Writing To Know Myself

Working on my current novel is an exercise in trust. I must just write and see where each word leads me, believing that if I create an interesting character, she���ll end up in interesting situations.��That means I must let go of any expectations to impress or create an important work.��Otherwise, I’ll be giving weight to the negative old man from my recent dream that wanted the women to be made up, unable to see or appreciate their natural beauty.��I also must remember primary processes���to get beneath all the shoulds to where something fresh and original lives.

Poetry is the one thing I write that I could do forever and not worry about publishing it.��I have a very different relationship with poetry than I do with fiction or non-fiction. The act itself is so satisfying that it doesn’t matter to me if the poem has an audience or not, though, of course, I do publish my poems.��But they don���t have the urgency that the other genres do to get out in the world; I don’t feel I need to prove anything in poetry.

I’m reminded of something I read in an issue of Parabola Magazine:

…an inclination embodies or mirrors an unexplored capacity in us which, if allowed to flourish, might lead us further into wholeness.��But very often the capacity itself is never left alone���the joy of singing is extended into a dream of being recorded, the transformative process of writing is extended into a need to be published.��Ironically, the innate ability to recognize and put things together, no matter what form it takes, is often diverted into an insatiable need to be recognized. In this way, a passion for a particular way of being turns into a grand goal of becoming, as if life did not reside in who we are but only in the dream of what we might become.��Here, in the same way that the loved one is seen as the keeper of the gift, the idealized ambition���becoming a rock star or a famous writer or a wealthy businessman���is seen as the keeper of the gift that will unleash true living.

Writing for me is a necessity, a kind of spiritual path. It doesn���t exist in a vacuum, unrelated to my life.��It is my life, more fully so at times than what I do in the world���teaching, being a wife and mother, interacting with friends.��Not that these activities aren���t fulfilling and terribly important.��But I���m discovering just how interrelated all my various selves are.��Writing is the way I come to know myself, the method of recovering and integrating the disparate parts of my psyche.

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