Something Writerly This Way Comes
"Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads." Erica Jong
I think I have used this quote before, but it resonates with my soul so well that I cannot leave it on someone else's screen without putting it on my own. This is how we find ourselves: a little definition of my soul found in a quote here; a little pain of rejection from someone we love there; mixed in with a bit of joy from friends and family, reminding us of how not alone we are.
Something writerly this way comes...
Since taking leave of my work in June, I have stretched my fingertips hesitantly into the curious and mystifying fabric of the world known as 'freelance writing'. Real freelance writing. Like, getting a paycheck writing.
And while I am a good way off from earning a reliable paycheck, just the mere exercise of allowing myself to think 'I am a writer' and act like a writer for the majority of my hours during the day is really...extraordinary. I whisper that in all the awe and beauty that you see in a child's first glimpse of the stars at night.
Baby steps, baby steps.
I now write for a blog, have work waiting for me at a content provider, signed on as a contract writer for an agency in Arizona, and am looking over a contract for another content provider. In addition, I am actually writing--real, typing on the keyboard, producing words writing--on my book, GhostSeeker.
This book, this obsession of mine that walks like a funeral in my brain to and fro (sorry Emily) is finally coming to light after the mightiest of all struggles with myself. Like the winged monkeys of Oz, my self-doubt swooped in on my words, my self-esteem, my will to produce, and carried them off like Toto to a dark walled fortress, never to be seen again.
It is still quite painful to approach the keyboard to write this book. Agonizing over the passion I have for this project and knowing it will manifest nowhere near as beautiful as I see it in my head is akin to giving birth to offspring over and over again that you know will not survive. The blood, the mess, the pain; they are all there. Yet, like life itself, you keep heeding the call and continuing on, knowing that ignoring it is ultimately more painful than going through it.
Baby steps, baby steps.
What is this that I am experiencing?
A hesitant blossoming; a bloom, unable to turn away, growing toward a light not fully trusted.
The warmth of embers in my soul not felt since the age of capturing fireflies.
The palm of a child's hand opening to slowly accept the wrinkled, aged fingers that reach for it. Not for comfort, but for the youthful renewal in the wisdom of innocence, of simplicity, of faith in oneself.
A last quote to close this entry:
"If you want to change the world," said Martin Luther, "pick up your pen."
posted by A.M.Adams @ 7/19/2006 07:30:00 PM
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