Mick Silva Editing

“I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.” –G.K. Chesterton

(on my small, slow faith…)

Sometimes I feel like a wisp of wind next to the overwhelming breeze of others’ faith.

The day started out well. I had a good idea to let go of all expectation and my usual comparisons, and spend my morning just receiving what might come just by being still and open rather than my usual too-aggressive planning and attacking of “the list.”

It seemed purposeful not to be quite so purposeful that way.

I turned on Freedom and settled into writing for an hour on this and that (and yes, even on the novel). But then the morning began passing. And I did write, but mostly spent the time rereading and catching up to where I was in my last writing because it’d been a while since I’d written that and I couldn’t quite find the line of it, let alone the cadence. And there was none really, so I was getting frustrated and trying to revise paragraph after paragraph and soon there were a bunch of jumbled thoughts over 8 pages and not much new written and the hour was up.

It was time to go to work.

I got up for more coffee, trying to put it behind me. There’s always tomorrow. It’s not about progress. Just enjoy the process and keep going slow. You’ll remember it more quickly tomorrow. 

But as I tried to move on, it just wasn’t working.

My brain was obsessing. I kept thinking back to the words I couldn’t quite get to. Why couldn’t I capture them? Somehow I’d lost the entire point in the brambles. I knew what I wanted to say, or I thought I did, but it wouldn’t come. And what did I do? What I always end up doing.

I pushed. I tried to work harder at it.

I don’t have to tell you how well that worked.

The truth is, I’m embarrassed, ashamed to admit I can’t practice what I preach. I know it’s just human nature. We want to be effective. And we think we can if we just try. Maybe too often we’ve gotten lucky and it’s worked, or we think our efforts have led to progress that really just got us further down the road in a direction we didn’t need to go. I think that’s happened so often with me, I could easily get really depressed thinking too much about it.

8 pages of drivel. And nowhere further along. Can I let go and just stop focusing on progress, whatever concept I might have of that? Believe in the process of sitting, receiving and listening? Read something and not compulsively try to improve it?

This curious obsession with being useful, being a talented writer, it’s trying to make what I do the measure of who I am. It’s that simple, Mick. You’re not what you do. You’re who he made you. Quit trying to change that. He likes you. Just sit there and receive what he has for you today. Spend tomorrow’s hour just doing that, k?

Oh, help me, God! For thou alone

Canst my distracted soul relieve.

Forsake it not: it is thine own,

Though weak, yet longing to believe.

—Anne Bronte