Much of my life, I have been obsessed with a longing for home. Literally. I have bought, swapped, remodeled, and left so many houses, apartments, attics, cottages, and even a half-remodeled haunted Victorian, that I find myself unable to remember them all.

My late teens through my late thirties are striated with couches, pedestal sinks, paint cans, a jack hammer, a neighbor who blasted rap music every Sunday, a neighbor named Halcyon, a neighbor who gave me a Van Briggle pitcher, a spontaneous courtyard party after an earthquake, two picket fences, neighborhood watch meetings, weekend graffiti paint-outs, Montecito garden parties, Easter egg hunts (one before I had Lilly), four gardens, four cats, three dogs, rats skittering (Gainesville and Montecito), seals barking (Bainbridge), garage doors opening, Dad’s voice calling “Jenny, are you home?”

And through it all, there I stood, echoing with longing.

For near 30 years, this terribly fierce longing baffled me. Why did I last only one night in the college dorm, renting a tiny furnished apartment the next day, then arranging and rearranging the furniture? Why did I acquire a Rhodesian Ridgeback at 23 and walk that dog past the mansions of Hancock Park before work every morning and evening, not because I dreamed of being rich or married, but because I ached for what those houses represented to me?

Safety. Dependableness. Belonging.

Looking back at my younger me, I feel such tenderness for her appetite. But, at the time, I just felt weird.

I made myself wrong for my longing to belong; I wanted so much to feel at home, with myself and with others, that I didn’t realize how nearly universal the longing for home is.

I didn’t realize I exiled myself from belonging my making my longing for home wrong.

This morning, taking a break from struggling to write this – my writing skills are not equal to the force of feeling roiling in me – I realized I have lived here, on this island, in this house, the longest of any – 9 years.

I have lived here not because it is my dream house or because I love it but because I, slowly, became determined to stay put.

By staying put, imperfectly and with resistance, I have, of course, partially met a part of my longing. I have used staying put as a way to come to myself.

Yet another part of my longing still burbles with hankering: the part of me that is ready to invite myself to belong. To open my home (metaphorically) to others, and to the Other.

Because, doh, the gravel bottom of my longing is for that which can never be known.

Or as the great Rumi said,

I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.

Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

I’ll stop now and go listen to the echo, but instead of looping back on itself and losing me in the process, I follow it… maybe, for one breath, all the way home.

To be a writer is to be a translator.

Think about it—when writing, you attempt to translate the shadowy bits that dart and loop around your brain, that whistle for your attention and then immediately hide—you attempt to render them into black marks on a white page.

Black marks on white paper that capture the feelings, images and memories that made you want to write in the first place.

Only you rarely (very) get the translation exactly right. There is almost always a gap between what you want to write and what actually comes out.

An extreme example of this gap is when I was in college and I would smoke pot and then be oh-so-certain my ideas were beyond brilliant… this was going to be the best screenplay - better than Chinatown- until I read my nonsense chicken scratch the next morning.

Big gap.

A more subtle example is the copy of Rilke poetry on my desk. On the left hand page is the original German, on the right, an English translation. Each says something similar but not exactly the same.

Small gap.

One of the most freeing things I teach writers at my Taos retreat is that every writer has to learn to live – and even thrive– in the gap.

Creating actually happens in the gap.

You actually can’t create any place else. So it behooves you (love that word) to learn to tolerate the discomfort of being in the gap, to see it as business as usual, to understand that hugging your Ugly doll, pacing, and making soft grunting noises while in the gap is not only normal, it can be highly helpful.

But what do most of us do?  We tell ourselves that being in the gap means that something is wrong.

We tell ourselves real writers never struggle – they see a scene and record it, like watching a movie. Good writers get a flicker of an idea and render it whole, like a pig on a spit. Successful writers do not take three hours to write a short blog post. (sigh.)

The main difference between a productive writer and a tortured one? Productive writers understand they will rarely (very) make an exact translation and they keep writing anyway.

They also understand that asking, “Is this any good?” is an urgent invitation to eat an entire Sara Lee pound cake.

Instead, they focus on what they can do.  “I will keep my butt in my chair for 45 minutes and each time my attention wanders to if what I’m writing is any good, I will bring it back to my writing.”  Or “I will read poetry for fifteen minutes before bed twice this week and copy one poem out.” These are examples of Conditions of Enoughness. They help. A lot.

By focusing on what you can do, that is dependent only on you, you build the trust to hang out in the gap where wild, wonderful and really fun stuff happens.

You can always write; you cannot never predict how well because well is an assessment. As is good, brilliant, fantastic and I’m a good writer because I got 45 blog comments.

Back away from the assessments, get comfortable in the gap, bring a cookie if you need one but not an entire pound cake, and most of all:

Focus on what you can do and you’ll be amazed at what you get done.

P.S. Be sure and check out what Susan and Hiro and Mahala have to say because they are brilliant. And yes, that is an assessment. Info on Taos retreat here – only two spots left. Conditions of Enoughness are explained here.