Write For Your Dead

Some thoughts and then some recommendations and then one writing prompt

For Sarah

*Photo by Johannes Plenio from Pexels

This is my year, she yelled on New Year’s Eve, confetti in her hair, as she clinked her plastic champagne flute, and poured a little out for her homies.

This is going to be my year, for sure, she wrote in her Dream Journal, ignoring the ink stains along the edge of her hand. February already. So many ideas, so little time. No matter. She’d make a list and crush each item like crushing a beer can against her forehead.

This. Is Going. To Be. My Year. She said it through gritted teeth, the habit of daily affirmations as pointless as anything else, not just because the calendar had flipped to March and all resolutions were fading, but because a friend from grad school, brilliant beyond belief, had taken her life.

And also, it was 2020. It wasn’t going to be anyone’s year.

Okay, I confess that the “she” from above is really me. Mostly. I haven’t stayed up on New Year’s Eve since my son was born 9 years ago. But it sounds like something Young Penny would do so let’s go with it.

When I think of the beginning of lockdown in 2020, I remember staring wide-eyed at the news, my hair disheveled and a not-so-mild state of panic brewing in my chest. In reality, I look back at our “artifacts” of that time and see lessons plans for my son’s e-learning and assignments I built on the fly as I converted all of my classes to online. I see coherent emails and obligations met—all time-stamped for proof. I held it together for a little while it seems.

I don’t know when I stopped reading or writing, though I know that I lost my ability to focus on reading very early on. Survival Mode is different from grieving, of course. It turns out you can do experience both at the same time.

I also don’t remember when I began to emerge from hibernation, but I know it involved the practice of early morning writing: Morning Pages.

*See the below meme of a Richard Scarry image (credit unknown) for an idea of how I typically cope with emotions when I’m not writing.

Image text: Me describing how I handle my feelings: Squish Cat squashes the garbage down with his squasher-downer.

What Are Morning/Mourning Pages?

I’ve been waking up at 5 AM to write since my son was a baby, when I realized that sunrise was my only period of (mostly) uninterrupted silence. (Shoutout to the #5amwritersclub on Twitter!)

In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Cameron insists that writing three long-hand pages—Morning Pages—first thing each day is crucial to an “artistic recovery.” These Morning Pages don’t have to make sense, and no one will ever read them. I’m simplifying her ideas here, but I think you get the idea.

Cameron writes, “Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page...and then do three more pages tomorrow.”

I had been writing Morning Pages without realizing it. It was such a part of my daily routine that even loss didn’t stop me. The day after my father’s death and on the day of his memorial service, I woke as early as ever to write. My alarm never stopped chiming through the next series of losses, no matter how little sleep I’d gotten the night before. Writing in the almost-morning calmed me and forced me to reckon with my feelings in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s hard now to imagine enduring those very rough days without blank space and empty pages.

Writing about loss has a way of helping us remember what feels too painful to remember. It’s not an easy kind of writing and there are still some losses I can only write about from a distance. Like me and Sarah, my former roommate and always-sister—I am still working through that loss and probably always will be.

This is how Morning Pages merged into Mourning Pages. Lots of sadness in those early pages, sure, but also weird dream-like images of ghostly women and haunted dresses. I doodled roadside crash sites and made collages full of zombified Sylvia Plaths. The Mourning Pages don’t judge. Eventually, joy and laughter seeped into the pages, too.

Image: Me and Sarah on New Year’s Eve (circa 2000?) We were happy, I think.

Write For Your Dead (and Your Living)

In How to Write An Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee writes, “Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write.”

Yes.

What I know is that writing about loss, grieving on the open page, has been my lifeboat. And since it sure seems like we’re all in a collective state of trauma and mourning, I also know that I’m not writing these Mourning Pages alone.

Where to begin? Mourn your parents and friends, your former teachers and idols. Grieve for all the losses as they puddle at your feet. Jobs and houses and pets. Even the long lost versions of you that you barely recall.

Write for yourself especially. That’s the one who needs it the most.

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This is where my Teacher and Bookworm selves come out to play. At the bottom of every new post, I’ll share what I’m currently reading and offer up a writing prompt if you feel so inclined.

Currently reading: Notes on An Execution by Danya Kukafka

Favorite poem of the week: “New Year” by Kate Baer

Article I can’t stop thinking about: “The Radical Woman Behind ‘Goodbye Moon” by Anna Holmes

Writing Prompt for your Mourning Pages:

Start with a list.

Start by listing all the things you’ve lost: car keys, sunglasses, the toothpaste cap. Ease into the more substantial losses, the loves, the dreams, and the friends. Call it “Things I’ve Lost.” (See Brian Arundel’s “The Things I’ve Lost”)

The next time you write, choose one “thing” from your list and expand from there.

And if I’ve figured out the Comments feature on Substack, you are welcome to share your list there.

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And if you haven’t read the little introductory post yet, start there:

Mourning Pages