just be. One morning I was in the backyard, digging a hole for a new bee-attracting salvia, and my mind wandered, as it does when your hands are in the soil and you commune with the earth. It suddenly occurred to me how to stitch all the pieces together. I got that feeling.

I dropped my trowel, telling myself it was too hot to plant anyway, and hurried to my desk, gripping tightly to that kite string of clarity.

The writing was fun. It was still work, but the work made the magic. I was still fussing with the sentences and moving things around, but it felt right now. I remembered why I wanted to tell this story and began letting the pieces fall into place, letting the words guide me through to the end.

This was a first. Throughout all my years writing features for magazines and local weeklies, I’ve never been able to work this way. When writing articles, I conduct interviews, do the research, then sit down to write the piece, generally from 1000-4000 words, in one sitting. Pulling all-nighters is regular thing. Well, was, back when I used to be able to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night. I quit smoking long ago, I can’t drink caffeine after 2:00 p.m., and now I go to bed at 10:00, picking up where I left off in the morning.

I start with the lede and CANNOT move on until it is finished. It is my annoyingly unwavering method that the lede must be perfect before I proceed to the nut. When that second graph is written to satisfaction, then I carry on with graph three, four and so on, until the end. Re-reading, tweaking, from the top of the page to the bottom, over and over until it is done. The words do not lead me, oh no. I am the boss.

This is not to say that writing articles has been without magic. I’ve had experiences when I get into that flow, when things are really working and I feel that buzz of excitement. Otherwise, why do it?

But I hadn’t yet felt it along this new journey into memoir, until now. And what made it even cooler, is that I recognized the process, like an friend.

There is crossover in creativity, it turns out, shared principles and formulas. And in floral design, I have a template that I know as well as the back of my hand.

When I have an idea for piece—we can even call it a flower story—it begins with a picture in my head and messy pile of stems, a collection of beautiful, individual blooms that don’t yet make sense in any cohesive way. I can hold each flower, imagine where I want to place it, and visualize how the whole thing will come together. I have the design chops to execute my vision. But it doesn’t always turn out exactly the way I pictured. In fact, almost never. I begin, I let the flowers guide me and bloom by bloom, a composition emerges from the chaos.

When I teach floral design workshops, I begin by reading a quote that I love by British floral designer Constance Spry:

“Do what you please, follow your own star; be original if you want to be and don't if you don't want to be. Just be natural and light-hearted and pretty and simple and overflowing and general and baroque and bare and austere and stylized and wild and daring and conservative, and learn and learn and learn. Open your mind to every form of beauty.”

This always gives the room group chills. Next, I demonstrate the arrangement the students will be making and, after watching me, with their excited and terrified faces, they make their own. They are given the same set of flowers and the same vase and yet, with freedom to express themselves, no two arrangements are alike.

We all have stories, similar stories, even shared stories. Experiences of joy, grief, transformation. But how we tell them is what makes them special, what makes them ours. I’m excited to have learned a new, yet familiar way, to tell mine.