Heart Wrenching

The words come hard sometimes, like pulling weeds that just refuse to part with their roots or their small seemingly inconsequential places in this world. I dig down deep below my words, below their roots, and still, I am not at the end, I am not at the place where they began. That would take shrinking myself down to the size of a verbal microbe and plunging into the deepest recesses of my memory whose many doors are no longer all open to me. It means digging up rocks whose large ends are always the most deeply buried, teasing me from the top, saying "We're small...you can dig us up," until I try and find that, the deeper I go, the bigger the rock. And then I abandon the effort in disgust and walk away.


Words are like that, and the ideas they organize themselves into...rocks whose small ends show until I've broken a sweat digging, only to find that the big end, and sometimes the gem hiding inside, are too deep, and there is no getting at them, and so I must let nature, and my life, continue to pile even more experiences and memories on top of them, leaving me no choice but to move on.


But couldn't I get at them from the side, I wonder, dig down through the softer soil and then horizontally to the gem? I could, but that might mean ignoring those small seemingly insignificant words that are closer to the surface and that beckon less ostentatiously or lie there awaiting the sun's touch to glint their meaning to me. I might miss them, though, while I dig, blinded by the sweat in my eyes, failing to see the pebbles of greater meaning tumbling into the hole, gone forever.


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS/

The Birth of a Story

After having spent a long and very productive day staring at a screen and at the same collection of words, I realized that the writing process is, metaphorically speaking, very similar to giving birth. First comes the planting of the seed, which is the idea. Then, like cells, that idea starts to grow as more words are added to it, thus increasing its bulk and its viability as a living breathing thing. (OK, maybe not breathing, but you writers know what I mean.)

The idea evolves, slowly or quickly, as the case may be, and takes on a life of its own while still dependent upon you for its sustenance. At last, after weeks and months of carrying it around close to your heart as it gets heavier and heavier, it's time to give birth. Thence comes the labor, the final push out into broad daylight where it assumes its own identity. At that point, just as life steps in to edit the human being, add meaningful content or cut away superfluous baggage, mold and shape it into the gem that it is destined to be, you polish the piece of writing until it becomes The Finished Story.

It's late at night, and it's done. Your eyes burn and your whole body aches from the strain, and after what seemed to go on forever, there it is, this beautiful creation that is yours and yours alone. You spend the last few moments alone with it before announcing its birth and sharing it with the world.

And it won't matter if everyone looks at it and says, "That is the ugliest story I've ever seen." To you, it will always be beautiful, because you love it.

https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS