advice from Pablo Neruda

If I were normal, I’d tell you the results of what I talked about in my last blog post. What happened after I decluttered. After all, when I wrote the post, I was pretty scared, but I still went through with the first part of the project last weekend.

Truth is, decluttering was pretty anticlimactic. I only worked on my clothes. I sorted through all of them, kept the ones I loved, and found space for all of them either hung up in the closet or folded in the drawer. The only side effect was me feeling a little sore from hauling things up and down the stairs all day. But otherwise, my bedroom is now as neat and clean and uncluttered as it’s ever been, and it makes me quite happy, to tell the truth. I was a little surprised with the things I ended up keeping—or rather, I was surprised that it felt intuitive and right, rather than forcing myself to toss things I loved. I look in my closet now, and I like all the clothes. It’s simple. So, that’s not much of a story.

Also, I still have to go through the books, which feels harder. That very well may be a story.

But while I do try to have some semblance of sense in these blog posts, my number one rule is to write what I’m feeling today, right now. And I’m not feeling like writing an in-depth follow up to my fears about decluttering. Instead, I’m feeling a lot of pressure on myself to write great stories. To craft and edit and make it so good I can’t stop reading. (Because I try to write the books I want to actually read.)

There’s so much advice out there on plot structure, character development, and style. Trying to follow all of it can drive me mad, because it feels impossible. How can I write something that is entertaining and beautiful and meaningful and still actually has a story and characters you root for? I’m, like, a human. I get tired. I have to work. My kids want things. And sometimes I do things that aren’t writing like organize my closet instead. (Although I have maintained a daily writing habit for a very long time now.)

I suppose the solution of how to write the best book is to just keep trying, and by that, I mean putting words down and studying how to do it. And to accept that there may be failure. Maybe I can’t do it. Maybe what I am seeking is impossible. Still, I can try to get as close to it as I can.

And then this happened.

I came across this Pablo Neruda quote:

“Two things make a story. The net and the air that falls through the net.”

Okay, damn. That quote shook me in my shoes.

I don’t write or think in that manner by any stretch of my imagination, but the words are just so beautiful. I’m not even sure I know all that the quote means, but I can feel it viscerally.

But it’s also an intimidating quote. Because that’s a master poet describing something I’m trying to do every day in a way that is simultaneously achingly attainable and so out of reach I want to cry. I’m not even sure why that quote makes me want to cry.

Is it because he’s taken simple things and looked at them so profoundly that now I can’t see them any other way?

Is that the key to all art? To all romance?

Looking at something or someone so deeply that it changes you and that you can’t see it/them any other way?

So, now I’m back to thinking about decluttering.

As I said, I was scared of doing it. Then I did it, and it was so simple and natural and easy, I don’t feel like I can write about it.

But maybe writing needs to be that way too.

Simple and easy and natural.

Maybe instead of reading all these how-to books, I just have to look for the air. And the net.