Two weeks ago, I got both. I went out three nights, more times than I’ve been out in a week since my son was born almost three years ago. Tuesday night I saw Wicked the Musical, Thursday I went out for my monthly mama happy hour/dinner to eat Ethiopian food (which I discovered I do not like, by the way), and on Saturday I saw Flush, a new production by Arial Dance Theatre. Maybe it was that I got so many hours out of the house to be something other than a mom, or maybe it was that I saw acting, singing, dance, and it woke up my inner artist. Whatever it was, I finished the week inspired.

I couldn’t just sit and watch Flush. I kept pulling out my notebook to write down my experience of the performance. Where am I supposed to look? I feel anxious. They want me to. They chose this music, this video, the dancers’ movements specifically to make me feel this way. The dancers were in the center of the room with three rows on either side so the audience was facing each other. Part of the experience of viewing the show was periodically noticing how other people were reacting to watching the same thing I was watching. Eventually I began thinking about the process of making and performing the work. What translates? What did the writer intend? Is the audience getting it? If audience members discussed the piece afterward, how much would anyone actually remember? Would they agree in their interpretations? Does it matter if what they’re experiencing is what the author meant, or the director hoped to convey, or how the dancers translated the work so they could perform it?

All of that got me thinking about the process of art. Both Wicked and Flush had elements from The Wizard of Oz and it made me consider what it would mean to pull the curtain back on the writing process. Throughout my life, people have asked me about being a writer, as if it’s mysterious. And in some ways, I guess it is. From a very young age people are told they can’t make a living as writers, yet some people do make careers of it. Some people write their entire lives without ever finding an audience for their work, or they find audiences through nontraditional channels. In the last few months, I’ve had people ask me about various aspects of my writing process: being a blogger; getting poems, articles or essays published; how to decide what to write about or find a voice, getting an agent; if I would critique their writing; what author platform is; whether it’s worth it to go to grad school for writing among other things. I’m figuring it out as I go along, but thinking about how often I’m asked how I do it made me realize it might help people if I dedicated this site to exploring different writers’ ways of working.

Before I’d left the theater, I decided my website would take a new direction. I got home, changed the tagline and wrote a new description for this site. In our right minds, no one would ever pursue creative writing. We’re told no one makes a living at it, writers are crazy, addicted, or otherwise damaged.  But in our wrong mind–that universe of creativity and hope–we do it anyway. Here’s one writer, in her wrong mind, pulling back the curtain so you can see how I fit writing into my life, what I do with it, how I find markets and submit work, participate in various writing communities, and navigate the unfolding world of social media to build an author platform. I’ll interview writers from different genres and at varying steps in their own process so you can hear a variety of ways of doing it. I’ll publish guest posts on people finding a way to write once they have kids: how to make time for writing when you have a day job, other people wanting your time outside of work, and you still must write or you’ll go crazy. Whether or not writers make a living at it, writing makes them a life.

Photo by gemenes

Our seats were one row apart but I was about ten seats over, so we weren’t close enough to chat as we waited for the show to start. For the first two songs, I was miserable. Why hadn’t I thought to listen to the soundtrack online? How can one enjoy a musical if one hates the music? We had a good view of the stage, but I should have brought my binoculars (not so classy as opera glasses, but they let me watch the actors’ facial expressions). I was goose-pimpled with cold and wishing I had brought the sweater that had seemed like a ridiculous idea in the August heat outside the Antarctic-cold theater. And I was fretting about Gen. Maybe she was hating it as much as I was. Why had I wasted our money? This was supposed to be a mind-opening and inspiring treat. I was out of the house, at night, at the theater.

But at the end of “No Good Deed,” when the actress playing Elphaba belted out the last lines, arms raised, her lone figure spotlit in the center of the stage, I was mesmerized. I still wasn’t thrilled with the music and the story was only so very loosely related to the book I’d enjoyed so much, but I was watching live theater, in the presence of people living out what I imagine are their artistic dreams, performing for huge audiences, courageous enough to stand up there projecting their voices to a silent and rapt audience. I wanted to be them.

Genevieve and I spent the intermission confirming that we’d initially been equally underwhelmed, but that we’d both teared up by the end of the first act. Then we started talking about those performers, then about us performing and how Gen was getting ready to start slamming again. (For a fun explanation of what a poetry slam is, check out this animation of my husband explaining the rules.) What slam is for me is a way to write and perform my own work and get feedback from an audience, not the polite applause of an open mic at some coffee house, not the months-long delay of a print submission that usually comes back with a form rejection or an acceptance that just means more months of waiting to see a poem in print but never hear anyone’s reaction to it. Being on a stage with five random judges chosen from the audience who are going to raise scores saying whether or not they liked my work (and maybe me) is simultaneously nerve-wracking and exhilarating. I can’t get over my compulsion to perform even though I suffer from horrible stage fright.

Elphaba’s outstretched arms, her full-lunged, open-throated, risk-taking performance was inspiring. It made me miss that part of my life, made me think about peforming. I don’t know if I want to compete to try to get on a team, or just go out every once in awhile to get my work in front of an audience, or maybe finally write and produce the one woman show I’ve been thinking about for years, but I want to be up there again. I’m ready.