If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware off, no shortcut.
– Stephen King, On Writing

Stephen King is right. I can no longer deny the harsh reality that if I want to write then I have to…. well….write.

I’ve got the reading thing down. I think my commitment to reading is sufficiently compulsive and obsessive.

I had dinner with a good friend a few nights ago and we spent a lot of time talking about my consulting work.  At the end of a long discussion about some of my projects she asked me how I was going to make time for writing now that I was clearly so busy with the challenge of running my own business. She’s one of those friends who isn’t afraid to ask you questions that will make you uncomfortable because they force you to deal with something you’ve been avoiding. You know the type.  The ones who remember all the good intentions you set for yourself and are not afraid to remind you about them when said intentions become lost – buried by the other stuff of life. Sometimes you wish they didn’t have such good memories, but really you’re incredibly grateful that they do.

One of the reasons I stopped working full-time was so that I could finally make time to explore my writing.  To really sit with this newly discovered passion.  Finally I’d be able to give in to the irresistible pull I feel to put myself down on paper.

It hasn’t happened the way I imagined.  The past few months have been consumed by finding a place to live,settling into the new place and starting a new business.

My technology consulting work has taken on a life of its own, and projects are coming at me fast and furious. I’ve been  spending all my time trying to figure out how to efficiently run a business, and my days are already filled with meetings, preparing proposals and estimates, invoicing and more.  I feel as pressed for time as I did when I had a regular job!

I’m realizing that it may have been naive to think that just because I was self-employed, by default I would have lots of free time for writing .

If it wasn’t for my monthly writing group, my writing would be limited to the occasional day when I manage to write morning pages. Once in a while they end up on paper, but more often than not, they are written in my head. Sometimes in the early hours, I am awakened by passages being written in my head. Am I becoming a vessel for the writing? I often hear writers and painters describe their creative process this way. If so, great.  I’ve written some good stuff. Pity its not written any place where I can read it.  I can only comfort myself with the thought that if it came to me once perhaps it will come again at a moment when I can write it down.

I wonder if  Stephen King counts writing in your head as writing? My guess would be no…but then again, who knows.

I know what I need to do to be a writer.  Write.

So this is my challenge – to make the time and space to write.

Clearly it will require a concerted effort and probably a great deal of sacrifice.

I’ll have to become as compulsive and obsessive about the writing as I am about the reading.

I know it can be done.  Take this post for example. I’m writing at it at 2am. Earlier this evening, I fell asleep on the couch watching TV.  I woke up around 1:30am, and began to make the half-awakened stumble towards to my bed. As I did so however, I glanced at my computer. Something told me to sit down and write about what’s been on my mind for the past few days. So here I am.

I have an 8:30am meeting with a new client, and conventional wisdom tells me that being up writing at 2am is probably not wise. By the time I lay my head down, my mind will probably be too stimulated for me to fall asleep immediately. I’ll probably end up reading in an attempt to lull myself to sleep – which most likely won’t work, and I’ll read for another couple of hours.  My guess is that I’ll end up snatching only a few hours of sleep.

I did say something about sacrifice didn’t I?

What’s funny is that this  doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. Sitting at my desk in the spacious stillness of early, early morning when it feels like I am the only person in the world who is awake. It’s blissfully quiet except for the gentle tap of my fingers on the keyboard, the hiss and splutter of the heat forcing its way out of the radiator and the occasional hum of a car passing on the street.

This feels like a gift.

I know for example that it’s immature to want to prove to all the men who -  in my mind – have rejected me just how wrong they were. Yet I continue to cling to the  “I’ll show him what a big mistake he made rejecting me / he’ll be sorry he let me go”  bone.

It’s a little childish, but it’s comforting. Empowering somehow to gnaw on this bone in anticipation of  it finally breaking open to release the sweet juices of  vindication I am convinced will be my reward.

I imagine how thrilling it will be when realization of regret hits those foolish rejecters. When their blindfolds are removed to reveal to them my true brilliance, beauty and uniqueness. They will be amazed by how skinny and successful and brand-spanking-shiny new I’ve become. I imagine how shamefully they’ll be forced to slink away upon seeing me with the handsomer, taller, better and obviously more intelligent man who snatched me up.

How dumb will they feel when recognition of what they COULD have had hits home? Opportunity missed. Gift horse looked dead in its gaping, slobbery mouth!

So I keep at my bone. Biting down a little harder as I imagine myself looking sadly upon the rejecters as they weep at the lack of foresight which led them to not choose me.  I imagine impassioned pleadings for second chances and magnanimous forgiveness.  The jerk of sobbing shoulders. The clutching of fistfuls of tear-soaked tissues. The mournful hanging of heads weighed down by regret and anchored by defeat.  The dragging, shuffling walk of men walking away from the treasure they know they have lost.  Me!

I sigh  blissfully as I picture myself shaking my head in pity while I turn back into the arms of  my new, anatomically correct, emotionally mature, spiritually enlightened , good-smelling, well-dressed, generally perfect new man.

See what I mean?  It’s really easy to shore up my battered self-esteem and tattered pride with these rampant and overly dramatic imaginings.

I know I shouldn’t do it. I know it’s spiritually immature and I’m better than that.  I really do know better.  I also know that I’m running out of excuses for me living from that place of ego. I’ve read the books, attended the classes. I received and read the memo.

Yes. I definitely know.

It’s time to loosen my grip, unhinge my jaw and let the bone drop.

I know all this.

However, in the interests of being kind to myself, I’m letting myself gnaw just a little bit longer.  Like a dog backed into a corner, I  see that there is no escape. The universe has been gently tugging this bone away from me for a while and its inevitable that I will soon have no choice but to drop it.

It will soon be time for the letting go.

I won’t get to bury it, or hide it away. There is no treasure in it after all.  I’ll just drop it onto the ground where it can be bleached by the sun and pounded on by the rain until it dissolves down into the dirt.

Yes. I’ll have to drop it soon, but until then…

For the second prompt we were each handed a poem and this time the writing flowed without effort. I thought I’d share that piece here because it really seemed to connect with people. Ironically, its all about love.

I’ve met a lot of people lately. Strangers who don’t feel like strangers. And I want to love them.  The cab drivers, the policemen, the movers. The woman at the candle store. The woman at the storage space where the trappings of my life are piled into a ten by eight cube. The timeshare guy who I talked to for hours about writing and creativity and his 10-year old son. The woman at the little boutique in Newport. So many seeming strangers, so much love.

The cab driver who told me about her ex-husband’s death bed apology to her. The other cab driver who told me about his parents divorce over 30 years ago.

I have this urge to love  people now. To love them by really and truly seeing them.  Not who they are, but what they are. Love. My brothers and sisters. There is a quote I love which says that you can “listen your brothers and sisters into existence”.  Maybe that’s what I’m doing. Listening them into existence.  It’s urgent and intense, this compulsion I have to wrap my arms around the world and love people.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m a little unhinged.  Like when I meet someone who is so beautiful it makes my cry. Makes me feel filled up with something so buoyant and expansive that I cannot contain it. It prickles my skin as it seeps out of me. Am I leaking love?

It happened when my 8-year old nephew wept a little  because his 4-year old cousin was sad that everyone was leaving.  His heart is so pure and true it makes me ache with love.

Am I turning into some sort of free-love, I want to hug the world freak?  I keep talking about love. Talking about how much I love people. What does it mean?

What is that quote?  “Somtimes I feel like I am being carried by great winds across the sky”. That’s how I feel lately. Caught up in a tornado of love. Except it doesn’t destroy things. This tornado is soft and warm, enveloping me in something that makes me know that I am okay. It floats me from the top of the cone down to the bottom and back again.And like any tornado it pulls into its center anything that comes across its path. So as I dance around in my tornado, the cab drivers and the movers get swept up with me and we spin and bounce against the soft sides together. And as this group of women sits here open-hearted  we are all being buffeted  by this tornado that is love. This is how is should be.  How it is. This feeling of open expansion that’s making me cry as I write this. As we listen each other into existence, I’m thinking I don’t care if I sound like a new-age freak. All that really matters is this thing that I cannot contain. This feeling that’s breaking me free of my body and filling the room. This essence of something bigger than all of us, yet of us.  This love. This moment. This love.

Last year I began working on a non-fiction book, but I was quickly stymied by my feeling that I wasn’t “qualified” to write. Who would read it?. What made me think that what I had to say had any kind of value?

I’m still learning how to  live into my questions, so I’ve just been doing my best to hold this question of what I might write, without getting frustrated by the seeming lack of answers.

A few days ago I had dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen for a several months. As I caught him up on my life we got to discussing what I want to do with my life, given the fact that in just a few short months, I will leave my job of 11 years to pursue a consulting practice and who knows what else. I shared with him that what I REALLY wanted to do was be a writer but had no idea what on earth I could write about.

Last night it came up again in a conversation with my beloved friend Curly Moo.  (Incidentally, Curly Moo is the one who first introduced me to the fabulous Deb and her Living out Loud writing groups which have become an essential part of my very existence.) Once again I found myself saying that I really wanted to be a writer but didn’t feel I had anything to write about. I expressed my long-held fear that I didn’t have the kind of creativity necessary to write. Being the wise woman and supportive friend she is, CurlyMoo told me very firmly that this was not true. Again, I ended the conversation still holding on to this unanswered question.

Then, this morning as I caught up on my blog reading, I came across by Sean Platt at copyblogger.com which asked the question Are You Are A Writer? I found myself almost weeping with gratitude as I read it. The post begins:

I’m a writer. I spent over three decades unaware of this essential truth, but I’m ready to atone for my ignorance.

I could have written those words myself. In fact, if I changed just a few words in this astounding post, it wouldn’t be hard to convince anyone that I’d written the entire thing. Sean expressed so much of what I’ve been saying to myself for so long. I come back to an Anais Nin quote I shared not to long ago:

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

It’s clear by the comments in response to his post, that Sean said what a lot of people are unable to say. I was forced to revisit my own words, “It occurs to me that my favorite writers and books are those which seem to say all the things I am unable to, for whatever reason. Those whose words unlock the hidden secrets of my own knowing and help me to to tap into my own wisdom. This is the power of other people’ words!”

Sean’s words speak for me and to me. He has said what haven’t been able to say up until this very moment, which is that:

I have language, so I can speak. I can speak, so I can tell a story. I can tell a story, so I can write.

Astonishing. To quote him one last time:

I’d always believed that I wasn’t very creative, or at least that what creativity I did have, didn’t run too deep. But I’m alive, and that means I know a good story when I hear one. A writer need not worry that his ideas will thin. Our minds only empty at the end of our final breath.

In reading this I have a sense of having uncovered something which in the deepest part of me I know to be true. Not only that, but a question has been answered for me. And while I cannot know for certain what I will write or when I will write it, I am certain of the fact that yes indeed I am a writer and I will be as long as I draw breath.

When I was a teenager, someone gave me this little spiral bound notebook as a gift. I started using it to write down my favorite quotes and passages from the books I read. Pretty easy to do considering that I always had a book attached to my face. (Not much has changed in that regard).  At the time I didn’t think too much about why I started doing that. I was just writing down the words that “spoke” to me on some level.

Sometimes it was something that made me laugh, or cry. Something that inspired me, or seemed profound to my teenage mind.  A lot of times it was an exquisite juxtaposition of words that was so beautiful I couldn’t stand it.

I don’t remember when I stopped using this notebook. I think it was in college when the majority of my reading became academic, and when I wasn’t reading I was too busy partying to read  Now that I have a “library”, I have been inspired to pick this habit up again. My relationship with my books has been renewed. I often find myself “visiting” with my books. Running my hands over them and picking one out at random, letting it fall open to a page and seeing where I land. This renewed relationhip has brought me back to collecting the quotes I love in my little notebook.  It’s also made me wonder what it is about  about reading someone else’s words that is so powerful. What makes someone want to write down those words, read them repeatedly and even share them with other people? What comfort do we get from this?

There is the obvious inspiration that we often get when we read certain things. An emotion is triggered. Happiness, inspiration, sadness, nostalgia, laughter, contemplation. Often the words serve as a reminder of some notion we want to hold in the forefront of our minds. Sometimes its a cue, a trigger for something. I have quotes that serve as anchors when I’m experiencing a certain state of mind. When I am feeling insecure, unworthy and generally unfabulous, for example, there is no quote that brings me greater comfort than this famous Marianne Williamson quote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

For me however, the most powerful way in which quotes seem to impact me is by expressing something that I am unable to say for myself. In fact in most cases, I’m not even aware that there is something unsaid floating around in my being until I read something. Many of the most profound realizations I’ve had in my life have come from reading someone else’s words and recognizing that they were saying exactly what I needed to say, but couldn’t.  I’ve read passages that confirmed something I may have known in the deepest part of me, but could never articulate.  It’s as if the reading of a passage unlocks the box in my subconscious where that knowing is stored. Once it is unlocked, there is a sense of recognition and I think to myself “I know this to be true”.Â

Anais Nin said it best when she said:

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say

It occurs to me that my favorite writers and books are those those which seem to say all the things I am unable to, for whatever reason.  Those whose words unlock the hidden secrets of my own knowing and help me to to tap into my own wisdom. This is the power of other people’s words!

I will start sharing some of my favorite quotes. I’d love to hear what some of yours are too.

I first attended this group over a year and a half ago at the recommendation of a dear friend.   I’d never done anything like this. I hadn’t done much writing outside of school and work, so it was a little nerve wracking. The idea of writing stuff and then reading it to other people, strangers no less, was terrifying.  What would I write about? I couldn’t imagine that I had anything interesting or important to say. I realized very quickly that in fact I had something to say and it was important. Not important because it was necessarily going to solve humanity’s problems, but because it was my truth.

Up to that point I’d always considered myself to be a pretty self-expressive person. I always viewed myself as someone who spoke her mind.  It was only when I started writing that I understood how suppressed my voice had been. So suppressed that I didn’t even know it.  Even when I did express myself, I did so through the filter of my expectations of myself and the expectations I believed others had of me. Deep down inside I was terrified to say what I truly thought or felt or believed.  I was convinced that if I did so I’d somehow be letting others down by not meeting their supposed or real expectations of me. I was afraid of people thinking I was stupid. Afraid of being judged and rejected.  It was as if I’d been holding my breath for as long as I could remember. Â

The greatest gift of this writing group has been reconnecting with a voice – my voice – which I didn’t even know I’d lost, so buried was it.  Each time I write, I feel more and more of my voice coming out and it feels so good to just say whats on my mind and in my heart. And each time, when I read what I’ve written,  I look around expecting people to be shocked, horrified, disappointed, or uncomfortable. No one ever is. Not only are they not shocked, but most of the time what I see on the faces around me is recognition of some shared experience. Understanding.  The looks seems to say “I know exactly what you mean. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that. You’re not alone. Its not just you. Me too!”Â

This is what I love about books and writing in general I suppose. The real truth, which is that we really are the same.  The stories might be different. The locations, the languages, the nationalities, the gender. Whatever. But the humanity is the same. The same themes run through every book I’ve ever read.  Love, hope, joy, pain, fear.  I believe its the Course in Miracles which says “There is only one of us here”.  When I go to writing group, it seems so clear to me that this is true.  We are one.  We feel pain the same way. Long for love and peace the same way.  We want what’s best for ourselves and our families.  Our fear and neurosis can get in the way of that and cause us to do ugly things, but I believe with all my heart that underneath it all, our basic desires and motivations are the same.

There is only one of us here.

Here is something that I wrote in today’s group which sort of sums up my feelings.  (You should know that I am an obsessive self-editor. I’ve been known to spend an hour editing a one paragraph e-mail. I am proud to say that in spite of a burning desire to “fix” this piece, it is completely unedited. Just as I wrote it.)

Here We Are

Here we all are. Strangers, yet not. Different, yet not.  Odd how it feels something like coming home here. Odd how it seems this place is one where it actually seems possible that I can speak my truth and speak it out loud.   When my pen drops down onto paper in this place, my emotions seem to flood out of me and pour onto the page.   Sometimes inky, murky black. Sometimes pink and flowery. Sometimes a swirl of colors all mixed in together, so I can’t even tell where one begins and another ends.  I realize that this mess of emotional colors is me.  Is what I’m thinking and feeling. I often walk away feeling a little tired. I never realized how much energy it can take to speak your heart.  When I am here I find myself writing and saying things which astonish me. They come up, like long held burps of feeling that can no longer be contained.  They rise from my belly and push forth into existence. Perphaps more shocking than their fierce insistence of being released it that there are no gasps of horror when I speak these thoughts into being. The earth does not shudder, the hearers do not recoil. In fact all that happens is that I feel a sense of relief. A lightness. I realize that I held my tongue for so long because someone – and I’m not sure who – told me that it wasn’t OK to say what I really thought. Really felt.  Really believed. And I, obedient as I am, I held my silence until it could be held no more. Until my eyes began to bulge, my stomach distend and my chest tighten with the awful strain of holding it all in. It couldn’t last. Implode or speak. These were my only options. And now, I feel the blessed freedom of speaking my heart.