The Right to Write

I'm trying to get comfortable and reacquainted with this page which I have promised myself to become the home for my words.  I've done a little bit of "spring cleaning" and removed a lot of unnecessary clutter that just take away my attention from what I really needed to focus on.  Perhaps it is the changing of seasons.  When work becomes busier I need to be quieter.  I need less rowdy interaction.  I need more spaces of pondering.  I need more time to exhale and find peace.  

But it becomes such a paradox because when I am busiest, all this is so hard to achieve.  To find that creative part in my mind and lock in to a flow that liberates me from mindless paralysis is something that I have never fully achieved yet.

My words are stumbling clumsily over this page.  I have lost ear to the cadence that pulsates when I hear my thoughts and are comfortable with them.  It's like not feeling my own heartbeat.  So much of my thoughts about writing are always coming back around this process that becomes such a complicated craft to pursue.  Yet, I can't stay away.  I must write.  

Mom has given me this book from her teacher friend especially copied for me.  Her friend had bought it in Boston sometime in December 2004.  It's called "The Right to Write" by Julia Cameron.  

Our writing life, our life "as a writer" cannot be separated from our life as a whole.  For this reason, many of the essays and especially the "tools" in this book "about writing" may, at first flush, seem to have nothing to do with writing--but they have everything to do with writing.   

We should write because it is human nature to write.  Writing claims our world.  It makes it directly specifically our own.  We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance as well. 

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living.  Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding.  We should write because writing is good for the soul.  We should write because writing yields a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.