Writing, for me, is best when the words, images, fragments and impulses pour onto the page. This happens when I journal but also when I’m given a writing prompt and am timed. I like the generative process of writing in a group (which is very different than workshopping). Sometimes I get a word or sentence I really love. Once is a while, an entire piece.
It’s like taking water and pouring it into a glass only it is my unconscious being expressed with ink or via a keyboard. The words coalesce into something that is resonant within me.
I’m writing this right now to remind myself that my unconscious is a constant that never stops offering me ideas and, therefore, hope. Remembering helps me harvest these unconscious gems and make them into a form with words—make them conscious.
I do like it when this process leads to an end result (essay, for example; book; collage, for example) that becomes visible in some way that correlates to an “achievement” or an “acceptance.” But, having been (and will continue to be) rejected so many times, I understand now that the one constant is my unconscious, and that I need to honor that first and always. I know it because it keeps bringing me back to the page and never ceasing to grant me ideas. If I honor it and draw it out and invite it into the world on its own terms, it will allow me to shape it and refine it. But I know this much is true: No achievement is possible without the cooperation of my unconscious.
I have never “always known” I was a writer. Sometimes, I’m not even sure I know it today. And maybe that is a good thing for me. The work is very much about finding ways for my unconscious to be in the conscious world in as pure a state as possible, without the “writer” persona-me trying to contort it. But when I write I get closer to being a writer, or I become a writer.
Through writing I become/am a writer and not just the persona of writer. When I write from within, actually get the raw material onto the page, I become less self-conscious of what’s inside me, and more confident about my abilities.
—Meredith
Photo by Adrien Converse on Unsplash