The hardest thing in the world for me is to actually sit down and write. This is crazy because when I finally get a hold of myself, almost pressing the butterflies way inside me and swallowing the bile of anxiety that rises up, I really love it. Yes it can be frustrating, but there are moments of purest beauty that resets upon a page, almost beyond the text, the words are hardly there at all.
Ernest Hemingway was quoted "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed". It does feel like bleeding sometimes, as if what is inside is flowing outside and the sheer agony of it is incredible! But still us writers are driven to it. It really is out of our hands in more ways than the obvious.
I remember discovering that I loved writing poetry. I must have been about 8 years old and I wrote this rhyming poem full of longing and heart felt stuff, and I read it to my Nanna. Such a kind and patient woman towards me and she said it was the most wonderful thing in the world but it seemed a little sad. How amazing I thought, that I could write something and there could be a feeling transmitted through words into another soul. This amazement continues for me until this day and the magic that happens when the right words come together...the feeling...the vision...the beauty that is shared is what keeps me retiring to my computer.
I still carry a notebook and a pen and a pencil around, there is something special that happens with the scratching of lead onto paper, the light swirls of ink on a page. I love stationary. Give me Officeworks, Kikki K, and the local Newsagency over fashion and food any day. The smell of ink and paper chemicals...the brightness of a new pen...the feel of al the many kinds of paper textures...I always seem to need a new pencil and some sort of notebook.
And finally, the stress of writing for others - this is a new career for me and I find I am quite nervous and quite afraid that they won't like it or won't LOVE it and I will be stuck with nothing else to say, no idea to replace it. But this hasn't happened yet. Somehow a process emerges and I find what I love is listening to people's stories and feeding it back to them, adjusting their words and distilling them into something meaningful and beautiful that is 'them'. I do struggle with deadlines, as Douglas Adams writes in the Salmon of Doubt..."I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by". But learning to manage these is an art in itself and i am trying to get the hang of it.
The main thing I have realised is that we must do what we feel compelled to or else it will stifle us and settle into something nasty in the pit of our stomachs and either diminish our lives, or darken our ability to experience lightness and joy. Be please with what you can get to within yourself and really live through whatever lens you wish to occupy...
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