Betsy Ray on Murmuring Lake
People were always saying to Margaret, ‘Well, Julia sings and Betsy writes. Now what is little Margaret going to do?’
Margaret would smile politely, for she was very polite, but privately she stormed to Betsy with flashing eyes, ‘I’m not going to do anything. I want to just live. Can’t people just live?’
‘Of course,’ Betsy soothed her. But she could never understand.
—Betsy and Joe, Maud Hart Lovelace
Lately I am remembering Margaret’s words – Margaret, the little sister who hangs around on the fringes of Betsy’s and Julia’s much more exciting lives. She is quiet, sober, thoughtful, a loner – she prefers playing with her pets and taking walks with her father to playing with other children. She doesn’t ask for much from life, not like Julia with her dreams of becoming a world-famous opera singer, or Betsy, whose dreams of writing the great American novel mirror my own. She wants to “just live.” And lately I’m wondering: Can that be enough? And also: How much writing can one do without a good dose of “just living”?
Lately I am wondering if I’m doing enough living to infuse my writing with any kind of spark. I am hiding out in my office, and in stacks and stacks of great books, even more than usual. I am reading other people’s stories while often failing to live my own. And then when I come to the page, I find I don’t have much, if anything, to say.
I don’t want to be lazy or undisciplined. I believe in the value of showing up to the page (or screen) regularly, if not always daily. I am grateful to have pockets of time and space to write. And yet lately I find myself running low on words, ideas and energy. It would certainly be easier to give up writing and “just live.”
But like Betsy (and her creator, Maud), I’ve always been a writer. And like both of them, I hope to learn how to balance the writing with all the pleasures and necessities of “just living.”
*Image from The Five Borough Book Review
cakes, tea and dreams 
A quote from the best movie ever- I think you know which one. 🙂 “Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.” -Kathleen Kelly
Thank you for posting this quote–I had quite forgotten about it!
A quote from the best movie ever. I think you know which one. 🙂 “Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.” -Kathleen Kelly
STEVE ALLEN: Jack….How long did it take you to write On the Road?
JACK KEROUAC: Three weeks….
ALLEN: Three weeks! That’s amazing! How long were you on the road itself?
KEROUAC: Seven years
ALLEN: Seven years! I was on the road once for three weeks and it took me seven years to write about it!
I am always trying to find that balance between living and writing, or living and planning (my downfall probably more than writing, alas.) It’s great to hear that other people struggle with that too.
Oh, it’s such a tricky balance. I find myself in the same place as you, these days. I still blog but I’m not working on the writing projects that matter. It’s time to get to the bottom of that.
Wonderful image to show that dilemma. I am only starting to commit to writing, but I also feel that if I am living the things I want to write about I can’t put energy to find the quiet creativity times. If I devote time to creativity I am missing on things. But maybe with me it’s about eternal rush, the crave to live more and more?
Warm thoughts on finding the balance!
Great post. Exactly how I am feeling right now… low on words to write and the energy to write them.
I love the questions you are asking here, Katie. I think you’d enjoy A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller, about living and telling a better story. One of my favorite passages, which I think I have told you about before, reads:
“A lot of people think a writer has to live in order to write, has to meet people and have a rich series of experiences or his work will become dull. But that is drivel. It’s an excuse a writer uses to take the day off, or the week or the month off for that matter. The thinking is, if we go play Frisbee in the park, we’re going to have a thousand words busting out of us when we get back to the house. We’re going to write all kinds of beautiful prose about playing Frisbee. It’s never worked for me. Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer while still in her mother’s womb, wrote one of her books in a concrete cell. She says most of what a writer needs to really live they can find in a book. People who live good stories are too busy to write about them. Nobody ever strapped a typewriter to the back of an elephant and wrote a novel while hunting wild game. Nobody except for Hemmingway. But let’s not talk about Hemmingway.”
I don’t comment on blogs very often (the ultimate introvert) but this one really challenged me. I tend to submerge myself in the worlds I find in my books, only coming up for air on the odd occasion to do enough laundry to get by, or help my husband pay the bills. I actually fasted from pleasure reading for Lent. But now I’m underwater again. Even so, I was caught by your assertion that you wanted to LIVE life and not just read about it. I am challenged to do the same.
I don’t comment on blogs very often (the ultimate introvert) but this one really challenged me. I tend to submerge myself in the worlds I find in my books, only coming up for air on the odd occasion to do enough laundry to get by, or help my husband pay the bills. I actually fasted from pleasure reading for Lent. But now I’m underwater again. Even so, I was caught by your assertion that you wanted to LIVE life and not just read about it. I am challenged to do the same. Thanks for your thought-provoking posts.
What I admire most about your writing is how you make daily life sparkle.
This may not be true for every writer, but I guess you need a good dose of “just living” to cultivate this special talent.