The Infuriating Thing About Un-Readiness

"Excuse me, how's the book coming?"

The idea of grad school is to fine tune your education. When you apply, you do so because you've found the thing. Your thing. The path you want to follow. When I finally decided I wanted to be a writer, I found a program, and people, who would teach me, and they did. I learned, and am still learning, how to write.

I've been finished with graduate school for several months now. I have a few publications scheduled in the next half-year, but most days are quiet. Most writing days are solitary, and they end on a cliffhanger: will she finish this book? Will Varmints be worth revisiting tomorrow?

Cliffhangers suck. Nobody likes them, and yet they keep the audience coming back for more. When a television show ends in a cliffhanger, the cast and crew have to come back for the next season. The audience is waiting because they know the plot--they're invested in it. They watched the buildup, the climax, and the abrupt ending. Not so with writers. Nobody gives a crap if I come back tomorrow, because nobody has any idea that I'm here today. Nobody can see me on this Sunday morning, sitting here in my unicorn onesie with mismatched socks and hair that looks like I just crawled out of a badger hole because cooking Thanksgiving dinner wore me out.

"What do you mean by not done?"

I can tweet the hastag #amwriting until the cows come home, but now, nobody cares until I produce a publication. Nobody is waiting for my draft. Nobody wants to know about the essays I start that fail, or the extensive amount of time it's taking me to find the proper voice for a middle-aged possum who's trying to fill out an eHarmony profile in what is starting to feel like the most ridiculous thing I have ever written.

And this leads me to the ever-growing worry that occupies a larger and larger chunk of my brain: What if I'm just not ready?

To my left sits a metal bookshelf I bought at a consignment store for $20. It's seafoam green and it holds every book I've read in the past two years of school. Forty or fifty. Each book bears an author's name and a publisher's imprint. Those people did it. They wrote the damn book, they published the damn book.

They were ready. I do not think that I am. And the infuriating thing about un-readiness is that it won't be moved by force. And while I agree that a writer must, simply, shut the door and write, every single day, the practice of writing may or may not nudge the ready-meter to the left or right. Readiness comes when it will.

"Stop pushing my butt, lady."

Ever try to move a dog who doesn't want to? Nugget is a collie-doodle, according to the mutt genetic test. I've never thought of either breed as being especially strong-willed, and she's not, unless I push her butt. Applying force to Nugget's rump causes her to plant her front paws and push back against me, even when I push her away from things like a knife-wielding Benjamin or a clawed-feline looking to snag a chunk of fluffy tail. And likewise, pulling on Nugget has an equal and opposite reaction: she instinctively pulls away from me. No matter which direction I try to force my doodle to go, she resists me. And yet, it takes only the slightest patience, a brief hint of a kind word ("Come 'ere, Nuggie") to move collie-mountains.

If I'm interpreting my own metaphor correctly (and I'm not sure that I am), it would seem that I need to stop pushing my own butt. To be kind to my hindquarters. But also to continually nudge. (And offer treats.)

The book I'm writing has taken several iterations. I have big decisions to make about it, not the least of which revolve around genre. This book doesn't yet have a home on any shelf, but it will, someday, and at the moment, I've written some truths and I've written some (fun) lies. I don't know if those two states of honesty can coexist on a publisher's desk, on a bookstore shelf. Thus, on any given day, I pick a direction and push myself. A week later I might reverse my course and pull myself another way. And all the while, my inner doodle is planting her feet.

Here, I lose the metaphor. Is the doodle my writing? Is the doodle me? Is the doodle the universe?

Hell if I know. And so I'm forced to wait, to get comfortable with un-readiness while friends around me finish manuscripts and win awards and remove the collars from their necks. And no matter how many essays I read about writers who also were not ready, I find no comfort in this perpetual state of uncertainty.

"We'll just wait here while you finish the book."

It's Schrodinger's varmint. Until I open the box, the book is both fiction and nonfiction. The book is both complete and incomplete.

And yet, I'm not sitting alone all day, every day, wringing my hands. I'm doing things I've wanted to do for two years. I'm out of my office more than I'm in it. I'm having the experiences I need to have, being with people rather than with a computer screen. Until I go out, I'll have nothing about which to come back and write. My kids missed me when I was in school. Weekend trips were postponed. Walks in the woods put off. Finally, I can and will do these things, despite the fact that they limit my writing time. I'm finding joy in a more open schedule.

Still, the unreadiness clings to me like the scent of wet dog. I get whiffs of it even when I'm out and about, but I can't seem to wash it off with a definitive end-date. I try to scrub myself clean with pep talks and mindfulness, but these are like the candles I burn to cover up the scent of the foyer carpeting where Nugget poops on rainy days.

I'm not ready to finish the book. I'm not ready to finish anything, today. I'm kind of thinking about chewing a sneaker, though.