The Musings of a Midwest Creative
I've always loved the word miscellaneous
How does anyone understand what anyone else wants from them?
How do I know if what feels magical to me will move an inch in someone else’s world?
I wonder if I missed out on some writerly quality that understands when an idea or an angle will resonate with an audience. When it will matter. I worry about it a lot as I try to choose topics to write about and headlines to use and social media copy to attract future readers.
What are those magic words that might draw you into conversation with me?
I’ll write anyway.
I feel—buried deep under the suffocating doubt and TV static and discomfort that rests between my fingertips and my mind—the notion that if I can just live in the purity of making my thoughts legible on the page, the other partner in this dance of words will always show up.
Some thoughts I’ve been percolating around lately:
My husband is going to the Indy 500 this weekend. He is a motorsports fanatic. He can tell you the finishing order of a race he watched when he was six years old and exactly which lap someone crashed on. He is very excited for this race. My interest in attending this race is about zero. I’m fascinated by the vary in entertainment-based passions between people, especially those in deeply close relationships. Maybe some day I’ll have more of an intelligent thought around that.
I do pay attention enough to know that we root for Conor Daly in this house. He has Type 1 Diabetes, and a few summers ago I tried desperately to get into contact with him and ask him to come to camp and surprise my husband. (Conor, if you’re reading this, the offer is still open)
I love podcasts that feature comedians just talking about dumb shit. They are always incredibly stupid and bring me so much joy. I listen to them when I work out and regularly come close to dropping 35+ lbs. dumbbells (brag) on my head while holding in laughter.
My latest obsession is So True with Caleb Hearon. Caleb was born and raised in rural Missouri (I think he might identify as a southerner but I firmly place Missouri in the Midwest) and constantly talks about his deep love for Kansas City, where he lives when he’s not in LA or NYC. He’s one of my favorite people on the internet with keen insight into the absurdities around relationships and pop culture. I love his passion for community and how seriously he takes the privilege of cultivating and caring for it. He fascinates me with his ability to one second make me giggle and the next second formulate my own conception of what Hell is outside of the Christian lens.
I am one of those annoying people that loves talking about their dreams. I have always found them fascinating. I shared an essay last year that detailed how deeply I am affected by my own dreams, how often I remember them. This prompted my dad to share with me that he has the same relationship with his dreams and he started keeping track of every person he dreamed of for a year. I loved this idea and started doing it myself. I fell off after a few months but recently stumbled across that document again and felt inspired to try again. I hope in a year I’ll have found some pattern I’ll want to write an essay about. At the very least, maybe I’ll understand myself a bit better.
I read a ton of nonfiction and memoir, so fiction gets neglected. But I started this recently and I’ve been really enjoying it. It blends fiction and nonfiction in an interesting way, and I find the narrator compelling. I’m really working on my close reading skills and I’ve been able to better identify unnecessary scenes or strange blips in the novel’s logic. So it’s been satisfying from both in entertainment and in improving as a reader and a writer.
Speaking of close reading skills—I can’t stop talking/journaling/writing/spiraling about how I struggle with craft and recognizing it’s different elements (hence the opening paragraph of this post). How does one recognize their own voice? How do you find the hidden meaning and metaphor in a poem? Why have I suddenly never read a bit of English in my life when I’m trying to come up with a word to replace the one I’ve used that feels boring and meaningless? I digress. I’m no closer to answers but I feel myself inching towards progress on this journey. I’ve been participating in
’s embodied writing intensive, trying to slow down as I read more essays, and adding more poetry into my reading diet. Maybe one day I’ll feel like I know how to write (you know, the thing I’ve already dedicated my entire life to).- Lenz is running 339 miles across the state of Iowa to raise money for Iowa Abortion Access Fund and Trans Mutual Aid. I think that’s pretty badass—and a great cause to support.
The Midwest Creative is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options. Pick one or more, and help sustain this movement.
As someone who grew up in Iowa and went to college in Missouri, I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you. Missouri is definitely southern :)
Missouri - I always said anything north of the Missouri River is Midwest, south is basically Northern Arkansas. It's like a whole different world once you get past Columbia. Heck they even have armadillos down there.