During the first week of my Creative Nonfiction class, I spend a lot of time asking students where they might find themselves writing and under what circumstances. In a notebook or on a laptop? Do they listen to music? Do they need a cup of coffee? A glass of scotch? A cigarette? Complete silence? Prefer to write in noisy coffee shops? In the morning? Late at night? I tell them to buy a cool notebook and pen for writing in class. I bully them (a little) to write every day, even if just for this quarter, as an experiment if not as a burgeoning passion. Naturally I start thinking about such things in my own life, too.

I write every day, early in the morning, in my potting shed (as you know). But I think I could get a little more writing done if I could establish a habit of writing in my office at the college — just a little — every afternoon. As Dorothea Brande says, even the meanest employer has to give you a break sometime.

I’m reminded of my days as a waitress when I noticed that the cocktail waitresses always took their 2 10-minute breaks. One before “lunch” (whenever that fell in their shift) and one after. I asked one day, “Why don’t the rest of us take 10-minute breaks?” “Because you don’t smoke,” the cocktail waitress told me.

If you smoke, maybe you can write while you smoke. Maybe you can just tell your supervisor that you need a smoke, and write instead. Maybe you can tell your supervisor that you’re taking a 10-minute writing break.

Writing is a much better habit than any other I can think of.

This afternoon, in preparation for our first meeting of Writing Lab this quarter, I browsed my bookshelves and found Fingerpainting on the Moon by Peter Levitt. This book contains one of my all time favorite quotations (which I’ve shared more than once, but here it is again):

“This is joy — the kind that comes from expressing the most intimate part of our lives and having it valued and known. Awakening such joy allows us to love.”

(image from http://spaceweather.com/eclipses/gallery_15may03_page3.html)

In his chapter, “Everything Is Permitted in the Imagination,” Levitt tells the story of a woman joining him in a garden at the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center, and telling him, “You know, there’s room for us.” The story continues:

As she said this she gently swept her hand in an arc to include all the various forms of life before us. I watched as she encircled all the vegetables, fruit and flowers, the compost piles, the shape of the distant mountain, and then included the two of us with her gesturing hand. “If there wasn’t room,” she said with a conspiratorial smile, “we couldn’t be here at all.” 

Later in this chapter Levitt recommends making up a sign in big letters spelling: “PERMISSION GRANTED.” So I did. I made up 10 of them and took them to Writing Lab and I handed them out.

Consider this blog post to be your permission.