A Loyalty Rundown

It's been a month, and we've had some incredible pieces up already in this series on women and writing, both broadly defined, The Loyalty of Water. So here's a recap of what's happened so far, in case you've missed anything. There is more to come! And if you are interested in contributing yourself, find me via the contact page. New voices are always welcome.

The project itself:

There will be moments of pristine performance, true, moments when the hours on this project, the hours on that, the hours for the immediately-paying-work, the hours needed for this person, and the hours for myself, all carefully arranged and maximized, will look like an ancient Greek mosaic.

Those will only be brief moments. The rest of the time, things will more closely approximate a bag of skittles emptied on the kitchen floor. Maybe two bags. Of different flavors.

Allison Landa, Living with the Scratches:

And speaking of judging, let’s look at the Mary Oliver quote from which this experiment takes its name: creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. I don’t have that loyalty. My loyalty is to other things: lying on the couch, for one. Buttered popcorn, for another. The Food Network, and I can go on and on – but these are easy loyalties, cheap and simply won.

Kristina Weaver, Alphabet Fridge Magnets:

Bless you, toddler, for teaching me tolerance (as she licks off the floor the rice she just dumped there). 1/4/14

Lita Kurth, A Yin-Yang Tattoo:

I’m no Proust. Locked away in a closet for years, I produce not Remembrance of Things Past, but champion neuroses. We each must seek our unique balance; that’s been said many times. For me, community and family are vital, but I need to keep taking my own temperature, as it were, to make sure I’m not lopsided—or too lopsided for too long. At least, now, I have a constant reminder of the goal.

Melissa Sipin, Why Write?:

These are all the reasons why I write. But it doesn’t exactly answer the body of that second question: what are you goals as a writer? Especially when stacked against the backdrop of this descriptive data of who succeeds in the publishing world, and who does not, why continue writing with the goal of publishing? What is the end goal of publication? With publication comes inevitable rejection; rejection is the staple food of a writer’s life. And so are sacrifices. What do we sacrifice as writers, as women writers, as writers of color, as women writers of color? 

Kim Golden, That Old Familiar Feeling:

And picture this: an open-plan office in Stockholm on a gray winter day. I’m sitting in front of my computer screen writing product copy for a mascara. Apparently this one is different from the other mascaras I’ve written about. This one volumes and lengthens…though the others do that too. My To Do List still has way too many items on it, but I’m not making any progress. There are too many meetings, too many deadlines, too many people interrupting, just when I’m about to think of a new way to describe lashes. I tell myself I’ll write during my lunch break, but then someone schedules another meeting, so my planned hour of writing while having a sandwich and a latte dwindles to a quickie 20-minute lunch, no notebook in sight?

I’ll write at home…

Rebecca Foreman, Fermentables:

It’s magical how such simple ingredients—barley, water, hops, and yeast—can result in such different flavors and textures depending on where the ingredients come from and how they are added to the process. I feel a wonderful delirium when I think about beer. But when I get down to brewing, I focus strictly on quantities, temperatures, and times. Brewing requires discipline as well as devotion. Discipline is no fun without devotion, and devotion doesn’t take you anywhere without discipline. I’ve found this true in many pursuits, particularly writing.

We're doing pretty well for our first month. Thanks for checking it out!