Writing with Rox WEEKLY—What rereading my Blog taught me (again) about writing and (again) about life

Occasionally I'll wonder if anyone reads my blog. Not in the "no one cares" sense, but in the "There are so many blogs out there, so many magazines and books...hasn't everyone read everything there is to read already and aren't I just repeating myself... and besides everyone's busy" sense. Everyone gets the point about writing by now, at least as far as what I have to say about it: Write your truth, don't edit, trust your raw voice, writing together is a wonderful way to build community, stories are gifts, etc etc...

Even so, writing is a lonely business and even though it's a deeply satisfying, beautifully puzzling, sometime life-changing, magical process of discovery, on the other side of the shore, when you set the pen down, it IS comforting to know that someone is out there reading, resonating, etc. 

It's the same kind of thing my students will sometimes say in discussing why we write in the first place.  "What's the point? Who cares? Who really wants to read this? It's boring! etc etc..."

"What are you, kidding?" I'll say after a disclaimer such as that, "this is brilliant! NOT boring. Keep going!" Sure, I tell them that and I mean it. I DO want to hear it. It is NOT boring. It is beautiful. And truthful. And please keep writing...  But you know how it is. You can't always apply these things to yourself, especially when you're the "teacher." 

It's the same kind of thing my students will sometimes say about it not sounding polished enough, poetic enough, story enough...to which I will say, "but it is, it is it is! It's perfect just the way it is. Write now, fiercely, truthfully, and edit later." I tell them that all too often when we edit as we go, or too soon, that we kill the soul of the piece. We flatten the rhythm, the joy, the fluid juicy energy that feeds us in every sentence; we kill the ecstasy we feel when writing it. The live raw pulsing song of the piece (poem, memoir, essay, short story) gets sacrificed in the name of the big game of "what others will think."

Then—and only then—are we left with boring writing. Clean writing, with less heart and more head. Writing that no longer breathes or sighs. Slaughtered innocent writing that we hardly recognize as our own. Voices abducted, fragments of sentences brutalized and bleeding on the literary field, lonely, without their original, less polished verb companions. I've seen it time and time again. In you, in me, in everyone.

How long have I been preaching on these things here at St Beach? A looong time. And sure, for the most part, I do take my own advice. I have faith in what I say, I walk the talk, write the fight.  But sometimes, like you and me and everyone, I can lose faith.  I can forget and wonder what it's all about. I question. What am I telling these innocent writer people? What do I know? Maybe it does have to sound "better." 

But faith is a good thing. Were it not for faith, I could have easily given over to the literary dark side, believing that pleasing the external is more important than honoring the internal, the truth, the deeper knowing that always surfaces when we honor our truth on the page. And we can feel that truth and pulse and recognize that truth immediately when we are writing. We know we are in it. 

Luckily, when my faith is tested on (and off) the page, I am struck by a reminding wind, a gust of cool calm reminding, seemingly out of the blue. Just a few months ago I was caught up in a panicked existential flare up of "what's the point? why bother? nobody cares, nobody listens."  I was having a very challenging week. All the hormones were aligned to make for some serious crazy. My fibro was in retrograde. I was in the mindset of seriously believing that if I called anyone with my shit that no one would care to listen because X or Y or Z has it a lot worse off than I do, and besides, they'd heard it all before in some earlier version, hadn't they? Plus, wasn't that what my boyfriend was for? My therapist? My community? The makeshift family that I opted for and chose for myself, likely before I was even born? Where were they now?

So there I was convinced nobody would listen or cared. I wasn't due to see my therapist for another week, Two Cute was mad at me about something, Paula was traveling somewhere, I didn't want to burden my friends or Jude's dad, etc, etc. So as I sat there in my own pity party, convinced how inconvenient my deepest oldest pain might sound—either too much to handle or too shallow to indulge—my thoughts ran throughout the day, "who will listen? Who will care? Is there anyone listening? Is there anyone I can talk to?" I believe I was in the middle of taking down the recycling, trying to keep up with the everyday doing of life though I didn't feel at all every day on the inside. I felt lost and alone. "Is there anyone? Anyone?"

And then, there it was, a faint little voice coming from deep within the right middle side of my body. "I'm listening," the voice said. "I'm right here. Right where I always am.  I'll listen."

Well, I just about had to sit down right there in the recycling. 

That was unexpected. I mean, I knew it, but I just never really heard it. Not like that. Not in my body. Which likely explains why at first I wanted to ignore it. I knew it was good old me coming through, but what do I have to do with this? Of course it's me listening; who else would it be? Aren't I always listening to me? Aren't I?

Or maybe I didn't recognize it as me at first. Maybe I did, but didn't take me seriously. Oh you? So, what of it? 

In any case, when I came upstairs I did sit down. It wasn't a big emotional thing. It was't another tearfest. It was just like, "oh, yeah. You are listening. You do count. You can listen and you can also hear." So I took the time to listen to me. To hear me. In my raw truth.

Of course as I knew then, as I deeply-er know now, I'm the only one who can give me that undivided love and listening that I sometimes fall into the trap of believing I need to get externally. I have to be the first one to listen, the first one to hear, listen, and care. That way if there ever does come a day when my people don't want to listen (yeah, right), don't care (yeah, right), judge me for my struggles (yeah, right), find me boring  (yeah, right), etc, I won't fall apart. I'm there. I'm listening. 

I'm reading my own damn blog.

You can imagine how this translates into writing. You are, as am I, first and foremost writing for yourself. To yourself, for yourself. When you come back and find yourself on the page years or days or months later, you will recognize yourself and be so grateful for the gift you have discovered on the page. Finding yourself again—again and again—in an earlier form, writing and breathing.


WRITE WITH ME?
What will you write "just for me"? 
Just for me, I write...