Writing past the difficult stuff!

Sometimes I get stuck in feeling I must complete something I’m working on. Or must make a scene into a story rather than just letting myself have fun with the writing. I get too bogged down in the heavy stuff of being a writer. I’ve discovered that to get unstuck, I need to push aside my concerns and just write whatever is surfacing in the moment that wants to be heard. That freedom then allows me to dig into a draft I’ve gotten stuck in and usually enables me to make progress again.

I’ve been thinking, too, of my assemblages, particularly the sewing box I’ve been developing. Maybe I’ll write a story about it as well. I’m sensing there will be something dark, something sinister, threatening the order and peacefulness I first envisioned for the box, but I don’t know yet what that might be. I hope I don’t shy away from it.

In looking back at my early journals about writing, I felt especially close to Joan Didion. She revealed her process, craft, and way of being in the world. She says, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” I’ve tried to do the same thing myself. I hope to  discover not only what I’m thinking and what I’m looking at but much more.

Reading other writers continues to be a source of inspiration for me. I recently bought James Wright’s last book of poems as well as The Daughters of Copper Woman, written by Anne Cameron, a Canadian writer who is retelling northwest coast Native myths that focus on women. There’s something in these books I need and may end up reporting on them in these pages.