Writing into Paradox

A personal essay from me + a writing prompt for you.

Hi friends, 

When I put out the question recently if you’d like to see more personal essay material here, what I heard back was a strong yes, so today I’m trying a new format (in addition to the usual letters which aren’t going anywhere): a personal essay from me and a writing prompt for you. 

Living—and Writing—Into Exquisite Absurdity

[CW: pregnancy loss]

Time can be tricky. Each day holds not only the present, but many past lives in memories and anniversaries. And sometimes they collide in strange ways.

There’s a day like that for me that comes every summer. This year, it was a beautiful morning—perfect porch weather, strong coffee, a birthday party on the calendar for later. On this day in the present, I hold a newborn in my arms—our gentle giant with the baby sideburns and budding smile. 

Yet slide back a few years, and this day also marks the birthday that should have been: my first pregnancy. What should be a happy day on our calendar—circled in sharpie confetti—is now a non-event, a ghost memory of a future that should have been, but isn’t. 

Slide back just one year, and this day also marks the loss that shouldn’t have been: my third pregnancy. The very same day we said goodbye to the family dog, and I had to explain death to my 18-month-old again and again, just when I understood it the least.

What I remember: my dad gently bearing up the weight of their golden-hearted black lab into the back of the van because he could no longer use his legs. The last time we saw him. A day of many lasts. 

And yet this year, a gorgeous midsummer morning, baby sleeping on my chest, peaches ripening in the windowsill, a mess of toddler shoes and river sand by the door.

What is to be made of all of this? How can a single day hold so much loss, and so much life? How are we supposed to feel in the face of such exquisite absurdity, as past and present intermingle, as do sorrow and joy? 

Life is like this: a great shimmering color wheel of emotions that jostle against each other in surprising, sometimes unsettling ways. Time holds many memories, and anniversaries overlap and overlay the present. Life, death, and resurrection cycle through our days like the turning colors of a kaleidoscope. We weave in and out of bouts of brimming-over joy, impossible hope, and fragile fear. 

Life is absurd—because so much happens and so little makes sense. 

And it is exquisite—because even as the kaleidoscope turns, look at all that color. 

What is to be made of all this? Isn’t that the essential question. If the call of the writer is to notice, to witness, then it becomes our call to wrangle with paradox because paradox is the experience of life. 

And because life is the inexhaustible subject of all writing, the best writing will always honestly engage these exquisite absurdities. The best writing will always openly engage paradox.

One of the best prompts I can offer for taking your writing deeper is this: How might you engage paradox in your work?

If you feel stuck in your writing—unable to reconcile the gorgeous and the gutting in your work—rather than resist what seems like dissonance, lean into it—and see what you discover. 

If your writing feels flat and one-dimensional, perhaps turn the kaleidoscope—just a few degrees, even—to see how a story might be complexified when contrasts are brought into view. 

Or, reconsider the emotional here-and-now of your reader in their reading experience. How might your work meet and reach them if their current plane of experience is life, death, or resurrection? Would you say it any differently, if writing one-to-one to someone who is living on the opposite end of the color wheel? How might this fresh nuance texture your work?

Please note the invitation of paradox is to wrangle, never to solve for x. I am not capable of reconciling the many ways life and death exist in conversation. I don’t have the cosmic clearance to access this kind of wisdom, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims they do. The call of our varied exquisite absurdities is not to bring them into perfect resolution, but to witness them, and see what the light might reveal this time. 

At least, every midsummer, that’s where you’ll find me. 

Until next time,

Take heart. Write on. You got this.

P.S. // A Blessing for Writers

SLANT LETTER is about both craft + soul care for the creative life. So for each issue, I want to speak this blessing for all of us anxious, ambitious, internet-exhausted writing folk.

If you’ve found something that speaks to you here…

Please pass it on! This letter is this editor's off-hours labor of love. Your word of recommendation is how our little community grows.