I've been going through one of those writing times where there is so much in my head that capturing it all in writing seems impossible.
I sit down. I begin with a few lines. I feel good about them.
And then a million thoughts and questions cascade through my brain and muddle any vision I had of where those first lines would lead.
The muddled state is strangely satisfying and infuriating at once.
I am reassured by the relentlessness of my own questioning and curiosity.
I am overwhelmed by the certainty of wanting to stay, unrushed, in my own experience.
When I teach about writing and the body, I often emphasize the sensory experience of the body, how it can be easy to assume that one's sensory experience of the world is very much like everyone else's and everyone else's is very much like one's own.
Yet, try to capture that experience, and one might learn that language is not always exact enough or that it's too exact. And not all experiences are parallel.
I find such beauty in the moments when I can observe an experience through sensory input and when I can observe the senses through an experience.
And then begins the puzzle of how words might express that beauty for someone else to understand.
One of the lessons I have learned about writing is that when no words seem available, write about that.
I sit down. I begin with a few lines. I feel good about them.
And then a million thoughts and questions cascade through my brain and muddle any vision I had of where those first lines would lead.
The muddled state is strangely satisfying and infuriating at once.
I am reassured by the relentlessness of my own questioning and curiosity.
I am overwhelmed by the certainty of wanting to stay, unrushed, in my own experience.
When I teach about writing and the body, I often emphasize the sensory experience of the body, how it can be easy to assume that one's sensory experience of the world is very much like everyone else's and everyone else's is very much like one's own.
Yet, try to capture that experience, and one might learn that language is not always exact enough or that it's too exact. And not all experiences are parallel.
I find such beauty in the moments when I can observe an experience through sensory input and when I can observe the senses through an experience.
And then begins the puzzle of how words might express that beauty for someone else to understand.
One of the lessons I have learned about writing is that when no words seem available, write about that.
