Month: May 2021

Reentering

I heard the term “post-traumatic growth” in a segment on NPR in which listeners asked questions of mental health experts, discussing lessons learned over a year of semi-isolation, loss, and change. Some were profound, others funny. One listener worried about getting back into social circulation after being fully vaccinated, afraid he had become unable to make small talk. One of the experts asked, do we need to get small talk back? I laughed, because I’d had the same concern—even though I’ve always been good at it.

Other thoughts on going back into the world:

Some friendships have stayed solid despite distance, while others faded. Those flowers were ready to drop their petals.

Hugging again was less of a big deal than I thought it would be. Good, meaningful, but not soul-shaking. Sort of like the rain today. It was refreshing and beautiful, but not a storm. I’m happy to resume real hugs with real friends, but I don’t want to receive exuberant but empty hugs from people I don’t feel close to, the contact equivalent of small talk. (Especially if they wear a lot of scent.) Touch means more than it used to, and so does my personal space.

Free time means more than it used to. I’ve had less of it during the pandemic, as I committed to more groups and more Zoom meetings. Today I declined to attend a meeting. I’ll still support that group, but I just couldn’t make them a priority today. I was out in the world, doing ordinary things I hadn’t done for so long they seemed special.

Like the rain. So rare, every drop is cherished miracle. Ordinary life is now a cherished miracle. And a changed one.

Writer’s Intuition

By making a joke in my online writers’ group, I caught the attention of exactly the expert I needed—and didn’t know I needed. The morning’s motivational prompt had been a funny one—something about banging one’s head on one’s desk. I replied, “Speaking of head-banging, my work in progress has a plot thread about metal music.” Another writer replied to me: “That’s my genre. Reach out if you need anything.”

I thought I’d done my research, but once I contacted her, I found out how little I’d really learned. Giving a character a connection to metal music in her past was intended to add surprising elements to the plot. Faced with how little I understood about the genre, and how enormous the project of grasping this complex musical world might be, I had to reconsider and ask myself some key questions.

Is the story dependent on this element? Or does it only add flavor? If that’s the case, could another flavor substitute? This reminds me of something my friend Bob said about cooking. When a recipe calls for Himalayan pink salt, if he can’t tell the difference between using it or regular salt, he’ll go with the plain stuff.

The black metal plot thread might be Himalayan pink salt. I’m going to try plain salt and see if the recipe still works. The story is about the characters, their challenges and dilemmas, their desires and obstacles, their lessons. As long as this character has a certain pair of people in her past, their creative output can be an art form I understand better. I never thought my joke would lead to such a revelation, and yet it felt important to make it. When it popped into my head,  I turned my laptop back on and posted it, though I was on my way out the door. The comment was, as far as I could tell, trivial, but my intuition knew better.