The future has yet to be written

I don't know where I'm going

the future is unknown

a sheaf of days

that have yet to be written

blank pages

waiting for words

the words hidden

somewhere in the future

perhaps stored in a pen

I have yet to pick up

peeking out from beneath a nib

waiting to be discovered

or compressed into the charcoal lead

of a #2 pencil, the way diamonds

are pressed beneath stones

waiting for the pressure of

my hand moving across

the page to release them 

Why do I write?

Why do I write?

Trying to answer that question is like trying to define love.

How do you put a feeling into words? Why do you love anything?

You feel something strongly... but what is that feeling? And where does it come from? Out of the blue? Or like a gentle wave that gains momentum and strength as it approaches the shore?

You see words appear on the page beneath your pen, and your heart melts.

You open a journal to a blank page, and something stirs inside you.

Just holding a pen in your hand sends a shiver up your spine.

You are where you belong.

Doing what you were born to do.

Who knows why this and not that--writing instead of drawing or playing an instrument, adding numbers, parsing the law, whatever.

Maybe it's not something to question, just something to accept.

A part of your identity as much as your fingerprint or the features on your face or the sound of your voice.

You write because you can.

Because there's nothing else that lets you be yourself in the same way... without pretending, without needing to wear a mask.

There's no hiding from yourself on the page. No barrier (except for your own limitations and talent) to keep you from seeing (being) yourself.

With each word you come closer to the truth of who you are, and, in the process of putting words on paper, you discover who you might become.

Each word is a gift into the nature of being you.

Breaking The Ice

Even in the heat of summer, when the pavement sizzles and the sidewalk buckles, a writer can feel like she’s trying to break through the ice to find the words to tell her story.

At times it can feel as if our words are trapped beneath the surface, frozen like fish caught in the ice while swimming upstream, irretrievable until the next thaw.

How can a writer break the ice?

Some days I find writing on a computer feels like trying to break through the ice. I need paper and pen to feel the warmth of words beneath my fingers. The simple sound of a pen scratching the paper will somehow warm the ice and release the words that were trapped beneath the keyboard, frozen, stuck.

Writing on the computer often feels too clean, too neat, too cold, too abstract—mere digital points of light and color, symbols rather than words. With a pen and pencil, writing is messy. Instead of pressing a button or tapping a key… and watching the words vanish like smoke into the Ethernet (or wherever deleted words on a computer screen go), I can feel with my pen the tactile sensation of scratching out a word or sentence or paragraph.

There are days when I may stare for hours at a computer screen before realizing that I need to switch from the keyboard and screen to pen and paper. Words don’t flow when my hand is still. That’s why I find a pen so helpful in breaking the ice. It lets my hand move across the page in a fluid motion, not the helter-skelter motion of typing, and that freedom of motion frees up something inside me… like freeing a block of ice…so that the water can flow again.

Sometimes all it takes to break the ice is the decision to push aside the computer and find a pen, a pad of paper, and I'l begin to write the old-fashion way, smudging my fingers with ink or charcoal, poking my eye with the tip of an eraser, accidentally drawing blood from a paper-cut.

The next time you find yourself staring for hours at a blank computer screen, try pushing aside the keyboard, picking up a pen and a pad of paper, and letting your hand start moving across the page. Write anything—the silliest gibberish that you can imagine—and see if after a few minutes the words don’t start flowing, falling into place, forming a story that only minutes ago was stuck, frozen, in the ice.

For more information on the benefits of writing by hand, visit:

http://critically-yours.blogspot.com/2010/11/writing-by-hand.html

http://www.themillions.com/2012/04/high-wire-act-why-i-started-writing-by-hand.html

http://www.journalingsaves.com/journal-writing-by-hand/

http://heartandcraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/hand-or-keyboard-it-depends.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/16/why-does-writing-make-us-_n_900638.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518.html