Daily Magic

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames, where you can find tons of writing advice, fun stuff, and giveaways. Check them out!

When I start out the day singing the Indigo Girls in the shower (Come On Home is Saul’s song for Jill) you know it’s a bittersweet day.

Dishes stacked, the table cleared
It’s always like the scene of the last supper here
You speak so cryptically that’s not news to me
The flood is here it will carry you
And I’ve got work to do. –Indigo Girls

I do indeed have work to do. It’s the same work I do every day, pulling words out of the air. It’s not the only magic I know. I can soothe a frightened child, produce dinner for seven out of chicken and noodles, ease a nightmare or hold a friend while she cries. There’s no end to the ordinary magic I can do. I think a lot of times we don’t step back and look at the miracles in our daily lives.

Writing, too, is a miracle. I am reminded of this each time I fall into a story. Yesterday I reread smoke and mirror and realized that I do like those books very much, still. I learned a great deal writing them, and am still half-finished with avatar. More importantly, I read them and saw how far I’d come, both personally and with the craft of writing. It’s a good thing to look at a sorcery you worked a long time ago and still see its effect. I don’t like Rose, but by the end of mirror she’s starting to buck up and take her hero’s journey instead of being so passive. And crucifying Constantius was strangely satisfying–he’s a manipulative bastard. (Guess who everyone loves, though? The girls adore him.)

Ahem. Pardon, I got distracted.

I’ve had a hard go of it lately. I’ve finished a book while suffering a broken heart and various personal upheavals. I’ve got a merry go round of revisions on two books and a fresh short story to write too. It’s better than the alternative–no work at all.

I am wondering, when I see the book I’ve just finished on the shelves (and isn’t that an odd feeling, to see something you worked on so hard and that was so personal, out there to be handled in public) if I will remember how much I cried while writing it. I wonder if I’ll remember, when I get to certain passages, how much my heart was breaking. How much I had to just shut out the pain and plunge through, desperately using the words to stay afloat. I wonder if anyone else reading it will be able to tell where I grabbed the lifeline and pulled myself up.

This is separate, of course, from wondering if my pain and distraction turned the book into a steaming pile of crap not even an editor will be able to save. But if I worry about that I’ll go nuts and have another nervous breakdown, and that’s not good for anyone. It might be a terrible book, but it is no longer a terrible unfinished book, and that has got to be good enough for now. It can be fixed in revision. (Yeah, famous last words…)

I am standing on the shore, shivering, looking at the water I was just recently drowning in. It’s lapping at my toes, and its cold little fingers are stronger than they should be. But there’s the lifeline, snaking off through the sand and the grass. It’s made of words twisted together, and made of the ordinary magic of each day. It’s a fragile line when compared to the abyss, indeed.

But it’s there. And it hasn’t let me down yet. When I see the book I just finished on the shelf somewhere, in the dim future I can’t even imagine yet, I may take it as visible proof that I’m a survivor. I may remember that the words are always there, and they always carry me. Each time I fling myself out into space, heart in mouth and terror behind my eyes…I fly. The net catches me, and I wonder why I ever thought it wouldn’t.

So here’s my Friday writing thought this week, dear Readers: the net will catch you. Some days the words are all we have. Some days the ordinary magic is all we’ve got. Between the two, we can manage. Or, at least, fake it until we make it. (But that’s a different blog post.)

So keep holding on, keep writing, and keep looking for the ordinary miracles. We are all magicians in our daily lives. Don’t forget it.

It just might pull you out of freefall–or out of the water–someday.

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