The Process is as rich as there are writers.
I now see that in my earliest years of writing I had been trying on words for size, putting out what I thought sounded good. Of course sounds are what give birth to words, and it is the thrilling privilege of writers to show communication is not only functional but beautiful. But now I am ruthless with Self, tightening, questioning, making her say more with less. I still experiment, and sound out my work for the music of language. But I am no longer willing to sacrifice style for truth.
In her prolific journaling and letter-writing to those back home a hundred years ago, Irish missionary to India Amy Carmichael asked herself: “Is this true?” Twenty years after I glossed over these three words in her biography, they have resurfaced these past few months. In the writing, I ask myself if it’s true. My purpose in the process isn’t to incite a response or rouse an audience. If a word doesn’t quite sit well with me, is not true to me, I rework it until it imparts my intention. I wasn’t looking to be funny or hyperbolic in the posts that earned laughs. They told what I simply felt or saw. I am not out to impress so much as I am to express. And in the expressing, I am also not the girl emptying angry questions from an abraded heart anymore. Not because my life is perfect. But because, as many will disagree, if I write primarily for the therapy it wonderfully can be, it to me will be emotional emesis, not true art. I won’t take up your time with my rehab.
We have sites devoted to the loving memory of a dear one or blogs defined by a persisting pain. I share loving hopes for the bloggers because writing is healing, one reason for my journaling through the years. I didn’t write bereft to broadcast one of the most impossible sorrows I have known. I in fact did not want to be explicit. The journaling already had helped me process the grief. But as I freed the poem to the life it took on, it rehearsed how the world had looked at the time from inside my pain. I had to keep it real. As for creative writing or fiction, I asked myself through every line in Rain Story, “Is this what I see in my head with my spirit?” And so I’ve discovered a finer line between journalism and creative writing than appears. I have felt very much like a journalist reporting live from the inside.
The nascent writer churned out her share of cryptic poetry. Now, I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time purposely being unclear when you’ve come to see what I have to say. No longer the high schooler with words welling over in the dark, I employ metaphors for the 1000 words they save me by their pictures. The journey may start out as an exploration. But at some point before I share it with another sojourner, I’ve figured out where North is and have walked the line — without needless acrobatics.
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