I suppose it's normal along any journey to come upon roadblocks...bright yellow tape marked, not with the words "police barrier---do not cross," but rather with something along the lines of "inspirational barrier--do not venture beyond this point." I read somewhere that distancing oneself from a piece of writing for a day, or two, or maybe even three, is actually good...good for the soul, good for the thought processes, and good for the motivation.
It's like any other trip I've taken. I come to a spot that doesn't look very familiar, and a sort of fear grips me that, if I venture any farther, I may reach a point of no return.
There is always, ALWAYS, that fear in writing...
So there is nothing else to do but to stop and ponder which direction I should proceed in once I get my steam up again. For there are usually many such directions, as many sometimes as there are sunbeams; but usually, if I wait long enough, one seems to beckon just a tiny bit more loudly, more insistently, than the others, just a wee bit more persuasively, and that is the one that I must undoubtedly take. Funny, too, how that presents itself at times. For when I get to the roadblock, I can't always see all the possible paths leading beyond it and away from it. It's like they're camouflaged by a dense riot of weeds and other unruly growth in a profusion too thick to be hacked through at the moment. And if I wait long enough, I usually don't even have to resort to that, can leave my pen sheathed, for the path that finally does open up does so as clearly as if it had been there all along and I just wasn't seeing it.
Then (and I've done this early in the morning when I first wake up), I say, OUT LOUD, "Yes, that's it! That's the direction I should go in from here on out!"
Until, that is, the next roadblock looms into view, the next bright yellow tape, the next tall hedge that I can't quite see beyond...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Behind a Tree
If I'm not careful, I will fall into the same rut with this blog that I have during the past 10 years or so with my handwritten journals--I'll simply forget to write in it, and after awhile, it will cease to matter. Actually, entire stretches of time can seem that way--as though they don't matter. But truth is, they do, and it is during those stretches of inactivity that I feel the guiltiest, because I am not doing what I feel I should be doing, and that is writing.
In all honesty, I don't know many writers. In fact, I know very few, and I've never been privileged enough to know any serious writer that intimately...the type of writer who writes no matter what, when writing is the last thing that he or she wants to do, the type who won't survive if he or she doesn't write, in both an economic and a spiritual sense. As with so much else in my life, I only have my own experiences to go by, so that I can't know if or when other writers come up against walls like this, and because they feel that it's not going anywhere, they simply stop. Am I behind a tree again, such as the one an old college professor of mine told me once that I have tendency to get stuck behind? "When you're behind that tree," he said, "you stop, and you look around it, but you don't go any further." Is that where I am right now, behind a tree, looking around but not daring to move past it for fear of what lies beyond it, again???
It's not really such a bad place to be...behind a tree. I love trees, and I feel safe when I'm near one, especially one of those giant ones that has been here for what seems like forever. And other than during a lightning storm, what better place IS there to be than behind a tree?
That, in itself, is an interesting concept. For how does one actually end up BEHIND a tree? Does a tree have sides, a front, a back? And how does one know which is which, which is the front, or the back, or the side? I've just always perceived trees as having bottoms and tops. I've never seen trees as having sides, fronts or backs. So in effect, whenever I seem to be behind one, I may very well be in front of it, or at least on the side, so that the way before me is clear and unobstructed. And no matter where I'm standing with regards to the tree, it really doesn't matter in the end, for no matter where I start moving away from it, I will be moving in a new and unexplored direction.
So once again, it's more of a case of simply taking that first step, as it has so often been in my life...that first step...often the hardest of all to take as I move away from my comforting and protective tree toward the unknown...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
In all honesty, I don't know many writers. In fact, I know very few, and I've never been privileged enough to know any serious writer that intimately...the type of writer who writes no matter what, when writing is the last thing that he or she wants to do, the type who won't survive if he or she doesn't write, in both an economic and a spiritual sense. As with so much else in my life, I only have my own experiences to go by, so that I can't know if or when other writers come up against walls like this, and because they feel that it's not going anywhere, they simply stop. Am I behind a tree again, such as the one an old college professor of mine told me once that I have tendency to get stuck behind? "When you're behind that tree," he said, "you stop, and you look around it, but you don't go any further." Is that where I am right now, behind a tree, looking around but not daring to move past it for fear of what lies beyond it, again???
It's not really such a bad place to be...behind a tree. I love trees, and I feel safe when I'm near one, especially one of those giant ones that has been here for what seems like forever. And other than during a lightning storm, what better place IS there to be than behind a tree?
That, in itself, is an interesting concept. For how does one actually end up BEHIND a tree? Does a tree have sides, a front, a back? And how does one know which is which, which is the front, or the back, or the side? I've just always perceived trees as having bottoms and tops. I've never seen trees as having sides, fronts or backs. So in effect, whenever I seem to be behind one, I may very well be in front of it, or at least on the side, so that the way before me is clear and unobstructed. And no matter where I'm standing with regards to the tree, it really doesn't matter in the end, for no matter where I start moving away from it, I will be moving in a new and unexplored direction.
So once again, it's more of a case of simply taking that first step, as it has so often been in my life...that first step...often the hardest of all to take as I move away from my comforting and protective tree toward the unknown...
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Getting Into Gear
Some days, there seems to be no going forward at all. There is, in fact, no movement at all...not going forward, no going back, nothing. Just a standing still, an infuriating incapacitating lack of movement that could easily set the stage for stagnation, and then the ultimate--death. Not in a physical or biological sense, but death nonetheless, of an idea, a possibility, the permanent blocking of a path that had not that long ago seemed to open and unobstructed.
Yet here I am, stopped dead my tracks, unable to take another step forward. And I call to mind the words a math professor once used to describe the peculiar habit I had back then of coming to a screeching halt when a problem presented itself that I could not solve.
"It's like you come to a tree," he said, "and you stop. Instead of moving around it and continuing, you stay behind the tree, looking around it, but afraid to go on."
Well, in terms of math, that fear was very real. It was an algebra class, and I'd never even got the gist of fractions and decimals in grade school, so I had no business even dabbling in anything beyond basic math. And that fear? Well, it was of failing, of course, because if I wasn't certain of anything else, I was positive that only failure lay at the end of any mathematical journey I might undertake. And I haven't been proven wrong in that theory yet.
But words? What do I have to fear from words? Plenty. That they won't come out sounding right, that I'll have to rearrange them until they do, and then, when will I know I've succeeded? Or maybe I'll think they flow well and adequately convey my meaning, but how can I be sure?
The truth? I can't. I can only trust that my years of crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs will work, and that others will want to read them. Because at its most fundamental level, writing isn't about hoping people will read my stories and like them. It's about reading my life and seeing me at my most exposed and hoping they'll understand and not think me too ridiculous.
As most serious writers know, writing isn't simply the act of stringing words together into pretty necklaces that we hope will sell. It's about stepping out into broad daylight wearing all our faults and our foibles imprinted on a sandwich board for all the world to see. And for many of us, those boards are large and very heavy and sometimes hard to carry all day, every day. But we do.
Because we must.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
Yet here I am, stopped dead my tracks, unable to take another step forward. And I call to mind the words a math professor once used to describe the peculiar habit I had back then of coming to a screeching halt when a problem presented itself that I could not solve.
"It's like you come to a tree," he said, "and you stop. Instead of moving around it and continuing, you stay behind the tree, looking around it, but afraid to go on."
Well, in terms of math, that fear was very real. It was an algebra class, and I'd never even got the gist of fractions and decimals in grade school, so I had no business even dabbling in anything beyond basic math. And that fear? Well, it was of failing, of course, because if I wasn't certain of anything else, I was positive that only failure lay at the end of any mathematical journey I might undertake. And I haven't been proven wrong in that theory yet.
But words? What do I have to fear from words? Plenty. That they won't come out sounding right, that I'll have to rearrange them until they do, and then, when will I know I've succeeded? Or maybe I'll think they flow well and adequately convey my meaning, but how can I be sure?
The truth? I can't. I can only trust that my years of crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs will work, and that others will want to read them. Because at its most fundamental level, writing isn't about hoping people will read my stories and like them. It's about reading my life and seeing me at my most exposed and hoping they'll understand and not think me too ridiculous.
As most serious writers know, writing isn't simply the act of stringing words together into pretty necklaces that we hope will sell. It's about stepping out into broad daylight wearing all our faults and our foibles imprinted on a sandwich board for all the world to see. And for many of us, those boards are large and very heavy and sometimes hard to carry all day, every day. But we do.
Because we must.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
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