What makes a great writer.........

Joan Baez sang, " . . . you don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now." The responsibility for living my writing life is mine and no one else’s. I can't blame anyone for not writing. I can't blame anyone for the days when my head is filled with so many voices I can't hear myself think. I can't blame anyone, but me for sitting at the laptop staring out the window for days on end instead of working. I am responsible for my writing life. I am responsible for my mental health. I am responsible for my happiness. Others can trigger anxiety or happiness in me at will and that is what people do. What I do with those feelings though is my responsibility.

My writing life is a series of wasted-time moments where I was so busy not writing I couldn't even sit still long enough to stare out the window like I have been doing for weeks. I thought there would always be a tomorrow. I could write tomorrow! I had no sense of urgency just a few short weeks ago, but now I am filled with urgency. This blog along with the circumstances of how my writing life began is based on and filled with urgency. I'm filled with anxiety about not writing every day. I'm filled with anxiety about missing out on spending time and talking to people I care about. I'm filled with anxiety about making a wrong decision and heading down a wrong path. I’m filled with anxiety that if I don’t write this blog entry every day I won’t keep the habit going of writing.

What makes a writer great is his ability to own up to his anxieties. To put all that he is and all he feels he is not, out there for the world to see in his writing. But the courage comes from being able to feel safe amongst people in his life to put it all out there. There must be a rehearsal with them first. It is through acceptance from others acceptance comes for ourselves. People in our lives are mirrors. They are reflections of the deepest parts of us. It is only by surrounding myself with people who can accept me at my most vulnerable that I begin to turn my fears and anxieties into something productive.

That is how this blog started; an intimate moment where I felt safe to be vulnerable. If I let myself I can feel that moment again all I have to do is close my eyes, but I can't let myself because I wasn't safe to be vulnerable. I wasn't safe at all. I can't have regret though because here I sit almost 2 months later and I have written every day; a habit I haven't been able to master for over three decades. As much as I wasn't safe it was the right time for my rehearsal and here I sit tonight unable to have a day off from writing because I am afraid to break the habit I have developed.

What is so wonderful about life is I can learn how to make my anxieties work for me instead of against me. I want to have my readers take to me because they feel the same anxieties as I do. I want them to identify with the feeling not the experience. I want them to feel the courage it takes to click publish and to believe they can have that kind of courage too.

E.B. White said, "I am not inclined to apologize for my anxieties because I have lived with them long enough to respect them." A few weeks ago I wouldn't have understood what White was saying, but today I do. There are certain anxieties I struggle as a writer to make work for me. This blog is where I learn to respect my anxieties. Learning to respect what prevents me from writing doesn't only come with writing it comes from talking about how I feel.

I must have a fellowship of people who can accept me with all my fears just as I am which is some days out of my mind and some days completely sane. I must accept that not everyone is so eager to turn their anxieties into something they respect and use to become involved in fellowship. I must accept the depth of another person's fears I will never completely understand and so I must never judge.

In fellowship we identify, we share, we support, we love, we talk and we no longer feel alone. I must never be alone because when I am alone I am overwhelmed by my fears. I must always be able to share with like-minded fellows. I must always be able to talk about how I feel. It is only through talking that I become a part of the world.

When I am a part of the world the burden I carry of my fear lessens. It is in this lessened state I become rational again. I develop a tolerance, an acceptance, a respect for me just as I am and my anxieties for just what they are. When I tolerate, accept and respect what it is I fear I am able to find the courage within to use my anxiety to help me write more, to be more and to be a part of more than anything I can imagine when I isolate.

When E. B. White accepted the National Medal for Literature he wrote about the courage it took for him to come to terms with his anxieties. In the best most productive periods of my life I identify with what White wrote when accepting the National Medal, “A writer’s courage can easily fail him, I feel this daily.” Not only does my courage to write fail me daily, but my courage to face other parts of my life also fails me daily. It is not the feelings that define me. What defines me is what I do with and how I use those feelings of anxiety. I cannot choose how I am going to die, but I can choose how I am going to live!!!!!!

Exercise #7

I had always felt like a jigsaw puzzle. Life was all about putting the pieces of me together. When she came into my life the last part of me fell into place. She washed over me like shellac. Her essence filled in all the cracks of my put-together puzzle pieces. When she left I became unglued. It took a while for me to pick up the first puzzle piece to start all over again. What I'm discovering is the pieces just aren't the same. I'm a different jigsaw puzzle now . . . .