How Do You Write About What You Love?

This is a genuine question. And one I think about a lot. My wife and sons show up in some of my work, but never too directly. Maybe it’s like staring at the sun? Same goes for writing about skateboarding. Full disclosure: it was skateboarding that got me thinking about this recently. I was talking with a friend a couple weeks ago about all the skateboarding books we’ve read but didn’t like. In some cases, we both felt like the author was trying too hard to sell it—intellectualizing it in a way that felt unearned or inauthentic or, and I’ve almost been guilty of this—gratuitous. I get it: it’s niche, it lacks broad appeal. I love skateboarding but I don’t really want to read about it. That said, I do spend a lot of time thinking about it. A lot. I sometimes go to sleep thinking about it; I sometimes wake up thinking about it. What am I thinking about exactly? Tricks, usually—some little thing I’m trying to learn how to do. I’ll work through the movements in my head: the foot placement, the weight distribution, etc.. As if on a loop, I’ll cycle through this endlessly—making micro-adjustments along the way. It often works; it often doesn’t.

Sometimes I’ll simply think about the act of skateboarding itself: the feeling of riding down the street, rolling—the wind in my hair! (Metaphorically speaking.) I feel lucky to have something I’m so passionate about. And I am. Lucky, that is.

Maybe not writing about it is about not wanting to examine it too closely, and in a way that might ruin it somehow, turn it into something it’s not. Same goes for all the other things I love and don’t write about. I mean, truly love—not, like, eels, for example, which I’m enamoured of, enthralled by, curious about. But maybe not in love with…

And as for my loved ones…

I think that what I tend to examine in my writing is when things go wrong—have gone wrong. That’s interesting to me, that’s material! My love for my family is boundless; they can do no wrong. That makes for boring writing, I guess. Who wants to read about that? Not me. Show me your broken hearts, your broken homes! That’s what I want to see and write about.

There are exceptions to writing about what I love. Of course there are exceptions. I write about my grandparents a lot in the book I’ve been working on. Writing about them is entangled with grief, so that changes things. One could argue that what I’m actually writing about is grief itself. Which I think is mostly true. It’s about trying to better understand grief. And to do this, I find myself writing my way through it. That grief—as subject—reaches beyond my grandparents to include friends and relatives, and further beyond that, too. The world is a mess; loss is part of life and living, but it doesn’t make it easier to grapple with. And for me, the only way through that, the only way to try and make sense of it is by writing about it—trying to write about it.

But that’s not what this is about. Or is it? I went to the dump yesterday to dispose of an old appliance. The last time I went to a dump was way up in northern Canada—and the reason I went that time was not to drop off garbage, it was to watch bears. I didn’t see any bears yesterday. But I did see mounds of trash. So much trash! So much scrap metal! I stopped to take a photo. And I thought: Oh, this is interesting! Garbage! Here’s something I could write about! And as I had that thought, I imagined my family watching from the sidelines, questioning the choices I make on the page, questioning what I choose to write about. And in that scenario—me, at the dump having an imaginary conversation with my family—I told them I do it because I love them too much! You don’t belong on the page, I said! You belong everywhere else but the page.

And as I stood there next to a pile of scrap metal, talking to myself at the dump, I imagined my family nodding back at me with understanding—and with a boundless love. And afterwards, we hugged, the four of us in a group hug, the three of them telling me how wise I am, me smiling knowingly, nodding back at them, thinking but not saying, I know. That’s how it played out in my mind, anyway.