I didn't really intend to open a new post window tonight. My head hurts, my body aches from coughing, and I'm exhausted after a day of doing mostly nothing. There are a few blog thoughts on my mind, words and phrases beginning to weave themselves around the ideas they must express. But I don't have enough will-power or discipline for that tonight: if I try to write those pieces now, they will fall short, disengage, be mere caricatures of what I really need to say. This evening, even my journal is intimidating: white space and uniform lines mocking my desire to tell you this or that.
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So, then, why in the world do I have this window open? Why have I put words in the title box? Why do my fingers flit across the keys, sounding perhaps like mice scampering in the walls? Why am I writing when I have just finished explaining that now, tonight, I cannot write?
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Because between shows on Hulu and naps, I checked to see if any of my dearest friends had updated their blogs. And Alicia's brilliant comments about the writing process sparked some contemplations of my own. Contemplations not about something I necessarily wanted or planned to write about. Contemplations, instead, on thoughts that desire to be written, which push against the soil of my mind, extending and stretching, impatient in their demand to be given word and voice. A reflection, seemingly, on my own writing process.
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First this: I understand Alicia's quandary; I've been in it numerous times myself. Wanting to write an essay, needing to write one, a deadline fast approaching, whether in the mostly innocuous form of a syllabus due date, or the far more intimidating introductory remarks before I'm called to speak. In college, I often did my best work in the days (or, hours) before a deadline. There were times when I would work on a paper for a week, struggling to grasp the intricate details of its structure and the subtle nuances of its personality. Yes, essays - and poems even more so - are as complex and layered as, say, an odorous ogre bent on retrieving his peace and quiet. After a week's work, or more likely, a week's agonising frustration as the due date loomed closer and closer, the moment of illumination might finally come. Well, less a moment than an afternoon, an evening, a night spent mulling over words and points, quotes shadow-boxing for prime status, metaphors spilling together and unwinding: to put it simply, the birth of an essay. .
And, as Alicia understands, and perhaps others of you as well, those frustrating and unplanned for moments are demanding and all-engaging. Like a puppy trying to sleep in a new room for the first time, or a new football passed into the hands of a gang of African boys at lunch hour: it won't be easily put to rest. The words must be written, the ideas expressed, the meanings played with. After hours of attempting to leave it be, of letting the words play their own games in the back of my mind, I finally succumb to their pull. At this point, the essay usually doesn't take so long to write. Less a blessing than a trade-off for the rumination process.
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Oh, and poems are even worse. Catch me in a poetic mood, and I can't even pretend to pay attention to lectures about theology or chemistry. I might even begin jotting lines and sketching word pictures before my hair is combed from the shower or while my students work an exercise. Thankfully, it rarely gets quite this out of control.
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But anyway. I've also been discovering, as I tried to explain to Alicia in the "comment box" that spilled over into this blog post, that I can, to some extent, nurture the mood, the passion, the moment, that is writable. This is not to say that I can simply choose to write whenever I want to: that I can, but the words themselves struggle for vivacity and elucidation. No, it's also that I'm learning to create spaces - inside as much as out - that foster writing, that bring to the surface those ideas and images that pray to be given voice.
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I am a writer, that much of my identity I have come to terms with, though I still question whether it will blur the lines of my career. I have often dismissed the idea of writing professionally, in part because I fear that in making writing the end product, I will stifle and constrain what has beauty only in its simple naturalness. I can imagine myself sitting down to write, an empty book and full pen, cup of tea cooling by an open window, in a cabin office dedicated simply to this endeavour, only to find myself with nothing to say and no words to say it with.
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But recently, walking through the crisp autumn air, it occurred to me that I've started to do that. A little bit. With outcomes which I appreciate. I've started to create more space in my life for writing, to more frequently expect myself to write, to sometimes make a date with an idea that needs to be fleshed out. And it's working. I write more these days than ever before - both in my head and on paper, neither of which is necessarily more important than the other. Life has enriched my perspective, but it also continues to stretch my horizon, to deepen my connotations, to challenge my cliches, and, perhaps most importantly, to add new names and subtler colours to my palette.
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I'm learning that the more I write, the easier it is to find the words and rhythm when there is an idea within my heart bursting and jostling for space in the outside air. Hence, the journals. Among other things, journalling is a soul exercise, a way of finding meaning and shifting perspective. Rarely do I write simply what is, for who can capture the essence of reality? More, I write the ebbs and tides of my heart: I write what I have seen and wish to see, feelings and dreams and fears and deadliest emotions. And it is from this process, this vulnerable act of carving thought onto waiting pages, that I most often find what I need to write. Most of my truest writing is for my journal, or from my journal, or written in that space where the line between private and public blurs, where I'm writing myself, but also you.
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Journals. If you've known me long, you know that I can rarely be found without mine, that I write in it whenever and wherever the inspiration to do so strikes me. A year in Uganda filled up seven or eight volumes; the current one began two months ago and will finish before the week. I'm picky about my journals and my pens, though not as much as I was a year or two ago. It's just that I recognise that there are some media which foster the easy flow of my thoughts - and some which don't. Same reason why I often can't express thoughts first with my keyboard. And the type of paper and ink changes every so often, just in case you were wondering.
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But, here's the thing about my journals. They're not the wise and intellectual tomes that some people make them out to be with their gasps and exclamations, "I can't believe you write so much!" By which they tend to mean, "I can't believe you create original meaning so much!" The truth is, I don't.
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My journals are full of emotional breakdowns, philosophical diatribes, and other people's thoughts. Sometimes I write letters, then copy them out to post. Often, I copy in poems, quotes, song lyrics, random snatches of someone else's meaning. Train tickets, maps, children's drawings, newspaper articles, directions, bits of metaphor that I want to play with: all of these thrown carefully into the midst of hundreds of words, mostly written in cursive. Anger, fear, disappointment, sorrow, longing. Joy, pleasure, hope, love, happiness. Meaning arises somewhere in the chaos of their intersecting.
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I am a writer, not because you read my words, or even less, because I publish them where you may. Writing is my way of making meaning: be it an ode to a second kiss, or a burdensome attempt to give voice to another's pain. I write. It is who I am.
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