Over the years I’ve learned to sit and wait in silence for
the words to come, and to sit in silence if they don’t come, and
to wait in patience for whatever will come—words or silence.
It's taken more than four decades, maybe five, to learn this, to
sit with a pen poised in my hand, a blank page waiting beneath it,
mute, and wait for thoughts to appear or, if nothing appears and
the page remains blank, to sit and wait in patience for words to come or
silence, whichever the moment might bring.
I learned to accept it wasn’t in my power to force words to
come or to disarm the silence as if it was an enemy waiting to
ensnare me, but to let go of the idea that I had any power at
all, to let the pen lead me wherever it needed to go, even if it
meant entering the thicket of silence.
Sitting and waiting was just sitting and waiting, not
failure, not frustration, just another form of seeing that allowed me
to view the world from a different perspective, a different angle, and
if the words remained frozen or stuck behind an invisible dam, I learned
not to worry if they never appeared and listened to my breath and
observed the changing color of the light and let my thoughts wander without
the distraction of the scratch-scratch sound of pen on paper.
I learned that writing wasn’t always writing but listening and
watching, that my pen didn’t have to move across the page, didn’t
even have to be in my hand, for me to write, for the words to
come and to appear on the screen of my inner eye—which required a different
kind of awareness, a different way of seeing (and listening for)
words.
Sitting and waiting for the moment when a thought glimmers, just
out of reach, and leaps like a silver fish out of the water, that’s
the moment that writing begins, and you can feel the desire to describe that
moment, to catch that fish and reel it in so you can see its fins and
scales and jewel-like eyes (quickly clouding) and feel its mystery and the way
it links you to life before life fades.
You sit and wait and hope to make that connection with
your pen, and with the words that flow through it, but if the day
brings no sightings, no tug on your line, and you sit and wait in silence,
listening to your breath, the page blank before you, as empty when
you get up as when you sat down hours ago, it’s okay because it
was all part of the writing process, all part of the mystery.
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