Change Your Life as a Writer in 5 Minutes by Seeing the Light

I do an exercise in Write or Die where I have people write what they think they would say to a listening presence if they knew they had five minutes left to live.

I love this exercise because it cuts out (all the) middle(wo)men. One reason I was finally able to write a book was that I had set up a line of communication between me and a sacred listening presence. This was a way of dealing with one of the biggest blocks I’d had—the fear of hurting my mom. This fear would keep her in my head while I wrote. This fear had her commenting on the things I put on paper, ultimately silencing me. (Mind you, these were things she was saying in my head, not so much her actual voice—I heard these things even after she was dead!) When I shifted to writing as a form of prayerful communication, the words flowed.

People can develop stutters when they are afraid to speak, afraid of what others are going to say when they speak, and essentially I had developed a stutter as a writer. I was supremely self-conscious and hyper-aware of how others might react to the things I wrote.

Those middle(wo)men, those commenters, are the death of good story. Writing becomes a tap dance when you are trying to please instead of trying to communicate.

Yesterday I tried living out this exercise. I walked along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz imagining that the Great Voice had just informed me I had five minutes left to live. I looked at the people walking in the other direction; I looked at their faces, their eyes, and I thought, I see you. I thought, You have no idea I have just a few minutes left to live. You are one of the last people I get to see. This is amazing. You are so perfect. Everything I saw was weighted with meaning: the ocean, the sky, the people getting high in their cars as they sat and watched the waves break.

I imagined what it would be like to be walking along like this, the big clock ticking. I imagined the light getting brighter, closer. I realized I was not all that scared. There was no raging against the dying of the light, because it wasn’t the light that was dying. I realized that everything would drop away because of the home-base beauty of the light, and I realized that, in my last five minutes, I would ask to be held. I would see that the slide into light was the bookend to the hard way we are born. I saw that the end was easy; the end was the reward for living.

What if every time I sat down to write, I imagined each word might be my last? Would that change what I focused on? Would that change my sentences? Would I start to leave punctation behind? Use single words as sentences?

It’s Christmas Eve.

I didn’t go Christmas shopping this year. My daughter came to visit me in Boston, and I took her to Martha’s Vineyard. I told her that was her Christmas present, and she said that was perfect. Gifts are my love language, but gifts bought out of obligation are boring and thick with headache. If you are my friend and I did not buy you a present this year, it’s not because I don’t love you. It’s because I’m not spending money in the same way I used to. It’s because the ocean is full of plastic.

I’m always looking for presents to give you, and I know you are doing the same. I feel it.

Thank you for being in my life.

xoxo