Mary Lou Sanelli - A Woman Writing

Back in November of 2009, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat (which has got to be a pretty sticky thing right there), echoed the point that it was funny to call health-care reform rushed, America has been working on providing access to health care for all Americans since the 1930s.

I have often felt the same way about writing a book.

Not that I, for a minute, compare writing, mine or anyones, to the crucial issue of health care. Im just struck by how often there is this misconception of time, how long it takes to accomplish certain things, how slow and arduous writing really is.

For instance, you might think all my thoughts come to me as I write, and in one sense, they do. In another, theyve taken all my life to uncover. All that comes to me now is an intensified need to get at them.

Ive written a lot about being a writer, a woman, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and, I regret, what it feels like to be completely disillusioned about American politics as of late, and how I feel vulnerable about so many things because of it. And yet, in my earlier titles, I was writing from a younger perspective (a glorious deficit)! I was unable to crawl underneath and lift my work to where I can now.

Ill say this though: I tried. I was determined. I spent whole weeks at a stretch pruning a single poem. I not only wanted my work to be beautifully written, I wanted it to make sense of things, especially the unexplainable, and especially to me.

I no longer put that kind of pressure on myself.

Gradually, I came to realize something: Writing, the act itself, is enough. If questions are answered along the way, better still, but its no longer my desire to make sense of so much. Isnt there something completely shady about people religious, political who talk as if they hold the key to the truth, as if they know the great secrets, as if they know at all?

I think so. And I cant tell you why people like this scare me so much. But they do.

Its as if I freed myself. I remember it as the moment that I knew I would spend the rest of my life writing, a pivotal distinction in my life, when, even though Id already published several books, I would no longer think of myself as a woman trying to be a writer, but as a writer. A woman writing.

Gratefully, with age come many such distinctions.

For as far back as I can remember, Ive looked to the wise guidance of women like Sheila Jackson Lee, women who swim against the tide, who have what it takes to make things happen. Risk-takers are my greatest influence. If she can chip away at the glass ceiling, I can surely shape this book!

Early on, May Sartons Journal of a Solitude literally changed the direction of my life. Reading about a woman active in a life of her choosing, a writing life, when most of the women around her spoke of themselves with reference to what their children were up to, and then, as the years passed, grandchildren, well, even as a young woman still giving thought to having a child, I knew her solitary, writerly ways would become my own. I thought of her often while in the throes of these pages.

I also think of Edith Wharton, writing years before May Sarton, how she inhabited a 113-acre estate alone so she could have the freedom from trivial obligations which was necessary if I was to go on with my writing. She wrote this in the late 1800s. Hard to imagine how strong the tide against her independence must have been.

Im well into the late stages of revision here when one family invitation arrives, and, later, another, and I must choose not to attend both my husbands family reunion (not so difficult, really) and a wedding of a niece who lives across an ocean and a continent, a more difficult decision. Im rather fond of the woman my niece has become.

Naturally showing up for neither didnt win me any points, but it was a choice I had to make. Id given myself the year to write, a promise I had to keep, making it impossible to say yes to the many social obligations wait, Id go so far as to say all that take focus away if I cave. To disrupt the continuity is the worst thing.

The voice of Nancy Reagan, of all people, comes to me now. I suppose because I was in my most vulnerable years when, in reference to drug use, she coined the catchphrase: Just say no. On purpose, I applied her slogan to my own set of needs as a young writer.

Okay, Nancy, I will.

Im not saying its impossible to write between demands and duties, allowing a sliver of time here, another there. But Id be lying if I didnt say that, for most of us, writing is just so all-consuming, such hard work, requiring so much energy and time and concentration that it has to be our only work. Its amazing anyone wants to be a writer at all is what I think when Im tired, or when my confidence falters and I fall into the fear pit again. I remind myself how many times fear has turned into the teacher I need. When I think, I stink; my writing stinks! I allow myself a few hours of that, tops. Until Im more determined than ever. And off I go.

Ive never been the kind of writer who can define a book at the beginning. I write it page by page (no, it writes me, which may sound like a writers clich, but its true) and this requires patience. It requires exacting work, and it requires lots and lots of time. You cant rush a delicate process.

Maybe this is why so many books nowadays seem forced. Its no secret that a writers first book can take years to write. But the same writer can be asked to hand over a second title in under a year. And why Im struck by some of the lesser-known European authors Ive discovered, how they write without seeming to give much thought to the American bestseller list, how individually they tell a story, how originally they make the pages their own.

In the back of my mind, I store what Anne Lamott said about her book Bird by Bird, how her process began as separate essays, but as she got into them, they grew into a single theme.

Her saying so left me reassured, a confidence booster if ever there was one. Here I thought I was creating another collection of essays stemming from my various columns and commentaries, but, in the end, it didnt work out that way. Sure, I had to revise the tone from column/commentary into book. I had to get in there and release each essay from the constraints of word count. Like a proud gardener, I had to stand back and let them flourish.

Writing is my greatest pleasure, all I ever wanted in terms of work. Still, I had to ask myself why I was determined to write a book about writing? Isnt