how to keep writing
The sky is orange in New York. 4 lost children were found after 40 days in the Amazon. The Unabomber died.
Venus is squaring Jupiter. Think a gin & tonic filled to the brim. Heels 2 inches deep in the grass at a garden party. Bright lights and wet kisses.
Are you feeling soft? Are you feeling like it’s all your fault? Are you feeling?
Whether you write poetry or fairy tales or fiction about alien romances or instructional manuals for air fryers, I strongly believe the act of writing is magic. It’s hard work, this magic, maybe because it’s all about going into the collective consciousness in search of kindling for a flickering fire that might last 45 seconds if you’re lucky. We all seem to ask ourselves—hunched at our desks obsessing over line breaks, villain names, planetary settings, or a dozen ways to say for best results —what is the point?
What is the point?
The point is a million different things. The point can be to inform, tattle, legislate, relive, bury, invoke, escape, preach, teach, warn, save, illuminate, and on and on and on. A better question is, what’s your point? What brought you to your knees searching for the perfect verb in the dreamy dark depths of language?
I guess I’ll go first.
I hate being misunderstood. I remember crying as a kid when my mom had to say “what” more than once. It wasn’t even that she had ignored me; I was (and maybe still am) a mumbler.
I believe the immaterial world of meaning is sometimes more real and more important than the material world. Call me woo-woo if you want. I’ll take it. But the idea of a desk is helping me write this as much as the physical desk I’m writing at.
Your turn. What brought you to your knees?
