I left my suitcase in Montreal. When I flew home from Mexico a few months ago, after a 10-day self-directed writing retreat during which I worked my process (the Mexican version which involved a terrace and sun and flowers) and made progress on a project — I plotted out my trip home very carefully.
It felt like getting back to Ottawa was a process in and of itself: travelling from Playa Del Carmen to the airport in Cancun (no biggie, but I was alone and that made it feel like a bigger no biggie than it would have otherwise); flying to Montreal where Thomas and I had parked my car in a hotel parking lot; getting from the airport to the hotel (again, a small thing that felt big-ish because it would be late and I hate waiting for the bus to my hotel while all the other buses to all the other people’s hotels constantly pull up); finding my car because Thomas had dropped me at the hotel door with my big suitcase and then parked it; digging my car out from the largest snowstorm that had hit Montreal in decades; and then driving the two hours or so back to Ottawa late at night to finally arrive back home.
Suitcase? When was the last time I saw my suitcase?
My suitcase sat back at the hotel desk where I left it when I went to hunt for my car. I was flying to Vancouver two days later so my suitcase would remain in Montreal for another couple of weeks until one evening when Holly and I made a dash to grab it. I was finally able to give her the Frida Kahlo merch I had brought her back, as one does.
I had a process. The process got me a fair distance but stopped working when I sailed merrily out of the snow-packed parking lot without my suitcase — so, so relieved to be in my car — honk-honking and waving goodbye to the hotel staff who helped me dig out. Merci! Merci!
I think about process a lot, and I talk about process a lot to the writers I coach or hang around with, nerds that we are. But it’s more than just about doing our work.
Process and the thought it takes to think and create one and tweak it, and mostly the steadfastness to trust it, helps me do all kinds of things, and not just writing. Process tells me (usually), that if I do this thing, that other thing will eventually happen. If I move in this direction, I will travel further north.
I guess that process, over and over again, becomes habit, and good habits make good things happen.
I’m working on a piece right now about Camp Widow, that beautiful experience that has helped me so much. Because I carry little writer notebooks around with me all the time, I’ve spent the last few days flipping through them trying to find my notes from attending two camps (which are retreats, which are also conferences). This has been a good-process-not-so-good process experience, like leaving my suitcase in Montreal. I know I took notes. But I can’t find the notes — yet! — because I take notes anywhere and everywhere and have many little books and journals and backs of envelopes with thoughts, ideas, lists, paragraph halves and seeds of stories.
Do you know how sometimes you have a moment when you see before you a path opening up to being the kind of person who has catalogued her journals?
I grabbed it, and some sticky notes.
Now, I have labels that say “Christian Wiman,” marking my notes from a moving talk he gave on suffering and art. And “Doerr” because Anthony Doerr gave a talk on similes at the Festival of Faith and Writing that ended in a standing ovation, and I’m not even kidding. Others say “Minister’s Wife” because I think it’s fun to see how baby thoughts became adults, and I want to remember that.
A lot of my stickies say “Brent” because there are stories I jotted down or conversations I recorded with my husband that I thought were important or funny or extra-loving at the time and now are like a sunrise to me.
Sometimes our process will be smooth. But a lot of times process will be as imperfect and bumbling as the person working it. (Plus, what could be more boring than remembering to bring your suitcase home from Montreal? Kidding).
But work it we will, and we should because process really does help. And along the way, taking notes because we won’t remember as much as we think we can, we will stumble upon the most beautiful stories.