Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. 

I started in earnest on a new book today.

It wasn’t one I’ve been meaning to write. For some time now, the list of what I’ve been meaning to write has been the same: a next novel (working title, Church + Main, named for a building project those local to Durham might recognize); a non-fiction children’s book (which has been in process For Some Time Now and shouldn’t take all that long once I set my mind to it (famous last words)); and a work of non-fiction for grown-ups, a quasi-historical effort that tells the story my extraordinary Uncle Bob and, in so doing, also the story of my father’s growing up–which is a fascinating story in and of itself. I am still going to write all of these.

But the book I started in earnest today is none of the above.

No. This book was born the morning after Thanksgiving while I was sitting with my husband in our living room. We were enjoying our coffee and talking with real gratitude about the goodness of God in our lives.

And also the things that have been difficult.

Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself.

Later that afternoon while I was walking the dog, the ideas for this book–stemming from that conversation–would not keep quiet in my brain, and I when I got home I told Bill: I’m going to write a book about that.

And he said: Good.

Fast forward some weeks and here we are, with several pages of notes that came all in a rush and then piecemeal for some time afterward. All I did for several hours this morning was to organize these ideas, to figure out how and where they went together and so create a framework for a book.

Shortly, I will type the ideas into a kind of outline (as the grid situation I’ve got for myself won’t do for others) and send them off to a pastor friend who has agreed to give them a look.

And then we’re off to the keyboard, where this skeleton of ideas will gain ligament and sinew, muscle and skin.

It’s no big deal, right? I’ve done this before. Writing, these days, is my job.

The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever.

But for a moment there at the beginning, with my pens waiting, the notebook open and the laptop, some source books within reach, I felt it again: the doubt that, it seems, must come with any creative writing endeavor.

Should this be done? And can I do it?

Can I? 

There’s only one way to find out.

Every morning you climb several flights of stairs, enter your study, open the French doors, and slide your desk and chair out into the middle of the air. The desk and chair float thirty feet from the ground, between the crowns of maple trees…. Birds fly under your chair. In spring, when the leaves open in the maples’ crowns, your view stops in the treetops just beyond the desk; yellow warblers hiss and whisper on the high twigs, and catch flies. Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair. 

***

This post comes to you with gratitude to the amazing Annie Dillard, from whose The Writing Life the italicized passages come.

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You probably find this hard to believe, but really, really and truly, I love you. You are my Absolute Favorite of All the Appliances in the House.

I know, I know. The crimes I commit against you are legion. Like leaving you out all the time, plugged in or not, languishing in all your uprightness in the middle of the living room, the upstairs hall, my bedroom.

Bill hates that, too. But I’ve told him countless times (have you never heard me?) that it’s because momentarily– really, any minute now– I’m going to use you again. I haven’t finished with it, I tell him. You, Dear Vacuum, are Far Too Important to stash away prematurely.

Yes, I realize that I’ve run over your cord a time or two– and the cord has those nicks to prove it. But none of it is anything a little electrical tape can’t fix, and it only happened (every one of those times) because I was so intent on making good use of all you have to offer.

And yes, okay, there’s the banging that sometimes happens– like into the leg of the dining room or coffee table. But these are Entirely Accidental, I assure you. And also, I had really believed that you could fit into that space that– turns out– you couldn’t quite fit into.

I’m sorry about that.

You have fallen down the stairs a time or two. Most Unfortunate– and almost always at the hands of the children (who, it must be admitted, do not love you Nearly As Much as I do) because they say they find it difficult to hold on to you and use your hose attachment simultaneously as they vacuum the stairs.

And yet, Dear Vacuum. And yet. You Still Work.

I thought we were at the end of things yesterday. I did. It was your most recent interaction with the bottom of the steps that did it– that seemed to dislodge your on-off button and render you unresponsive. Bill mentioned the word “Dyson” to me, and I will admit that I was tempted. But I’ve taken you apart before. What was wrong with giving it another go round? You withstand it so patiently (even though you are– and I’m not meaning to be critical here, though it is trying at times– often reluctant to surrender whatever it is that is clogging up your hose), and today I kept careful count of the screws and Put Them All Back– which we both know hasn’t always been the case.

I didn’t want to risk being without you– not for love or money. You truly are wonderful. Better than the iron (is there even a comparison?), better than the microwave. Better than the washer and dryer put together. You willingly consume ficus leaves and pine needles, omnipresent and drifting seeds from the birch tree, footprints and lint and bread crumbs and the clay that comes in cleats from the soccer field. You fill your clear and bagless canister with unidentifiable and loathesome refuse from every carpeted corner of my home. How can I begin to thank you?

With you, there is restored order. With you, there is regained peace of mind. And when finished with your tasks, you so obligingly leave behind you those wonderful lines in the carpet that declare your recent presence, your voracious appetite, and a subliminal (pun intended) message: This Is Clean.

Yes, you are my Favorite. My Treasured Chore of Choice. I have loved you since before I owned you, since the earliest days of my marriage when I owned a vacuum that was infinitely inferior to you but almost just as effective.

Now today you are mended. After a dark and bleak night during which I could not finish my vacuuming and you remained Out, you are in (nearly) full repair. The requirements? A screwdriver, nimble fingers, a stake from the croquet set, and my undying devotion.

Yes, Dear Vacuum, I love you. You truly have been a great gift over the years as the children have grown, the world is relentlessly tracked indoors, and the dog is shedding again.

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