New Socks

I have a tendency (okay, a compulsion) to browse when I'm anywhere that has shops, and the more unusual, the better. Today I was at Tyson's Corner--an unlikely place for an epiphany, and as I browsed through the shops, I realized that I was wallowing in, if not the slough of despond, at least the slough of ennui.

I've discovered that I'm prone to that sort of thing. I had been getting less and less enthusiastic about cooking over the past year and was of late seizing any excuse not to, no matter how tenuous the pretext. On our return from our visit to Tucson, however--where my job had been to prepare meals every day for a week --I found that I'd experienced a renaissance of interest--purely from doing that. All at once, it wasn't a chore anymore. I started looking for new recipes, shopping for ingredients, figuring out how things fit together...It was fun again.

The same thing applies to writing. It's really easy to fall off the wagon and not write one day. Unfortunately, that 'one day' starts multiplying, until the writing becomes a distant chore that you don't enjoy anymore. My brain bogs down in an empty hole; I'm not thinking anything new and it shows in my work.

Now you may be wondering where all this circumlocution is leading, and how it connects to Tyson's Corner. My epiphany was that I found a book in my browsing. It was a children's book, called "New Socks", and it's a writing manual. Not really, but it is as much of a writing how-to as any other book in Barnes & Noble's labyrinthine stacks. It relates the experience and excitement of a little chick (maybe a duck--it was yellow and had a beak) who has a new pair of socks. Hardly "War and Peace"-- or even Strunk & White.

However, as I paged through the book (I DO like children's books, particularly if I can put an adult spin on them) I started thinking again of Billy Collins and his Looney Tunes inspiration. If we're going to write, we need to foster that same kind of excitement, that same kind of wide-eyed "Wow!" with which children (and chicks) view their world. We've got to let our worldview be upended and enhanced by things as simple as a pair of new socks, or as complex as a presidential election. Sitting in front of my laptop doesn't make me a writer--at least not a writer with anything to say. Getting out in the world and tasting it, seeing new things and embracing them, thinking about something in a new way and writing about it: that's what gives me a reason--and a responsibility--to put my work out there for others to see.

All I needed was a pair of new socks. Read the book.