I joined a writers guild this past winter. We make an interesting combination of people, coming from a wide range of backgrounds and having a wide variety of experience with writing. We’re retirees, teachers, published novelists, bloggers, mothers, travellers, locals, and transplants, but we’re united by a desire to find more consistency in our writing practice.
One lady comes to each meeting wishing, and promising, to write more, but never seeming to actually do so. “I’m getting older,” she half joked once. “If I don’t do it now, I might not have the chance.” She mentioned some beautiful, large trees outside her retirement home that would make a nice place to sit under to write. She lives just a block from me. She’s never out writing when I walk or drive by. Once, she was watering flowers as I passed with the stroller. I resisted the urge to yell, “Lil! Go write!”
Thus, the impetus for this blog. I don’t want to get to a point, further down my road, to find I’m filled with the regret of not writing with no one to blame but my own lack of consistency. So here we are.
At one of the early Writers Guild meetings we talked about vulnerability, and people shared some truly human stories about the struggles associated with putting their writing out into the world.
At that meeting I shared a brief poem on the subject, and, in the spirit of writing, and sharing, regularly, I now share it here. At least in theory, it all gets easier with practice:
A Piece of My Heart
When my writing is
polished, done, and released out
into the world my
stomach ties in knots; rapid
breathing. Instinct? Find. cover.
But I force myself:
lean into the wave; embrace
vulnerability. Swim.
Swim. Sharing is so scary
because it matters deeply.
Opening the doors
to my experiences,
I’m giving you, Dear
Reader, a piece of my heart
And when I do, the magic
happens. The first time –
Eight years old, a short story
about a brown cow
won third – a local contest.
My mom read it to cousins
She sat at our old
desktop. I, lay on the floor,
my head buried in
a pillow, willing myself
not to run away. Be. Share.
