You Are A Writer {so start acting like one}

"Close the door. 
Write with no one looking over your shoulder. 
Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; 
figure out what you have to say. 
It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

-Barbara Kingsolver

I wake at 5:00 a.m., pour myself exorbitant amounts of coffee, slip in the ear buds to my iPod, and plant myself in front of the computer for two hours.

It is dark and quiet and it is wonderful.  

And it is crazy.

It is in this space that I am trying to figure out what I have to say, to gather up bits and piece of myself and, with trembling hands, to present them as an offering.

It is one of the hardest things that I have ever done.

To sit and muse, to poke and probe at one's deepest places, and then to just lay it out there

well, it is profoundly humbling.

Frightening, even.

I long for approval and head nods and pats on the back.  I want to know that the pain of self examination is worth it.  I look to the comments for proof that I should keep doing this.  I secretly hope that some big-name blogger will, somehow, stumble upon this space and share me with the world.

But that is beginning to change.

Because, at its very core, this writing process...well, it's for me.  I write to figure out what I am thinking.  I write to make sense of it all.  I write to discover who I am.

So I will keep waking at 5:00 a.m., I will keep drinking too much coffee, and I will keep my iPod programmed to repeat my "writing song."

Because in that space, it is dark and quiet.

And it is wonderful.

“Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us.  The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write.  To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.  Thus, writing requires a real act of trust.  We have to say to ourselves:  ‘I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.’  Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving.  Once we dare to “give away” on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches.”

-Henry Nouwen