Over the next several months I would like to use this space to reflect on the factors that make us artists and that inform our creativity. Optimally, I would like to provide a refuge where our insecure little souls can breathe easy knowing we are among friends and kindred spirits. It is okay to think weird thoughts. It is not only okay to think them, it is okay to embrace them, and nurture them and create whole weird worlds where things always or never, or sometimes go the way we want them. It is okay to be a god, and it is definitely okay to be a flawed god. It is okay to spend an hour thinking you might be the greatest writer who has ever lived, and a week wondering why you ever thought anything you have written was interesting, or valid or should exist anywhere but the recycle bin or the bonfire. All these things are normal, or at least normal for us.

Perhaps, along the journey, this space will teach you a few different ways to order those weird thoughts, or to summon that fickle witch called “muse” and maybe even get her to stick around and talk to you.

Before I explore some of our potential motives and pitfalls, I would like to make clear that, though I am mainly a writer, and this space will mostly focus about the writing process, I do not make much distinction between what medium a creative person uses to express themselves. Many of these themes and thoughts are universal and will apply to painters, and sculptors and dancers and musicians and chefs and landscapers. If something exists in the world solely because it existed first in your magical brain and you made it tangible to others, and you think it is beautiful, then you are an artist and I love you.

So, why do we do this?  Why have we decided to choose this lonely occupation of staring at a blank white space with the intention of filling it with words in an attempt to share our thoughts with others? Jeanine Garofolo had a great line during her stand-up career. She said, (I am paraphrasing) “I chose stand up because no other occupation provided an adequate amount of self loathing.”

Some of the obvious reasons we write are “because I have all these ideas” (except when I don’t), or “it’s fun” (it mostly isn’t, but okay), or “it’s how I work things out in my head.”

Natalie Goldberg, in her book, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, writes, “Writing is not therapy, though it may have a therapeutic effect. You don’t discover that you write because of lack of love and then quit, as you might in therapy discover that you eat chocolate as a love substitute and, seeing the reason, stop (if you are lucky) eating Hershey’s chocolate bars and hot fudge. Writing is deeper than therapy. You write through your pain, and even your suffering must be written out and let go of.”

I will be referring to Natalie numerous times during this blog series. I consider two of her books—which I will list at the bottom of this blog—to be essential for anyone who wants to write any kind of personal or confessional public writing. She and Anne Lamott, (also listed below) are my goddesses of memoir and self-reflection.

Finally, before I wrap up this introduction, I would like us to explore the distinction between public and private writing.  Private writing is your diary. It is your inner voice, alone, with no filter. It is the email or text rant you type when your significant other has dropped a messy bomb of angst on your head and left you needing an emotional fumigation—by the way, don’t press send, trust me, I’m old.

Public writing is writing you are going to share with others. Public writing can certainly be sourced from private writing. Sometimes the distance of a third-person point of view makes painful subjects easier to write, but public writing is always, purposely shared. That does not make it any easier and later blogs will explore that in more detail. In general, if it scares you a little, it is probably a vein you need to mine. If it scares you a lot, it is something that must be written. Whether that writing ever sees the light of day is a call only you can make.

I will leave you with Natalie’s Goldberg’s answer to the title question. In Writing Down the Bones, she encourages writers to do this exercise periodically, and acknowledges that the answers for everyone will invariably change depending on time and circumstances.

In the exercise, you must ask yourself the question of why you write or want to write. Don’t overanalyze it, or hold yourself to being entirely accurate, or worry about contradicting yourself but just “answer…with clear, assertive statements.” Here is her reaction to the exercise that she shares in the book:

Why do I write? I write because I kept my mouth shut all my life and the secret ego truth is I want to live eternally and I want my people to live forever. I hurt at our impermanence, at the passing of time. At the edge of all my joy is the creeping agony that this will pass—this Croissant Express at the corner of Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, a great midwestern city in mythical America, will someday stop serving me hot chocolate. I will move to New Mexico where no one knows how it feels to be here with the sudden light of afternoon, the silver of the ceiling, the half-smell of croissants baking in the oven.

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me, and even more amazing, I don’t know. Now that it’s spring I can’t remember what it felt like to be in forty below. Even with the heat on, you could feel mortality screaming through the thin walls of your house.

I write because I am crazy, schizophrenic, and I know it and accept it and I have to do something with it other than go to the loony bin.

I write because there are stories that people have forgotten to tell, because I am a woman trying to stand up in my life. I write because to form a word with your lips and tongue or think a thing and then dare to write it down so you can never take it back is the most powerful thing I know. I am trying to come alive, to find the distances in my own recesses and bring them forward and give them color and form.

I write out of total incomprehension that even love isn’t enough and that finally writing might be all I have and that isn’t enough. I can never get it all down, and besides, there are times when I have to step away from the table, notebook, and turn to face my own life. Then there are times when it’s only coming to the notebook that I truly do face my own life.

And I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I’ll ever have.

I have read that particular passage many times in my life, and it never fails to touch me in some way. I hope in the upcoming months you can think of this space as a kind of home, or even a temporary stop: an oasis that can provide a refreshing drink, or a knowing, conspiratorial nod, or just a place to collapse and stare in exhausted silence. It doesn’t matter if you ignore everyone, or maybe your mouth hangs open in wonder or disbelief. No one will judge you. As the Cheshire Cat said, “We are all mad here.”

RECOMMENDED READING;

Goldberg, Natalie

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft

Lamott, Anne

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

References:

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There. 1909 Dodge Publishing company. ISBN: 10: 0805794301

Goldberg, Natalie, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. 1986 Shambhala Publications. ISBN: 0-87773-3785-9