Fear and Possibility

Writing holds possibility, but there’s fear there, too. Some writers can admit it easily, and others can’t. I’m a firm believer in the idea that you need to name your demons before you can exorcise them. Inherent in the fear of possibility is the idea that we somehow won’t manage to show up on the page, that we won’t have any ideas, that what we’ve got to say is utter tripe, that no one will ever want to read what we’ve written, and that we’ll be ridiculed for what we have managed to write. I think a lot of my fear, the primary source of my road block to writing, is making time (not finding time). Making that time requires that I assign writing a higher priority than I normally would, making space for it in my life … not always easy when others don’t always see its value. During the busy winter months, making time to write is difficult, but I’m beginning to see it for what it is, an investment that must be made, and not something to put on the back burner for the elusive day when I “have more time.”

But it’s words on the page that matter most. That’s what I keep telling my students when I teach writing. Even if all I write is “I can’t think of anything to write,” that’s enough. And I’m always amazed, looking back, at what I’ve been able to write when I’ve squeezed in a few minutes, somewhere, somehow. As a primary example, I had a poem published last fall, a poem I literally scribbled on the back of a boarding pass in the Denver airport last year while my youngest son was in surgery in Phoenix and while I was trying to get there for when he woke up (which didn’t quite happen, but that’s another story).

Rambling aside, that blank page (or blank screen, if you write on a tablet or computer) can be a scary thing. There’s always the possibility that my brain’s empty, that everything idea in it has somehow managed to dribble out my ears in a macabre stream, leaving me a hollow shell. When the boys were wee, there were days that’s literally what I felt like, as if I’d been hollowed out, made empty, capable only of changing diapers and endlessly rocking our colicky eldest to sleep that never came. Deprivation, on so many levels, not just sleep, ruled my life, and paradoxically brought me joy at the same time. All of my writing from this period shows that paradox, in a variety of forms. In A Year of Writing Dangerously, Barbara Abercrombie mentions that there’s no way to hide who we are in our writing. That’s certainly true for my own writing. I can’t keep myself out of it, even if I wanted to, and I’m not sure that I do want to, as there’s value in those experiences, in the trials, tribulations, struggles, and outright battles that have taken place, both physically and mentally, over the years.

There is no safe journey to writing, to getting words onto the page. There’s introspection, memory, and lived experience, and there’s imagination, inspiration, hope, and love, all melted together into a chimeric muse that both torments and inspires. Writing isn’t easy, and I don’t necessarily think it should be, but it’s a necessity, as essential to who I am as my kids or breathing. Writing isn’t something I choose to do. It’s something I have to do, almost as if it’s an itch that’s just begging to be scratched. The only cure is to write.