Writing

Today is day 85 in a row I've written something intentional.  I started at the beginning of Lent, using the United Methodist Church's Lenten Word-of-the-Day.  Starting on Ash Wednesday, I wrote daily reflections on the words, usually with a spiritual bent, and included a stock photo evocative of the word or concept.  Some days the words flowed easily, filled with alliteration and imagery, surprising myself with the insights that just came to me with very little effort.  Some days were a struggle, with verbs that would have been better in their adjective form, or plurals that would have been easier to write about in the singular; or words that I needed the dictionary to clarify.  The thesaurus was my best friend, and many times song lyrics said it better than I could.  Ultimately, though, I found I really enjoyed the discipline, and have continued it in the weeks since Easter, coming up with my own topics or words some days, and getting input from friends for others.

Choosing my own topics has given me a freedom the daily assignments didn't offer.  I've written about the color green, Friday, unicorns, difficult conversations I need to have, my eyes (which I think are pretty), the farmer's market, pressure, and freedom itself.  The difficulty, though, comes in waiting for inspiration:  what do I want to write about today?  I'm googling "journal topics" and "inspiring words to write about."  While the daily discipline of writing is enjoyable, I confess that I'm finding less inspiration in this haphazard approach to choosing topics.  

Frankly, writing about writing is less than inspiring as well.  LOL.  And yet, here I am.  In Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances is attending the book signing of one of her former students.  He talks about writer's block and going to Frances for help.  When he told her he had nothing but horrible ideas, she told him to take one of those and write about it.  One of those ideas became the book he was featuring that day.  So, here's my horrible idea, in black and white, and it's certainly not my best writing, even this week.  But I'm writing.  I'm exercising the muscle, stringing words together to form sentences, and sentences to form paragraphs, and paragraphs to form a blog.  

I may never do a book signing or have more than two readers (my mom and my husband) or get monitized, but the words have left my head and gone through my fingers to the keyboard to the screen (or through the pen to the page).  They've gone out into the world, either on the interwebs or in my journal.  And as they say, "better out than in."  The catharsis of the writing far outweighs the shortcomings in my ability.  The mental health improvement of organizing my rambling thoughts, even in a limited way, is worth the struggle of not always finding the best topic or the right word.  And so I write.  Every day.  

If you've found this really boring, I take full responsibility.  If somehow you've been inspired, I take absolutely no responsibility.  If you've ever tried something on a regular basis with varying degrees of success, and my story resonates with yours, I'm delighted to have made a connection.  That's really the bottom line, isn't it?  Finding connection in this divided world, holding on to the tiniest sliver of common ground, reaching out to the rest of humanity with something that defines being human.  Here's my challenge to my fellow humans:  take the bad idea and write about it, or paint it, or sing a song about it.  Take the ugliest color in your crayon box and make it into something less ugly.  Or just get the ugly out of you and on to the page--and then burn it.  Because sometimes we get to create beauty, and other times the best we can do is just channel the ugliness away from our souls to allow the beauty to come in.  Thank you for reading.