Writers need to make changes........

Galway Kinnell wrote, "Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness . . . until it flowers again from within . . ." As I write I need to make changes in myself. I must change my attitudes. I must change my thinking. I must change my faith. The biggest change for me comes in the form of reaching out and developing fellowship. The more I reach out the deeper I go within to write. I find this paradoxical. The more I talk about how I feel the deeper the level of my writing.

To not be surrounded by people I aspire to be like is to not aspire to be anything myself. I must always be reaching and moving forward. I read a blog from a fellow writer this morning about writing reviews. She bluntly stated reviews aren't for her the writer they are for the reader.

As writers our strong driven personalities serve a purpose when it comes to our work, but in the world others can be critical of our seriousness, our melancholy, our confidence when we know a puzzle piece just fits. As we write we live. I am one in the same. I can’t and don’t want to be anyone else.  

A beautiful woman in my life from years ago wrote to me that to become the woman I really want to be is to accept the woman I truly am. I didn't understand what she was saying at the time, but today I do. In always thinking I can write it so I create anxiety and fear where there need be none. My mind has collected voices for weeks because I am focusing on why I can't write instead of why I can.

Sitting in a car with a friend last night I learned I intuitively know what to do about things these days. I learned I am accepting of myself as long as reviewers are accepting of me. In thinking this way I have created anxiety within myself where there needs be none. In order to write my mind must be free. In order for my mind to be free I must be at peace within me. If I am focusing on the negative review I am not at peace within me. I am at peace when I surrounded by people I aspire to be like, who aspire to be more like me. I am free when I am moving through the solution not wallowing in the conflict.

Today I woke up finished with being attracted to the negative review of me. Today I woke up with wanting to be surrounded by love, acceptance, tolerance and people living in the solution. I want to be drawn to the positive reviews. But I must be careful because all reviews are not for me. If I focus too much attention on the positive reviews I can easily dwell on the opposite of wallowing, pride. I can become too great creating another set of anxieties that stop me from being free and being me. I must always remember reviews, all reviews, are not for me the writer; reviews are for the reader.

It is time to let go and move on from the negative review and I must never pick it up again. I got an email in the middle of the night a friend's father who had been ill passed away. Whenever I am in the muck, at my lowest, death comes to remind me I only have one shot at this writer's life.

I have wasted so much time, but not really I just took a different path. My agendas were different: education, career, raising a family, helping others. A friend reminded me last week to not take the ability to accomplish those agendas for granted; not everyone is able to fulfill those accomplishments. And so my point is my time wasn't wasted I just chose a different path.  I have gained different experiences.

My father use to tell me people without children have no concept of real, true, unconditional love. I never understood what he meant, but now I do. People without children experience love differently than those of us with children. I look for a different type of love, a deeper, accepting, unconditional love that I have experienced as a parent and I won’t settle for less. And there it is the answer to every conflict I have. I won’t settle for less! Some days I think I can, but settling isn’t in this writer’s life. To settle is to not be me it is to be you and I can’t do that. I can’t write that, I can’t live that.

Writers aren’t followers they are achievers. Writers forge their way. If they don’t like their writing life they don’t accept it they go down another path. There is no settling for less. There is no settling at all. This is not to say we don’t try to settle because we do.

Those writers who could not live with settling and could not continue to develop courage day after day to keep trudging the road not taken die. They tell us they are dead and we keep reading them as if we can will them to remain alive. But we can’t will anyone to feel alive. If a writer believes they are dead then they are. Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, Hart Crane, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath the list can go on and on were all dead before they died and they told us so in their writing, but they finally made us believe it with their actions.

Robert Frost influenced the type of life I would have when I read his poem Road Not Taken in middle school. The poem has been the driving force of my life since. I have always chosen the road less taken. Sometimes it is the harder path, sometimes it is the easier softer road. But neither matters because in this writer's life I must always take the road less traveled by. That is who I am. I must always go that extra mile. I must always push a little harder than everyone else. I must accept that I feel a little deeper because I am willing to go a little farther. I must never stop knowing what I know. I must never stop figuring my life out in affirmation. No matter how much I am attracted to degradation I must step over those reviews. I must not pick up anxiety that isn’t mine. 

Today I will leave you with my favorite poem. Frost reminds me I have no other choice, but to not seek out reviews of me. A writer’s life is just to forge ahead on the path other’s fear to take.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

...Robert Frost

Exercise #8

The past exercises have been excerpts from a manuscript I pulled from a drawer about a female spy in 1945. Each exercise was a step on the path less traveled by. Many non-writers proclaim their desire to write. Writers make know claim they just write. The hours in my day have gotten longer as I have added writing to them. My work, my blog, my book every day that’s the exercise for today….