I don’t much care for reading about writing – and my writing likely reflects that. But recently I stumbled across a blog post (Reditus) by Amanda Mininger that struck a chord and sent me to the keyboard I have been most recently associating only with work.
She notes that when we write we “peer down the silent well. What’s down there? What have I been overlooking? What roots cling with naked tenacity to the stone sides? What thin layer of much at the bottom hides an ecosystem…. What hides in the cracks unbidden? I don’t know yet. I can’t see. My eyes need time to adjust.” I like that analogy. Writing often feels like “peer[ing] down the silent well.” Continuing, she notes, properly so, that when I feel that tug there is something, often something I can’t even assign a name to that “has not let go yet. Has chained itself to my ankle, has let me drag it down the street into my apartment and on vacation and into work meetings and into lazy Sunday breakfasts where I can continue to ignore it, and ignore it, and ignore it if I want to…. But if I say it here – I’m coming back to writing – maybe the chain will break.”
So here I sit at the keyboard, ball and chain unattached – for now. But the well is always close, the drink so refreshing.
It occurs to me... 