Alright. Please excuse the visual.
While determining what to write for next weeks blog, I visited several blogs that I frequent as a way to find motivation/inspiration. Some may call this procrastination. I don’t see it that way. About seventy percent of the time after I’ve returned from my blog journeying, I’ve found something to discuss. Monday was no different. And it only took on blog to discover my treasure.
Stuart Nager wrote Doing at his blog The Opening of Doors. If the reference sounds familiar it’s because I wrote about him last Monday, January 14 at Stuart’s Signs.
So what’s the reference to the title of this blog?
Ray Bradbury, a favorite author of mine said I BELIEVE in his book Zen and the Art of Writing:
Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That’s what writing’s all about.
As an aside, before I wrote blogs I wrote fiction. I have several unpublished novels gathering dust that I probably won’t get back to. I have been published several times in the early to mid 1990s in the small press; short stories in the SF/F market. There you learned something new about me today.
In response to Stuart’s blog on Monday, I used the quote:
Writing is like throwing up on a page.
As a way to show that any type of writing can be cathartic. Stuart is experiencing a few challenges in his life at the moment which is clearly evident if you’ve read any of his latest entries and I don’t think he’ll feel violated by my pointing this out. He is continuing to move forward, however which is also evident if you read his Monday entry Doing.
So good to see that he IS moving forward. Writing can be one way of expressing how you feel; even if you don’t consciously write about what you’re feeling, bits and pieces always find their way in. I’ve experienced this countless times when I was writing fiction. There were times when I found myself in the flow and I’d look up and realize four or five hours had slipped away and looking back at my computer screen, I’d see word upon word staring back at me and have no recollection of writing them.
Upon re-reading the words, there were times I’d be shocked at what I’d written. Those times were when it first dawned on me that though I claimed to be in control of what I was writing I realized I was fooling myself.
I was no more in control of my literary life as I once believed I was in control of any aspect of my life. There was only one who controlled my strings. It’s the same now with my blog, I may be placing the words on the screen but the words are coming from another source, a different power. Whether anyone else sees it that way isn’t the point.
As I’ve recently realized cognitively though on some level I always understood:
Everything is a choice. We choose to see the world a certain way.
If we choose to see everything as Divine, then that’s real for us. That’s how I live my life now; seeing everything as Divine.
Alright, as so often happens when I’m writing I fell off a cliff again, chasing another pebble. Where was I? Oh yes. Writing as catharsis:
I can certainly relate to that subject as that was one of the major reasons I spent so much time writing in my youth. Writing released all of my challenging emotions, dissipating them on the page and into the ether. As it can do for any of us, as it is doing for Stuart.
We all have challenges.
We all have baggage.
How do you leave yours behind?
Have you considered writing?
As I said earlier in this entry, you don’t necessarily have to be explicit about your challenges. I bet, like me, if you simply sit down and begin you’ll find a time comes when you find yourself in the flow just as I did. Then you’ll see that you have actually written down what you were feeling, all be it masked in metaphor. You’ll have released what ever you were feeling and once you’ve seen what that can do for you, you’ll more than likely want to feel this way again.
See? You’ve found an all natural way of feeling better.
Amazing! Isn’t it? And there! You’ve discovered another secret about me today too. I don’t just write for my audience..
I write to keep the calm within my soul.
I write because I must.
I write as I breathe. If I stop breathing, I stop living, correct?
The same with writing. If I stop writing, I stop living.
I bet the same can be said for Stuart.
Be Happy! Be Well! Be Positive!
Blessings to you.
–
Chris
Feel free to comment here on Patch or jump on over to my blog:
Throwing Up on a Page
