Another story about process: It’s not about the bird

My last post was about glossolalia, not really a process, more like sitting with our heart in our hands and hoping something good can come from it.

Writing is about so much more than ordered words.

For example, and I asked permission to share this, one of my critique group members sent along for us to read a first draft of a piece that could be defined as flash. It was about a winter’s day, along a river, walking and coming upon a heron on the other side, silent and still. He and his wife walked every day for a week and saw the heron in the exact same spot. They began to wonder: What’s wrong with it? Is it dead?!

Other passersby also commented and expressed worry.

His piece read like a Reddit story, not sure what was going to happen next or what the point was. Like a lot of first draft writing.

Eventually the bird did fly away to the relief of the walkers, riverbank-observers.

I told my critique-mate it wasn’t about the bird.

The world is terrible right now. I’m not in everyone’s heart and head, but the news is overwhelming. It’s not one thing, it’s everything. Add to that our 401K, the future (who knows!), our families, marriage, children, the list goes on and on and overlaps. I worry if my grandson will ever use the toilet properly as well as the missiles in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, unfathomable death and destruction. The health of a critically sick friend. My critique mate shared that his daughter is studying abroad and soon will be a senior in college. He and his wife wonder what’s going to happen.

I told him it wasn’t about the bird.

Yes, he wrote elegantly about the bird, the beautiful, glittery, snowy day. His fear about the bird.

It’s not about the bird.

He’s a wonderful writer.

It’s not about the bird; I was in tears as we talked.

Like all flash memoir: There’s what happened, what we think happened, and what’s really going on. There’s the thing, then the thing behind the thing. Like shooting an arrow: We aim and miss. It’s only when we relax the muscles and move our focus a little bit to the left or right of the bulls-eye that we manage to hit the mark.

It wasn’t about the bird—it was about his awful love for his daughter. Awful because it was so great and had to be managed; he didn’t know how to help her, even if he could. Like in a fairy-tale, there were things out there, lurking in the forest, waiting to harm her. He could swoop in, swim across the freezing river, rescue the bird, but it was a wild animal and he might end up wrecking whatever nature had going on. He was there for her, for the bird, and would likely just have to worry for the rest of his life because that was what love required. Thank God, this time, after the seventh day of walking and hope against hope, the bird lifted its wings and took off.

It wasn’t about the bird. The bird meant everything.

 

First, write it down, write from the heart without respect to finding the plot, the point, the twist at the end. Write it again. Write it like a study or series. Over and over. Discuss it with a friend. Become angry with them that they just aren’t getting it. Then, at night or the dark night of the soul, admit to yourself all the sadness and loneliness and anger that you feel, the fear eating away at you. Then come back to that bit of writing and once again write another version.

I hope I’m hearing myself right now, because I have to do the same—all the time.