I went to a writing class last night, a workshop on the personal essay, and the first class I’ve taken in ages.  If you are anything like me, I know what you’re going to say–that I’m already a writer, that I went to school for writing, that I just published a book, so why do I need to take a class? And I am, and did, and have–but still, it doesn’t mean it’s easy, and all of us can use a little kick-start some times. Even Ernest Hemingway thought so. Once, in an interview response to what he might consider the best training for a would-be writer, he suggested that the writer might as well go and hang himself because writing well is impossibly difficult. Once rescued (and the hanging aborted), he’ll in essence, at least have a good story to grapple with (a paraphrase from The Paris Review Interviews, I). So to my point, writing is hard, and doing it well, even harder.

Admittedly, I’m no Hemingway. Far from it in fact and neither do I write fiction nor plan to.  I’m no Joan Didion either, though I would like to some day write as well as her. She said her self in that same book of interviews that it took years to muster the courage to write, and look at her now. We all have our “ordinary instant” but it’s what do we do with it that counts. But, do tell me it gets easier. You see, there is rarely a moment where I feel totally in my groove as a writer, so completely on a roll that I don’t second guess myself. That I don’t question every word, every detail, letter or sentence that I put down; labor over structure, language and sound. That I don’t ask myself: “Who am I fooling?”

On bad writer days, I have all the traits of a writer trying to avoid the work, the one who perhaps should have hung himself first. I hover over my tweet page and email while nursing a first cup of coffee, scan the news and repeatedly check my Facebook throughout the day–you never know who might have said something relevant. I do the dishes, thumb through cookbooks, sweep the floor, shuffle papers, peruse jobs with steady incomes, read about other writers, think about dinner. I even contemplate cleaning out the dreaded, overstuffed closet. Whatever it is I need to do to avoid picking up the pen, I seem to do it.

I know that I’m not unique in this. I’ve heard other writers say the same, writers with multiple books under their belt, those who are experts in their field whatever way you look at it. Some of them devise whole rituals around avoiding the work as if preparing for it at the same time, in the way that a peacock preens and struts preparing for its mate. They take long walks in the woods, go down to the corner cafe for a cup of jo, read the paper, draw. Writer’s block is nothing new, and every writer experiences it, but at some point we have to open the closet door, if we’re ever going to see the light of day (or the inverse). Suppose we look at it another way. Perhaps it’s not an avoidance at all, but rather a setting of the stage, putting things in some kind of order to help make sense of our day, of the life we want to write, the world we want to impart.

Looking out to the patio at my  Meyer lemon tree, I am reminded of the time when I lived at Henry Miller’s house on Partington Ridge in Big Sur, and to the essay I submitted last night (Finding Home) to my newfound class. To a time when a bowl of lemons on my table gave me pause, provided a simple beauty in what was a difficult time in my life, gave me reason enough to paint, to write, to cook with pure abandon. Back then, I devoured everything I could about writers and writing and how to become one.

I guess you could say that I am again preening, finding my comfort zone, the right words, the right moment to lay down the map that is my life. It is not so different than how and why I ended up in Oakland to pursue a writing degree and ultimately, why I found myself on the second floor of a nondescript building south of market in San Francisco on a very cold, monday night, surrounded by other writers. Truth is, I need to write to save myself.

Somewhere along the way, I’ll have to actually stop questioning and simply put words down on paper, no matter what they are or what they lead to. As my uncle, London-based designer Kaffe Fassett, would say, “just get on with it.” Lay down naked in the stream, if you will. True, I have to keep believing, just maybe even find that picture of inspiration, much like that bowlful of lemons, to lead me there. But then there I’ll be. And all I can ever do is sink or swim, not write or write. It may not be easy, but it’s what I’ve got.