Last week I had the privilege of hosting July’s Virtual Writing Camp with Julie Jordan Scott (yes, that would be me). Writing Campers from across the US and the UK gathered each day to write, to share, to see what it was our virtual campfire would have them come to know.
One thing Writing Camp had me come to remember was – I don’t have to do it all simultaneously. Summer requires me to focus on my children more. They are underfoot (hand, steering wheel), etc. They need and deserve my attention.
I also feel compelled to continue to move forward in my business and my creative play, so I wasn’t going to sacrifice writing camp in the Summer this year. I just wasn’t going to do it.
What was sacrificed? Chores. Dishes were left in the sink and became part of the grist for writing.
I wanted my students to write of the ordinary, the every day, to come to see how extraordinary it all could be. I used my own dirty dishes as an example.
I wrote a group of fragments and a sentence while observing the dishes that were left in my sink overnight. I didn’t think as I wrote, I just wrote. And then, when we gathered around the “campfire” I read aloud:
“Dirty dishes in the sink. My penance. My calling. My task tangled in dried Italian dressing and slivers of carrots glued to stoneware from dried up oil.”
I asked a simple question:
What did you notice about those sentences?
I didn’t expect the torrent of responses I received, everything from “so visual, I could picture it,” to a discussion of my devotion to art above housekeeping and a zen, mindful approach to chores. I was unprepared for the thought, the care, the reflection and how each observer of my words seemed to project their own expectations and experiences of dirty dishes onto my experience of dirty dishes.
In short: it was a tremendous creative moment of experience and re-experience.
I then had them take a “writing field trip” to an ordinary spot in their houses and to do the same thing: write a sentence or two about it, stream of consciousness style.
The writing that came out made ride a metaphoric submarine as we lifted our word-periscopes into each other’s homes.
The next day we once again gathered around the campfire and we joked about my dishes.
They asked me if I had taken a photo – I had. I also took a photo after the dishes were washed.
It shows lots of bubbles as well as a few other salient features of my sink.
It makes me with I paid more attention to flylady before taking the photo. I even thought of restaging it after scrubbing out my sink.
The writing I do, though, is real and raw and unscrubbed or scrubbed depending upon when you happen to show up. I might be in the midst of prepping for an art show or teaching a new class or leading a writing fire or taking an impromptu road trip with my children or friends.
It is just fine. The dishes will get done. The books are being written and the lessons are being taught.
Sometimes dirty dishes are in sink are just dirty dishes in the sink.
= = =
Interested in August's Virtual Writing Camp? Check it out and register now to reserve your seat. We begin August 8.
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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott
This is post 15 of 31 in July for the Ultimate Blog Challenge ~
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