Winning is the Second Step
Winning is the Second Step
Wanting to win is the first. And here is my adapted "just three scraps" messy and fruitful collage-style writing process, with flexible steps and illustrations
It’s hard to talk about the ocean. Even though I walked in its shallowest waters for eight whole weeks, the same five-mile stretch of big bend panhandle sugar. For hundreds of cumulative hours, I sank in the softness of the Gulf.
Today I walked again down my own front stairs and across my street, then around my block and down and around the next one over, too. I saw a sign for a window company. It said, “Restoration, Not Replacement.” I saw an empty cardboard box on which was written, in black marker, “Little Dolls.” And at the base of a tree, I saw three painted stones, one of which read, “Let the Sunshine In.”
Restoration, not replacement, for little dolls. Let the sunshine in.
Or, Little dolls, let the sunshine in.
Or, Let the little dolls in. Talk to them. It’s about oration and rest. Also, sunshine.
I’m playing around now, taking liberties. But it’s already full of meaning.
I looked inside three Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood, too. I found no books I wanted to read, which was kind of surprising. I usually have to try not to take more books than I should, because most of my neighbors are of University professors and artists. I did find a vintage drugstore paperback novel called Winning. The back copy read, Winning is the second step. Wanting to win is the first.
But what about the thing you are trying to win in the first place, and ascertaining whether you truly want it?
Isn’t that the actual first step?
I am not from the ocean. I am from grass and stone and slush. Fallen leaves and pine. Also, lichen and moss. I am from a ceiling of oak and elm, a path of twigs. I am from leggy prairie rose and dandelion, crabgrass and granite.
When it comes to the ocean, I am a shy visitor, all saucer eyes and cold feet. Everything about the ocean is strange and vast and striking. Take the wind, for one. And the dead things, too, which the ocean spits out. The ocean steams. The ocean sings and glows, even through its restless, inattentive waves, which constantly rock the water, even on still days.
Stillness was rare, though, during my time on the Gulf. Isn’t stillness too often hard to come by?
I wrote Monday about Nick Flynn, a poet who walks in various cities and collects craps to make collages—collages he finishes using, always, just three scraps. Nick writes the same way he collages. And so do I.
Walking in cities is one of my favorite things to do.
Here is an itinerary of cities I walked in from January through March: Minneapolis, Champaign, Nashville, Montgomery, Port St. Joe, Apalachicola, East Port, Montgomery, Nashville, Champaign, Minneapolis. Also, Tallahassee and Panama City and Destin, for the airports.
Also, Kansas City, for AWP.
In these various cities, I walked a couple hundred miles over nine weeks.
I also wrote about a hundred pages.
And now for today’s Writing in the Dark Writing Lab + Exercise, I offer you:
My own messy adapted process for collage writing using the “just three scraps” method (note: the above warm up is part of the process!)
Photos of my actual scraps and my finished collage
A structured exercise
A strange mathematical equation for insight
This week’s process starts with and grows from attention, as always, which I have already written a lot about a lot, including these three posts:
Also, note that when I say the process is messy, I do mean messy. For me, collage writing is about keeping my gaze soft so that my mind can see the thing closely enough to see into it and through it. This is where meaning and metaphor live.
I can’t rush to meaning. Instead, I have to let meaning find me. If meaning is the destination, then I have to trust that the destination will reveal itself soon enough, if the road I’m on is real. The road being my attention to the world and to language. It can take a long time, of course. But if we’re curious and persistent and open, if we’re letting the words work on us as much as we are working on the words, we’ll get somewhere eventually.
That’s just how it works.
If you play with the exercise this week, I do so look forward to hearing from you in the comments, including any scraps of your own that you want to share! I can’t wait to admire your work.
So, here’s how I collage-write in general, how I did it today, and my equation and structured exercise. All of which is less linear than it sounds, so give yourself a little stretch and shake before you start …