“Writing
is a tool that enables people in every discipline to wrestle with facts and
ideas. It’s a physical activity, unlike reading. Writing requires us to operate
some kind of mechanism—pencil, pen, typewriter, word processor—for getting our
thoughts on paper. It compels us by the repeated effort of language to go after
those thoughts and to organize them and present them clearly. It forces us to
keep asking, ‘Am I saying what I want to say?’ Very often the answer is ‘No.’
It’s a useful piece of information.”[1]
We
have all been told that writing is a process, but I am just now learning what
that means. My experience with writing has, I’ll admit, been one of random
light bulb moments. Ideas come to me while driving, hiking, or sometimes even
in dreams. Whole poems have come to me in dreams—I wake up just in time to
remember and write them down. My relationship to writing has been one where I
have felt more like the vessel through which some other voice speaks and I
simply transcribe. To become aware of this was a major break through moment for
me because it gave me clarity as to why my relationship to writing has often
felt so troubled, painful and difficult.
I
have deliberately been working to change my relationship to writing—instead of
always thinking about a finished product, I am learning to embrace the journey.
This is a journey that I enter with intention. And my intention is not simply
to be done with the dissertation; it is to give myself permission to explore. I
realized that I have been afraid of the journey. I have been afraid to write a
sentence that didn’t quite make the point on paper the way I heard it in my
head or felt it in my heart.
As
I entered the writing stage of the dissertation, I created a writing schedule
that was difficult to maintain because I didn’t know how to engage writing with
discipline or with patience—I wanted the dissertation to appear to me in a
dream. I have never fully taken the time to cultivate my relationship to my own
voice as a writer because I have been holding on to the idea that my ideas come
from some elsewhere. I do believe in that elsewhere, but that elsewhere isn’t
so far away. It is in me, I just have to learn how to access it. This takes
practice, persistence, and patience. This change in my consciousness has
motivated me and even given me more confidence in my capacity to write and
think.
I
am handing in the dissertation introduction to my advisor tomorrow and I feel
good about it. I’m not worried about the things that I didn’t say or the arguments
that aren’t as clear as I’d like them to be. This is a process, a journey and
it takes time. Yesterday I woke up anxious to return to the problem I had
written myself into the day before—that was new and exciting for me.
In
my research, I’m obsessed with darkness, shadows, the spaces that are difficult
to find, the spaces that many mark as dead—but I know life, beautiful life can
exist there. Writing is a kind of darkness for me and I’m putting my money
where my mouth is by playing in that darkness. I remind you, and myself “If the
process is sound, the product will take care of itself.”[2]
What
is your relationship to writing? What is your writing schedule like? What are
the tools you use to make yourself a better writer? I would really love to hear
back from you regarding your own process. Let’s share our knowledge and grow
together:-)
