Tag Archives: journal

writing when the writing’s hard

Good morning over there. I’m going to work to get this blog post written before the puppy wakes up and begins poking me with her cold nose. Here I got all accustomed (after ten years I still haven’t learned not to get accustomed) to those sweet warm mornings we were having, and now it’s chilly again. One good thing about living in the Bay Area is getting to complain all the time about the fantastic weather we have.

This morning I’m thinking about writing and the ways we use writing to save ourselves and the way that writing sometimes can become a site of re-iteration, the way that writing can be difficult. A few years ago, I noticed that I was, in my morning pages, writing over and over (and over) about a situation in my life that I was unhappy with. I wrote into it and into it, I told the same stories over and over, I began to discover patterns and understand what I needed to do for the situation to change — and then I hit repeat: write the stories, look at the patterns, see through the words what I need to do to change, but I didn’t do those things. Instead I just kept writing. And the writing began to hurt. I didn’t feel as good after I finished writing. I stopped wanting to go to the notebook. I stopped wanting to hear those stories. Never mind that the writing (along with other voices) was pointing me toward a solution– I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Continue reading