I see it now, the problem. Answered simply by my friend, Neha, the question both to life and writing that I’ve struggled with the past few weeks. You’re trying too hard.
Each story starts with an idea, an egg that drops within a womb and catches on when meeting with a wiggling sperm cell of excitement that forms conception, and eventually the birth of a living tale.
But up till now, I’ve listened to what is told to me; the characters are so apart from me I felt a mere mouthpiece for their sharing. The painful word-by-word of writing that has become my way of late is in effect, a taking over by an author of someone else’s life. I am Leonard Bernstein conducting same as the Engineer can guide his train to a chosen destination. I am the plotter and the planner in a place I’ve never been. Try and try and try to chart a course, to know when violins must play the softer solos; the speed, the pace.
It’s harder this way. I’d rather be a listener, for I truly don’t know where I’m going on this journey.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Susan, who knows where journeys can ever take us? All we can do is keep walking. That’s what the traveller is meant to do. All you can do is keep writing – and that’s what a writer is meant to do. The journey has no beginning, no middle, and no end, yet it still exists, sustaining itself through every breath and every footstep of the wanderer. Don’t fight it; embrace it.
Sometimes I thrill with a glimpse of knowing, and sometimes I weep with the certainty of having no clue, yet it seems I keep traveling in this journey, nonetheless.
I have spent much energy and thought in trying to know much, only to come again and again to the conclusion that I know little, and that life prefers it that way. The journey continues.
Amen.