Truthfully yours
I was recently asked what the soul of my writing was, what excited me most about writing, and why did I think that writing words down was important.
Anais Nin said: “We write to taste life twice, in the beginning and in retrospect.”
That’s it for me, in a nutshell. I’m one of those people who get so caught up in the moment that I forget to take a picture. I am totally immersed in the laughter, the grief, the oh-my-gosh-it’s-her-birthday-again-how-can she-be-growing-up-so-fast moment. I am a busy person. My days are full of work and play and family and home and friends and chores and…
Sometimes I forget that this is my life, the only one I get, and I need to stop gulping and savor it.
Like memories reinforced by the photos we take, the impressions of the day last longer if I write them down. I remember them better. Maybe they’re not life-changing events, but if I reflect on the day, the insights I will get from them might be. Maybe today is the day that a truth will hit me—a truth so profound that it will seep deep into the core of who I am. It might have the power to touch someone else, and perhaps it’s the truth they need to make it through their crazy day tomorrow.
It takes time to draw the flavor from life, to taste all the nuances, and imprint them on my heart and my memory, and offer others a taste.
I used to think that the soul of my writing was my soul, scraped out and spread raw across the page. But that isn’t quite right. It’s an invitation. It’s my heart seeking connection, my mind seeking another who is like-minded or not, who will sample my thinking and enrich it with their own.
But it’s more.
It is the hope that if I seek truth diligently, that somewhere in the scraping of my soul, I might find it, rake it loose and plant it somewhere else for another soul to harvest.
And since I’m a firm believer that stories hold truth—buried deep, or laying loose on the surface, it’s the stories that get me excited. Living only one life is not enough for me. I want to experience it in the stories that I read, and in those I create.
