Is it time for yourself, discovery, reading or hearing your words? Maybe it’s the chance to listen to your inner self or to think your thoughts instead of having them think you.
Whether you enjoy one of these aspects of writing or another of its qualities, writing can, for many reasons, become a drudge. If that’s how you’re feeling, take time to think back to what writing was before the “you shoulds” came crowding in.
As an editor, I’m among the guiltiest of the “you should” pushers — for publication, discipline, diligence, development, revision — you get the picture. Thankfully, I’m also a writer and can call to mind, for myself and others, the joy of just taking time to write.
So for today and for the coming Labor Day weekend I’m advocating for the mere experience of writing, the tea or coffee or glass of wine on the porch or in the park with pen, paper and the solitude of peace. I’m also advocating for taking the usual structures and strictures and throwing them out to write just of the sake of it.
If we view writing as a form of relationship — with self, others, Creator or creation, the world at large or in a grain of sand — then, as is true of any other relationship, writing can suffer from chafe, the fiction of constant wearing. But what if writing can return to the kind of relationship where just being is enough? Wouldn’t that, in itself, be something?
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