Winter started today. Friday the temperature reached sixty-six degrees, so the shift was overdue. Nothing worse than Florida weather at a Jersey elevation. Might even see some snow overnight. Good times.

The surrender mantra whilst writing helped quite a bit this weekend; I chanted it often. Funny how the simplest tokens often make the biggest differences in productivity.

Though I planned alternating between a brand new project and another manuscript shelved last January, after a few false starts with the abandoned tale earlier in the week, I decided to let the story roll on longer. While the ending exists on paper, as it has from nearly the beginning, I have no idea how to reach that point. The fun is letting the characters drive there, instead of placing them in a car on a collision course with their nemesis, scene after scene.

Saturday night a faculty member celebrated a birthday and marked the occasion with a party on campus. Talking to another faculty member–this one working on a MFA in Creative Writing–I remembered why I’m so poorly suited for formal instruction, as I avoid analytic or critique based discussions about what I love above all. I’d rather write–even badly–than figure out what the hell a writer meant by their work or how their catalog stacks up against the masters.

This is not to suggest that creative writing instruction is foolish, or unnecessary. Certainly teachers must demonstrate proficiency in those areas. How else can they lead inspiring discussion if they themselves do not have the tools for devising them? For a writing instructor to draw from the critical process makes sense. For me the prospect is not very palatable.

I’m no writing teacher, is all I’m saying.

Had an interesting–and lengthy, my apologies to his wife–phone call last night with someone about why we write. We do it for different reasons, but one common stumbling between us is telling a story for its own sake, versus working with a specific outcome for the piece in mind. In other words, worrying what might become of a manuscript once it’s finished. That is, if it ever is truly done. Along the path, we question the worth or time invested into a piece, and so forth.

The futility of concerns like those sunk in, and I understood at once why I waste so much time on forecasting thoughts–what could happen, how people might react–rather than staying in the moment and letting the characters tell their story. I won’t speak for my colleague, but I indulge those concerns because I have no control over them, therefore they scare the hell out of me.

Sitting down to write on the other hand, is a choice under my influence. I work; I don’t. A simple formula, and wholly about my actions. Yet despite the fact I wield this control, my mind fixates on the very matters I can not change, and knocks me out of the moment. And once the mind is loose, the story suffers and takes longer to finish.

I’m trying a mantra for the next few days where I find myself straying. Surrender the universe. Finish the sentence. That way it’s not about what might happen to the manuscript, just about me writing one line. And how hard is that really?

Perhaps if I do this long enough, I’ll have a long string of sentences behind me.

Maybe even another novel.