Clarity - about my need for clarity

Many times over the last year, I’ve started articles for this blog. Some were drafts of a few pages, some remained just a collection of images about my key questions, some were notes headed, ‘A Wordly Exploration topic?’ But nothing has made it to publication. 

As you may have noticed.

It’s been a rough two years for me for finding time and energy and routine to write. Floods, illness, loss and grief. Initially, I managed to post a few articles, but then it became too much.

I tinkered with ideas. I put them down.

A year - then more - ticked by since the last substantial article. Was the Wordly Explorations blog heading for oblivion, like so many others? 

This week is two years since my home was flooded, and two years since this blog went on the backburner. This post is about what I learned through this hiatus.

From Susan Orlean

Wordly Inspiration from Susan Orlean, whose words jolted me - why is it that I have to remind myself so often of this, and struggle to accept that as sufficient reason??

"You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it."

"You have to appreciate the spiritual component of having an opportunity to do something as wondrous as writing. You should be practical and smart and... you should work really, really hard. But you should also be filled with awe and gratitude about this amazing way to be in the world."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

From Stephen King

Wordly Inspiration from Stephen King, reminding me that I look forward to more sleeping and more (well, any at all) writing soon. Well, really I look forward to unlocking my mind from the humdrum that has been dealing with 2022.

"In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives."

See more Wordly Inspiration.

From Hilary Mantel

Wordly Inspiration from Hilary Mantel, searching for trust that I will still be a writer when I can return to these pages.

"Of course, writers find it difficult to trust themselves. It can seem such an inflated claim, that you are a writer. So you think you have to keep proving it, by persecuting paper with ink or pounding the keys, as if you need a self-justifying witness to your own strength of purpose... You can’t measure your productivity day-to-day in any way the world recognizes."

See more Wordly Inspiration.  

From Ursula Le Guin

Wordly Inspiration from Ursula Le Guin to help me hold it together while I do flood recovery work instead of writing. I like to think the ideas are scouring through some of the vast silences while I paint the walls. 

"One of the functions of art is to give people the words to know their own experience. There are always areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say." 

See more Wordly Inspiration.

 

Attention - paid or stolen?

By the end of this post I will have revealed my deepest secret, something about which I feel deep shame. I've never told anyone before but it's time I revealed all.

Um… no I won't. 

I just wrote that sentence to get your attention and I'm admitting it.

Apparently, that's a thing now. On social media I see people sometimes writing, 'Oh I just said that to get your attention' or they might add a picture of a dog which they describe as 'unrelated image for attention'.

Strange thing: attention. Something of yours I can 'get'. And now you are 'giving' your attention to this post. 

But did you actually give me your attention? 

Or did I take it from you?  

From Lucie Britsch

Wordly Inspiration from Luci Britsch: words that hushed my continual self-questioning about whether I should be writing or I should be doing something 'more useful':

"Write like the ghosts of all the women in history who weren't allowed to write are standing next to you wondering what a laptop is and why you're still in your pajamas."

See more Wordly Inspiration.