If you have to be sure…

Last updated on: July 25, 2011 at 9:21 pm by Sarah Babbs

If you have to be sure… 2011-07-25T21:21:18-04:00 Sarah Babbs

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“I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don’t write”

– from Berryman by W.S. Merwin

When I go too long without writing, I get restless. I get so restless that it makes me irritable. More irritable than usual. Something’s off and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Something’s off and it makes me want to eat every piece of chocolate in sight.

“So,” you’re thinking, “then write something”. Yes, if only it were that simple.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that I am incredibly undisciplined when it comes to just about everything writing. I complain all the time about how I don’t have time to write, but then when Maggie takes a nap and I’m free, I feel guilty if I write instead of washing dishes or folding laundry. Or, on bad days, I fritter away the time watching TV or reading stupid articles on the internet.

When Atticus gives me time to write, I have nothing to say. Although I suppose that’s not entirely true. At any given time I’ll have three or four ideas for posts swirling about in the old gray matter. Disjointed ideas floating around in my head, waiting to be cobbled together into something worth reading.

What Merwin’s talking about in the poem above is what I experience too. I wonder if anything I write is “really any good”. By my own standards, I think most of my posts are pretty good; I wouldn’t post something I thought was garbage.

Just because I think it’s good, doesn’t mean it is. Ultimately though, this isn’t what keeps me from writing, though it might be what keeps me from writing more controversial posts.

If I’m brutally honest I have to admit that I’m not writing for you. Don’t misunderstand me, I am so glad for the blog friends I have made, and I love all of your comments and feedback dearly. What I mean, is that even if no one read this blog, I would still write it. I would write it because it needs to be written.

I need the release of the written word. I crave the clarity of seeing my thoughts before me in words. I long for the day when I can tell the stories that need to be told, when I can face the pain of my past and put it down in words.

Often, when this blog is silent, it’s because I’m nearly bursting with a story that begs to be told, but I’m too chicken to tell it. The “thin places” I long to share with all of you, the heart that is scarred and redeemed, but with so much left to explore.

There’s hesitation because people do read this blog, and as I learned from recent posts on other blogs, the internet is often an unforgiving place.

The other truth is that I am undisciplined. I have the time to write, if I would only take it. I have a wonderful husband who would allow me this time. I don’t want to write on a schedule. I don’t want to get up an hour earlier to write before breakfast. I want to write when and how it suits me, which of course does not at all suit the life of a wife and mother.

My lack of discipline so often means that good ideas go unexplored, and the stories that are waiting to be told are put off again and again.

Merwin is right, we can never be sure if anything we write is any good, but as anyone with a hear for writing will tell you, to write is in the bones. It simply must be done, even if it is not particularly earth-shattering, or even if it is flat out wrong.

So please bear with me dear friends, as I’m figuring out how to carve out the time for this passion, and learning just how sure I need to be before I can press publish.

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