Just beyond the next breath

Do you ever wonder what keeps drawing you 

back to the page each morning--day after day, 

month after month, year after year?

Or why you return like a lost soul not knowing 

who you are or where you're going, the only certainty 

the pen you hold in your hand (as long as the ink lasts),

and the blank page waiting for you to fill it with words?

Maybe it's because the moment your hand touches the page, 

you feel like you've come home, no longer lost or blind, and

the world you couldn't see moments ago suddenly becomes clear

waiting for you to enter.

Maybe it's because you feel like you set off on a journey 

each morning, like stepping into a boat and pushing off from shore

to see what is waiting for you just around the bend, just past the curve 

in the bank, just beyond the next breath.

Maybe it's because you live for these moments, for the chance 

to swim into your imagination, to return to the place where you know

you can be yourself without pretense, without a mask, the place

where you can remember who you are and why you pick up a pen 

and open your journal and fill a blank page with words each morning.

Finding a kind of rhythm

I find a kind of rhythm, 

even if it feels awkward, 

writing every morning, 

fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, 

sometimes more, 

using a fountain pen 

and a journal from Otterblotter

with unlined pages 

because I prefer the open space, 

the sense of freedom that comes

with an unmarked page, 

a sense of possibilities-- 

anything can appear on 

the page at any moment!--

and even when it feels awkward

or I feel empty and don't think 

I have anything to say

I convince myself to go 

to my desk anyway

say to myself 

just sit down, open the journal, 

pick up a pen, see what happens. 

And I come to the page 

feeling like my head 

is a block of ice... 

and I hold the pen in my hand 

as if it's an ice pick... 

and it's like magic, 

how the ice begins to melt, 

how the pen is like a wand 

that can shatter the ice 

and free my thoughts, 

and here come the words 

spilling onto the page 

like a stream in spring flood.

Each day is like opening a book

Each day is like opening a book

and finding another poem

waiting for you

sunlight or clouds on the page

shadows or raindrops

the sound of the wind

the silence of snow falling

of clouds passing by

each morning a different poem

lighthearted or sad

a moody melody

a gleeful reprise

the moment you open your eyes

you can hear

the song of a new day

words filling your ears

sounds you never heard before

syllables that roll off your tongue

letters spilling onto the page

one after the other

a stream in flood

pulling you into the day

filling your lungs with air

with life, with gratitude

for whatever appears 

on the page

beneath your pen 

Just a glimmer

You reach a point when your mind goes blank 

like a blackboard that's been erased, 

only chalk dust clinging to the board 

but no words,

and you stare into the blankness

wondering where the words went

and if you’ll ever find them—

if they’ll ever appear again,

and suddenly a word—or the shadow

of a word—appears

just a glimmer

but you see it and grab hold and

suddenly it’s like pulling open

a flood gate you didn’t even

know was there 

and the words come spilling onto 

the page again, splishing and splashing, 

words that only moments ago were hidden, 

invisible, nowhere to be found.

 

It's like a miracle happens

Each morning I set aside 

a half-hour to write these pages.

It's the time of day I love--

the silence of early morning, 

the blank pages waiting

in anticipation for words,

the not knowing what I'll find 

on the page, what ideas

or thoughts I might discover.

It's like a miracle happens 

every morning: I open my eyes 

and get out of bed and sit at my desk 

and hold this pen and move my hand 

across the page and see words appear 

beneath my hand, and at the end of 

the 30 minutes I can find a page 

or more filled with words 

like a bucket filled with water, 

sustenance of life, 

evidence of my presence

that I am here, alive, 

savoring this moment. 

The way ink dries

The way ink smudges

before it dries

the way letters form 

on the page

the way a simple line

can convey meaning

the way words

sound like your voice

the way your hand

holds the pen

the way a poem

takes shape

the way we fill

the silence

the way each letter,

each line, is part

of the mystery.

—

You must embark

Each morning you put pen to paper hoping words will appear. 

You never know what you'll write and so you write to find out what you're thinking, what you're feeling.

First, you have to summon the courage to face the blank page. 

Only then can you begin the journey you need to make to an unknown place.

Yes I know, you're unsure of your destination, the same way a bird might lose its way in a storm, and you might seek familiar landmarks that tell you which way to go, and where home is, and how to get there.

Only there are no landmarks. 

There are no signs pointing the way. 

You know only one thing: you must embark. 

You must step into the water. 

You must start swimming.

Even though you have no clue where you're going.

Or how you'll get there.

If You Want To Write: Jena Schwartz

Writing teacher and coach Jena Schwartz lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her kids, Aviva and Pearl, her beautiful wife, Mani, and their bulldog, Chalupa, and describes her life and work as “anything but predictable.”

In her work, Jena says, she talks a lot about practice: “It’s the basis for my writing and life, for how I parent and how I work with writers. To me, practice means we don’t have to hit the bullseye, we just have to throw the arrow. Permission to stumble, self-forgiveness, fierce compassion for the ache and beauty of being human — these inform and guide me. I’m not interested in love and light; I’m interested in the truth.”

Jena was kind enough to share with us a recent post that appeared (in slightly different form) on her blog:

Tonight I noticed in my "COVID-19 diaries" Word doc that I've written exactly 50 pages and 24,000 words since March 17, which was day four of quarantine for me. 

I am not generally focused on word count, and often don't even keep all that much of my day-to-day writing, so it's interesting to see it adding up, especially since I'm not working towards anything but rather just writing my way through this experience. 

This isn’t all that different from what I’ve been doing since 2007 when I first started blogging, but the pandemic puts life in full relief and sharpens the edges in some ways.

Last week on a walk, a thought came to me—it may have been prompted in part by the short poem I wrote inspired by a local poet’s baguette baking—about the similarities between bread and poetry. 

I had the thought that maybe I am a baker-kind-of-writer. Hopefully, people eat the bread. Hopefully, the bread brings nourishment and perhaps pleasure. Maybe it accompanies a meal that brings people together.

But there is no big opus of bread the baker leaves after she'd gone from this world. In this same way, I don't know if I will "leave" any significant single work or body of work; the shelves might never be lined with books I've written.

In a world with far more than its share of big names, fame has never been a driver for me. And the longer I'm here, the longer I keep writing and sharing with no expectation of some magical day when something different happens, the more at peace I am with leaving behind mostly writing that was consumed in the moment, then forgotten. Or maybe occasionally remembered in the way one might recall a satisfying meal. That would be more than ok with me.

A new coaching client who has been writing with me online for years asked me the other day about my brand. I wonder how my face looked on Zoom in that moment. Brand? Huh. Not so much. I told her with a laugh that at one point when Aviva was in middle school, she told me what my brand was. "Mama," she said earnestly, "your brand is coffee, and real life, and being short." I laughed and laughed.

If you want to write:

Forget all the nonsense about best-sellers and brands and sales funnels and platforms and all the things you should do on social media. The world does not need more brands. The world needs more of YOU.

Write like you're baking or making a meal for someone you love.

Write like you're making your favorite tried-and-true recipes or write like you're experimenting and have no idea how the thing is going to turn out.

Write like everyone is so hungry and you are making an offering, like bringing a dish to a fabulous potluck filled with ordinary people who all have extraordinary stories to share, plates filled with every kind of cuisine there is.

Write like it's simple -- flour, yeast, water, maybe a pinch of sugar or salt or honey.

Don't worry about what it will amount to or where it's all going or how you'll know when you get there. You won't, because, in the famous words of Gertrude Stein, there's no there, there. 

There is always only here, and now, and this.

Jena Schwartz earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College and her B.A. in Russian Studies from Barnard College, Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. For more information about Jena and her work, visit her website https://www.jenaschwartz.com or her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/thepromptress/

Note: “If You Want To Write” originally appeared on Jena’s blog and Facebook page in slightly different form. It’s reprinted here with her permission.

If you stay in bed

This morning I lay in bed before
the alarm went off wondering about
the shape of my day and what would
happen if I didn't go to my desk to
write before doing anything else.

It was the first time in months
that I thought about switching
my routine.

I lay there thinking
I don't have anything to say,
so why bother to get up and
sit at my desk with pen in hand
waiting for words that will never come?

But then my alarm went off and
out of habit I went to my desk
and sat down and took a pen in hand
and opened my journal to a blank page
and found the words waiting there
I couldn't see while lying in bed.

Maybe I'm just inherently lazy?

Or maybe it's just an illusion,
and you can't see it as an illusion
(that's the nature of an illusion)
until you get out of bed?

Or maybe writing comes down to habit--
a routine, a reminder to sit at your desk,
a need to find, through the familiar,
what's not yet known?

You don't know what you'll write
until you pick up your pen and begin.

If you stay in bed or go for a walk
instead of sitting down to write,
you'll never know what words are
waiting to give themselves to you.

Wondering About Words

On some mornings I sit down to write wondering where words come from and, if they come, why they come to me or to anyone else, really.

I wonder if words come from some secret place hidden beneath our feet—somewhere deep under the earth, perhaps?— or from somewhere high above, way beyond the clouds, way beyond the moon and the stars?

I wonder if words are simply invisible until they appear on the page, which is the reason why we can’t see them floating through space like foreign objects that come to earth carrying a message from another planet sent especially to us.

I wonder how we find the words we need to express what’s hidden in our hearts, words that describe the mix of thoughts and feelings swirling inside us.

I wonder if maybe it isn’t that we find words but that words find us, as if we’re magnets that can draw to us the words we need to help us explain how it feels today or how it felt yesterday to inhabit this body, to dive into the unknown not knowing what we’ll find, just hoping words will appear to help us understand what we need and who we are and where we belong.

I wonder every morning — or whatever time of day I sit down to write — if the page is really blank or if it’s filled with words I can’t yet see and which only come into being the moment I begin writing. 

I wonder if words are inside us, locked in some mysterious storehouse, and how we’re supposed to find the key, and then I wonder if words are all around us, waiting for us to catch them, how a writer is born with a net in his or her hand to capture them like butterflies before they get away.

I wonder about words which flow on some days like a steady stream and on other days like a trickle and I wonder how on other days there's nothing more than a dry creek bed where words once flowed.

I wonder how words became as much a part of our lives as the water we drink, the

air we breathe, and equally necessary for our survival.

I wonder why we wait and wait and wait, never knowing if anything will appear on the page in front of us, until one day a word appears… and then another.