Reconciling Saints

Writing.

I've been doing a lot of it these days. I've got my little space here, ourpdx.net where I don't post nearly as often or nearly enough like me, the odds and ends that I scribble in the many journals I keep lying about, the submission for Ashley over at Nostus Cookbook that I promised her a month ago and there is the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo. Then there are the projects that have gone by the wayside, like Waiting for Amanda and my websites.

Writing is my lover and my enemy. It's loved and hated. It's being naked but safe.

I guess you could say it's like sex... one wonders about how the body is viewed, how good one is, if one is really loved and yet, it's put out there, vulnerable. Writing, for me is very much like that. In a sense it's sort of a no-brainer, you do it 'cause you love it... and the person... sometimes. heh. It's an expression and this is how I choose to express myself, this is how I feel it. So I don't think, I just do.

It's also a lot like a relationship: it's perfect, it's horrid, maybe it's not for me, of course it's for me, I need to work through this.

These nights I've been struggling with the writing. It's a chore, but it's a chore I love, that I get caught up in. I do it because... because I love to. I think about that because a lot of people ask me what I expect to get out of it. Well, nothing really, except for the very act of doing it. When I don't write... it irks me, I feel out of it. Then again, when I do it, I question it all the time.

Ibsen wrote, "To write is to preside at judgment day over one's self." I cannot think of a better way to describe it.

Would I love to be able to write all the time and make my living off of it? Yes! Would it drive me mad because of how hard it is to try to come up with something without over-thinking it? YES! Do I think I can cut it? ... Maybe.

The point, mainly, is that I love to write, with all my heart, with all my soul, with every particle that's me. It's a labor of love. It's what I need to do. How it's done, whether I get paid for it or not, that doesn't matter. The problem still lies in that sometimes in the midst of it all, it scares the hell out of me! However, I'm learning that I can't help but do it, and the more I try to do, the more I want to do, and fuck the questioning of it! I find myself asking what I tend to do with the finished novel (as I will finish it!), and then what, and then what after that?

Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn, I just want to do it!

*Note: I'd like to thank IAMX for the title Naked But Safe as I can't get the song out of my head and the title worked perfectly for my thoughts on writing.