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Hi dear writing buddies,
Did you ever play Double Dutch? I lived in Sarasota, Florida for five years as a kid, and Double Dutch was THE playground game. How it works, for the unfamiliar: a person holds each end of two jump ropes, making two backward C shapes, and then another person jumps into the middle of the turning ropes or tries to jump in, without tripping on the ropes and stopping the game.
On the playground where I grew up in Florida, the white girls had a gymnastics group that you could only join if you could do a cartwheel, which I could not. A Black girl invited me to join in on Double Dutch. When I was first invited to play, I tripped the rope constantly. But gradually, I got better. Sometimes we could get two or three girls in the ropes at once, chanting the songs. These are connective and collective games, not the solo competitions of gymnastics.
When we moved back to Ohio, my new school did not have Double Dutch. It had a salad bar. I didn't play Double Dutch for years. When I tried, about ten years later, I couldn't get the rhythm down.
A draft can feel like this, like trying to play a physical game after a long absence.
You have big energy for getting started, and then, at some point, you look down at the ropes swinging fast underfoot, and in looking down, you trip up the jump ropes. Before they were being twirled for you, rhythmically, without you even thinking about it. Now, you can't get passed thinking and into doing again.
Taking a break from writing, even for a week or two, can trigger this having-looked-down feeling, but self-doubt is like summer insects in your house: comes out at night, and may take a strong and persistent routine to manage.
This is how sending a new letter to you has felt recently: like entering double dutch again! I’ve felt for a few weeks about writing a new letter to you and multiple topics arose. Which thing to talk about? My self-talk was something like: Keep it light. Don’t show all the anxiety as you try to jump in. It could be summer is my anxiety season, when I ostensibly have more time to think, but I don’t, because the kids are home, and our old house is porous. One day, a lizard darted into our bathroom from somewhere. Reader, we live in OHIO, not Florida. I’ll spare you talk of the insects.
These are the days of pinky promises and mornings like today when the first fifteen minutes outside walking to the camp bus stop begin with children (mine) shouting down the streets about how it’s all mom’s fault they are going to be late. Times when I'm thinking, "How do I acknowledge their feelings but also teach them about respect and to take responsibility?" This is my ongoing lead parenting question.
Gloriously now, kids at a camp they love until 3 pm, I sit in the insect-free air-conditioned dining room in a bra and shorts, cooling off and writing this to you and thinking about Double Dutch.
How do you get out of this tripping-on-the-rope feeling and get back into that buoyant writing feeling?
I'd love to hear your tips! What has helped me:
Don’t deny it; Recognize it. There you are, doubt. I see you. Here is a little pat on the head, now I’m gonna get back to work.
Read something by an author you love. If you love them, the chances are the best form of compliment you can give another writer will be true: you’ll be inspired to get back to the page. I'm reading Miranda July's newest for this reason, and b/c Kelly McMasters posted about it. I just finished
’ The Leaving Season and was so moved by how she tells the story of being an artist, getting married, and leaving the city for a rural life that goes wild--in good and difficult, feral ways--and the new life she makes (and the writing self she returns to) with her children during and after the relationship ends. The partner has unpredictable bouts of anger. She opens a bookshop in their small town. They both try to keep up the work of an artistic practice. This is a rare book that doesn't ra-ra divorce or marriage but shows the many facets, leaves in the doubts, and a big bonus for me is the transparent talk about work and money.Share your mess with a friend. Don't keep it a secret. In the process of getting ready to send it over, you'll gain energy to fix some of the things that felt unsurmountable and your friend will likely give you feedback and helpful ideas to get you back into the project.
"It looks easy, but it's really hard," said ten-year-old Inazia, a member of the Jazzy Jumpers, a world champion team out of Brooklyn that has been competing since the 1980s. "I always say I can try [when attempting a new trick], I never say I can't do it." -article on double dutch
In a wild woo-woo turn of events, as I was composing this letter to you A FRIEND FROM MY TIME IN FLORIDA EMAILED ME. We had not spoken in over thirty years but she found my work email and reached out. So soon I will be able to reconnect with a childhood friend.
A Wish For You
Today you will write that thing. You never know what unexpected good fortune will arrive alongside it, but trust that something good will come.
Yours,
TS
P.S.
Can’t explain how well-timed this newsletter was for my “on the rocks” summer writing. I was in a glorious groove and it just….disappeared. Here’s to pulling it back in!
Thank you. I so needed your wisdom.