Prioritizing art by deprioritizing art

The ultimate platitude, the obviousest of all obviousities: you can get so obsessed with capturing life that you forget it’s good to live it.

Last Friday, I had a writing date with my friend J. This is when you get together to talk about your work and then sit across from each other and write.

I started doing these a few years ago in Brooklyn with my closest writer friends. Since then, I’ve moved to Toronto and kept up the habit virtually and— now that I’ve made a local writer friend (!)—in person.

Anyone who is trying to make art (I feel pretentious using this word but there it is) will agree that it is a lonely endeavour. You can start to feel like you’re trapped on a desert island and the project is your Wilson, i.e. nothing but a volleyball with a face painted on it. (Castaway fans, have I reached you?) Or, how about this: like you’ve willingly sealed yourself inside a snow globe. Pick your simile.

I find it comforting to sit with people who, like me, spend many hours putting down words. You think to yourself if they can do it, I can do it. Which reminds me of this quote from Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead:

“…if he could endure it, so can I.”

J and I meet at a coffee shop in the East End. Painted green bricks and antique furniture, a stream of regulars who continue their ongoing conversations with the sitcom-worthy staff.

She isn’t like other writers I know; she is what my Dad would call a go-getter. J dropped out of law school to start her own copywriting company. She is a person with systems in place.

We first met when I freelanced for her. I noticed that no question caught her off-guard, no filler words muddled her sentences. Her brain seemed to move at 2x the speed of mine. Surprising my dishevelled-English-major-self, I found I wanted to be friends with her. I hoped to absorb a fraction of her competence.

On this morning—this is our second writing date— she is already there waiting for me. Did I mention she is glamorous? She is glamorous. Like an Instagram fitness influencer, except sweet and non-toxic. Am I mythologizing her? Maybe.

We share updates about our projects. I tell her I’ve ditched the endless flow of backstory and started this character’s perspective over, keeping all I learned about him in mind. So far, it feels better. I think.

J tells me she enlisted the help of a memoirist she found on Upwork. She has solidified an outline for the next draft which allowed her to overcome her greatest obstacle— structure. We commiserate about being trapped in our own brains and circling in sections we don’t want to be writing.

Then, she tells me she recently took a month off.

It has been years since I allowed myself a full month. I am surprised and delighted to hear this from her. I have this tendency to assume everyone else is doing more and better than I am. This is especially true with her.

Giddily, I ask how it felt to get back to the page. Did the fresh eyes help?

Around us, the cafe has filled to a happy brim. Behind J, a middle-aged son is telling his father about his plans for the weekend: a visit to a local theatre and a friend’s birthday dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant. To my left, one barista is telling a customer about his misguided History degree. (“Unless you want to be a historian, there isn’t a whole lot you can do,” he says.)

J says, yes, fresh eyes helped. She sips from her large decaf coffee: “And, life,” she smiles. “Being busy with life.”

She lets out a small laugh. A laugh I think that means: this thing we do is silly, it is crucial to us, but it is also very silly. No great epiphany, what J is telling me. Nothing I haven’t said to myself before, but it’s nice to hear it from someone else for a change.

This is the main point of what we’re trying to do through writing, isn’t it? Say, here, have a look at yourself without having to look at yourself. The clarity that can follow the right words delivered at the right time.

In all those hours straining over the keyboard, I forget how many of my ideas have come to me everywhere else. And now I’m arriving at the ultimate platitude, the obviousest of all obviousities: you can get so obsessed with capturing life that you forget it’s good to live it.

Going out to buy coffee filters, a bike ride to the beach, a trip to visit your folks— all are equally if not more important than getting the dialogue of the two characters in the cafe just right. If you can convince yourself, even briefly, that this is true, I say good on you.

For another hour we sit silently across from each other, typing and clicking into our laptops. Then we make eye contact over the screens, a little tired, a little bored, and agree to leave. On the sidewalk, a brief hug goodbye and a promise to do this again sometime soon.

And we’re off: me on a bike, her in her car. I don’t know about J, but I feel lighter, springier, and more generous toward my own laziness; my desire for one of those aimless, teenage summer days.

At least for a few hours.

Thanks for visiting my little corner of the internet.