OCTOBER 25, 2018 // 3
SCRATCHPAD
Writers: Be not
afraid of badness
By ERICK BENGEL
COAST WEEKEND
M
COURTESY KIM STAFFORD
Oregon Poet Laurate Kim Stafford.
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y recent email
exchange with Kim
Stafford, Oregon’s
Poet Laureate, was one of
those interviews in which ev-
ery response could be turned
into a story, the deleted
scenes as compelling as the
feature presentation.
Sadly, given the limita-
tions of space and time, most
of the material ended up on
the cutting room floor.
For example, I asked:
What’s one piece of advice
you wish you’d heard as you
were starting out as a writer?
His answer:
“The ongoing process of
writing is far more important
than any particular piece
of writing, no matter how
‘successful’ it may seem. Get
into the process for the long
haul, and cultivate ways that
writing can serve your sense
of well-being each day —
like physical exercise.
“I tell my students now, if
you write every day, the writ-
ing you do may not always be
stupendous — but it will al-
ways be a better day for your
engagement with the self, the
language, and the world.”
This imperative to make
writing a daily practice,
especially if you hope to
make a life out of it, came up
again on Sunday at the Can-
non Beach Library, where
Stafford read, sang, played
guitar and contemplated that
elemental human function
— storytelling — during a
Northwest Authors Series
event.
He spoke of his own
THOMAS ROTT PHOTO
Features Editor Erick Bengel.
practice, which begins every
morning when he takes a
walk and sits down with a
page.
“If there’s something that
troubles me, something I’m
afraid of, something I regret,
something I’m angry about,
I just say to myself, ‘I’ll
look at that in my writing
time.’ And then I do what I
call ‘settling my accounts
emotionally.’” As one of his
students said: “Put your rage
on the page. Don’t fight it;
write it.” In this way, Stafford
said, he can return to neutral.
“Happiness,” he pointed
out, comes from the Old
Norse “hap” and shares the
cognate with “happens.”
“Happiness,” he said, “is
when you come into accord
with what happens: If it’s
dark, you look at it, you take
on what you can, you have
relation with what happens,
and then you go forward.”
Afterward, Stafford pre-
sided over a meeting of local
writers. Terry Brooks, author
of the “Shannara” fantasy
series who lives part-time in
Cannon Beach, said he needs
to write every day to be a
pleasant person, to feel sane.
A serious writer should do
the same, Brooks said. Make
time for it. “If you need to
give something up, give
something up.”
This means doing what
is, at least for me, the most
masochistic part of writing:
staring at my own bad unfin-
ished work — really looking
at how rough and draft-y and
bad it is — and continuing to
write anyway.
Being in accord with
what happens while writing
means confronting head on
my malformed thoughts
and mangled sentences, the
literary tripe only I could
produce, the cringey drivel
I fear would make my loved
ones give up on me were
they ever to read it.
Not to worry, I try to reas-
sure myself. It can always be
smoothed out later. Trust the
process. Just write, every day
if possible.
And it’s always a better
day, Stafford said, when
something comes forth from
the inner life. CW