Writing -- Communion with the Divine
Pillar #4 of 5 -- A message to deliver through the cloud
Why write?
Artists and psychologists vouch for creative outlets left, right, and center. I won’t take long to vie for the value of writing today. I’d love to give you an update on my novel, some posts I’m thrilled to whip up soon, and just a smidge of a case for the writing pillar. (If you aren’t familiar with the idea of value fulfillment yet, I’d read this first.)
It’s simple. I am compelled to write. My hands magnetize to pens and keyboard clicks the way a fat hardback plummets to the hardwood floor. As a little girl, glitter glue, sketchbooks, and plastic towers of mini markers littered my room after each birthday. Aunts, grandmas, and neighbor kids wrapped drawing supplies for my parties – gifts for their creative tot.
I never outgrew my creative outlets. For Christmas, I still unwrap gel pens, highlighters, and journals each year. It’s writing now. Crochet needles and yarn rest in my craft cupboard beside watercolors and cardstock, but story endures forever.
I will record the magpies skittering across the pasture forever. I will journal forever. I will whine to the lines, commiserate with my pen, and pray in ink forever. I will probably only ever figure my problems out on paper.
My soul yearns to write. My mind works in words. I can stop writing as much as I can stop myself from waking up every night to use the lou.
If every word swelling in my chest escapes only for my own eyes to witness, I’ll still write.
I’ll write without pay.
I’ll write without recognition.
If I break both arms, I’ll dictate.
That’s a promise.
It’s also essential.
The best pieces don’t appeal to the market for approval. They shift it from whatever trends and patterns worked before. They storm into publishing houses, rousing wide eyes, “That’s new. I want that.” They don’t take notes from the bestselling authors of the last ten minutes.
They commune with God.
The best books, essays, speeches stir up such a fuss in a writer that she can’t help but write them. They speak to her history and soul, travel through the ether into her heart, itching to materialize. When she rests the pen, worn out from being the medium, they strike all the chords in someone else’s heart like a harp. That message wasn’t a commercial copycat or a sales ploy. It was God, the conductor, leading a symphony.
Picnics Ahead
That philosophy is exactly how I strive to write Red Gingham — Miracles embed in this writing practice week after week.
When Monday rolls around, I toy with topics. Sometimes all the spaghetti slips off the wall and splats onto the floor. Nothing sticks. Then the eve before publishing day, once Lavie and Tristan conk out, the wisp hums outside my window.
I draw up out of bed, winding toward my writing chair, and open the laptop. The matchstick strikes, sssshck, and my fingers clatter across the keyboard with a surprising spell of clarity.
Last Monday, I started my marriage essay, and chipped away the slightest bit more on Tuesday before hitting a cinderblock wall. I punched in and immediately backspaced words the whole hour. A void bellowed from my gut, from the pages – something crucial missing.
On Wednesday, The doorbell rang. I stood up from my armchair and dodged the shoe graveyard on the mat to swing it open. No one met my eyes. I scanned around and then stared down at the stoop, where a dome lid covered a silver platter. Skeptical, I picked it up and looked inside. A butter colored paper propped up in a perfect triangle gazed back at me. Narrow, looping cursive ink read, Something to write about.
I like to believe sometimes these messages floating to you through this cloud aren’t flimsy and weightless, because sometimes they don’t seem to start with me. Writers can pull ideas from events they need to process for peace, an article they read online that 40 others have already regurgitated, or sometimes, a question someone miles away is asking herself too.
When I picked that invitation up from my doorstep, God showed me something about marriage. It just so happened to be exactly what was missing from the piece I started earlier that week. And to more seasoned couples, those thoughts could be tried and true, but for me, they are still new. I wrote them. I shared them. And then someone I’ve never met before received it. Her name was Brianna, and she sweetly confided that this was a reminder she needed just as much as me.
When I break down the structure of this newsletter, I can see where the magic originates. Red Gingham is a way for me to answer a call each week. I’m no prophet or priest. I have no assignment from God, but I think every human being can receive a whisper in their ear to pass to another wanderer. These letters I write to you are little missions for my soul. I challenge myself to parse out and divulge some measure of truth each Friday.
It is the most fulfilling, grounding practice I know.
It is also exhaustive.
When I created Red Gingham, I took up my first real publishing project. If Red Gingham is a picnic blanket, I think the spread on top is more triangle finger sandwiches, moscato, and globe grapes than burgers and Coke. I’ve done burgers and coke in the past. They’re a great time, but these Friday luncheons aren’t casual.
Some newsletters take a good half hour to draft, edit, add photos to, and publish. They read like blog posts or journal entries. I subscribe to those. I love them. I used to write those. This publication, for whatever reason, serves a different purpose.
When Lavie’s eyes finally flutter closed for her nap each day, the claw clip wraps me up, and I roll my sleeves to write. Most weeks, I toil over these words until I run out of time and have to hit publish. I prepare these posts all week.
It’s starting to weigh on me. Earlier I mentioned the indispensable value of genuine writing, and I must clarify: these posts are always genuine to me. I’ve never published something here that didn’t feel like my own marrow, but I need to lighten the load a little bit.
This is my 24th published post after 24 weeks. (I’m surprised, because I definitely haven’t shared something every single week, but I guess it’s leveled out!)
2024, the year I found my footing as a mother, also became the year I got crowned writer. I wrote 30,000 words in 30 days. I published all these posts, many of which I might call personal essays. Most of all, I became confident in craft, voice, and consistency.
With more confidence, more ambition arises. I am a writer now. I want to write more.
From
I want to write personal essays
to
I want to write a novel. I want to write flash fiction. I want to submit to literary journals. I want to query. I want to publish. I want to interview other writers. I want to vlog it all on Instagram!
When I started this publication, a weekly newsletter was my only focus. All my creative energy poured into these posts. Now I’m balancing all these plates, and they look an awful lot like silver platters from God, too. I treasure these interests. I treasure the connections spilling out of them. I treasure you reading this right now.
Now I need to get methodical and form a system to disperse the weight so I can carry them all.
Other ideas brew behind the scenes, but what I’ll tell you now is just this:
I’m considering a new editorial setup. This month, I’ve stumbled into an experimental series of posts and loved the security of knowing what to write about each week.
I used to rarely plan topics ahead of time, because I’d feel forced to stick to them and lose that authentic, real time writing factor. This month, the miracles abound despite that. Like I told you earlier, I outlined 5 pillars to touch on for the 5 weeks of January, and in the nick of time, divine intervention guided those posts to publication in peculiar ways. Now I definitely believe in some middle ground between structure and inspiration.
With that, I doubt this will be entirely predictable, but I’m toying with the idea of sandwiching lighter, fancy free posts between my personal essays. A formal(ish) essay each week demands so much time and energy that I don’t have much creative elixir left for fiction writing.
A month with this idea:
2 personal essays (The usual poetic analysis of some grandiose womanly idea. Ex. creative motherhood, the romantic history of candles, love stories)
1 picnic spread (A quick and easy to write, full creative freedom, low pressure roundup of treats. Ex. A little reflection on a moodboard, a love poem or two, a podcast, a novel, a philosophy)
1 diary (A cathartic, real time sum up. Ex. A journal entry, photos from the month, and bigger reflection)
The collection and diary posts won’t take as much time, so I’ll have more room to write each essay and my novel. The other nice thing is that I can build up a basket of posts to reach for in a crunch. If one week, I’m glued to The Meadow, ensnared with writing the height of the romance or its downfall, I can pluck a polished collection post from the cabinet, publish on the spot, and keep writing.
I’m sure it’ll shift with the seasons. If I get pregnant again, I might write 3 essays in a month, juiced up with whimsy and affection for new life. Maybe in December, I’ll want to do a series on Christmas folklore.
For now – for February – I’m going to see how this goes and pick up novel drafting again.
A Novel News Briefing
Here’s where I’m at:
I’ve been so caught up writing these newsletters lately, but the novel still brews in the back of my mind. Some days out of the blue, when I haven’t cracked my brainstorming notebook for a week, a scene whirrs up in my mind. Some days, I diligently answer questions from my characters’ perspectives like a serious method actor.
You may have read about my first drafting process in the November Writer’s Diaries. I’d never stuck to a novel before and wanted to prove I could, so I wrote 1000 words a day for 30 days during Kailey’s 90 Day Novel Challenge. I also ordered the workshop book that inspired her, The 90 Day Novel by Alan Watt.
After those 30 days, I’d proven myself as a writer and realized I didn’t want anything to do with a writing challenge. As my best friend, and fellow writer, Hailey reminded me this week, I’m not trying to make this my job. I don’t have any deadlines to meet. I write because I love to. I write for fulfillment and fun. Writing challenges suck the life out of my process. The entire premise of this January Red Gingham series on value fulfillment and pillars roots in the same concept as my writing mindset: My life is not about building a career, moral, or body resume. It is a gift to enjoy. Writing is a lifestyle. I’m writing a novel, publishing these letters to you, whittling away at poems, philosophies, and maybe – one day – short stories in my journal, because they are pleasures, acts of joy. They are not work.
The 90 Day Novel Challenge isn’t for me, but the workshop book is the perfect resource to help me solve the problems I ran into after drafting Act 1. Nearing the end of Act 1, I realized I’d gotten the mechanics of drafting down, but I lacked loads of essential information about my story. In the writer’s diaries, I explained my method as a plotter/pantser – plantser. It seemed like my method for writing this book was disorganized chaos, but it actually makes a lot of sense in retrospect.
When I started planning in October, there was only so much I could figure out. I needed to jump into drafting to really discover my characters and the blocks that kept coming up. After nearing the end of Act 1, I felt like it was time to return to the drawing board. Now I think I have what I need to draft Act 2, but Act 3 is a mystery. It looks like the process for writing this book may be drafting Act 1 (Check!), figuring out Act 2 (Check!), drafting Act 2, figuring out Act 3, drafting Act 3, then reading and revising it as a cohesive piece.
The first 28 days of the workshop book are entirely devoted to exploring my story’s world and planning my novel. I started those in December but lost steam earlier this month. My initial instinct was to force myself through them for the sake of the book’s timeline. I don’t subscribe to that method, anymore. If I’m losing interest and getting bored with the exercise, I truly believe it’s a clue that my energy is best spent elsewhere.
Writing is an intuitive venture, ingrained in my lifestyle. There is no timeline. I have a whole life to live outside of this practice — a baby to hold hands with, friends to take to brunch, a husband to kiss, flowers to water, birds to listen to, songs to sing, more babies to make.
I think it’s time to get back to drafting. I’m ready to shift gears and thrilled at the thought of opening up my story for drafting again. Act 2 will be a treat to write. That’s when the romance takes off, and the plot twists.
That’s all for now, I’ll be back next week with the last pillar — God. I have absolutely zero idea what that will entail. It’s quite the topic to tackle, but I’m excited.
Take care,
Love Ally Mia
P.S. I’ve just sorted all of my previous essays, writer’s diaries, mother musings, etc. into tags on the Red Gingham home page, so if you want more to read this week, feel free to browse around.
I’d also love to hear any reflections you have on your own writing life!
You inspire me. Every word from you, spoken or written, inspires me.