It's that time of year

It's that time of year.

Close your eyes. 

Sleep.

Let yourself dream.

You need to trust the process 

of rebirth, of dormancy, 

of silence turning into words

when the words are ready 

to appear.

You need to stop writing

in order to keep writing,

to close your journal so

you can open it again,

to put down your pen

so you can pick it up 

after you've had a chance

to rest,

revived, 

restored.

You need to feel the rhythm 

of life without holding a pen 

in your hand, to meet life 

head on, bare-handed, 

without protection,

vulnerable.

You need to let each day 

sink into you, let the world 

turn, let yourself accept

whatever comes with gratitude 

for where you are, 

for who you are.

A week from now 

you can pick up 

your pen to express 

in words what you 

can't say 

without it.

For now let yourself 

embrace the silence.

Be still.

Listen to your heart.

Open your ears to the wind.

Let your heart open, too, 

so you can sail in

whatever direction

your spirit takes you 

in the new year.

Finding Your Way Home

"Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn." -- Leo Tolstoy

"Light will someday split you open." -- Hafez

As you write into the unknown, swimming alone for weeks and weeks (and often for years and years), it's not always easy to find your way home.

You may look up from the page one day and find yourself far from shore, disoriented, unable to see the shoreline, unsure of what direction to swim in.

If only the sweeping beam of light from a lighthouse could guide you back to land.

But, alas, there is no lighthouse.

You are swimming in water that is deep and dark, and your arms are tired after swimming for so long, and you can barely kick, and you are close to sinking in a story that no longer makes sense.

It can feel like you’re drowning and that you will never reach solid ground again.

It’s just you… and the deep, dark water… and the empty sky…and your story, and words swirling in your head, and a faint whisper of a voice pleading with you: please, please, keep writing!

But how can you keep writing?

How can you find the strength within to keep going?

At some point you might stop to tread water and gain a little extra energy from the pause in your stroke.

Or you might float on your back for a while to rest and catch your breath.

Taking a break is always a possibility, an essential one at times for the future survival of your project (and for yourself as a writer).

But here’s the thing. After you rest and start swimming again, you may still not be sure what direction to swim in. (And remember there are sharks. There are always sharks.)

In the darkness, you keep wishing for a light to guide you.

If only there was a light.

And the thing is … there is always a light.

It’s the light that burns inside you like an eternal flame, a flame that will light your way and strengthen you once you become aware of its presence.

Most importantly, its light will help you remember what led you so far from shore in the first place.

It's this flame’s brightness that has the power to inspire you … and to reveal the way back to shore.

Remember: your inner light will always show you the way home.

End of Year Musings

It’s the end of the year and who can count how many hours we’ve sat at our desks waiting for words while the minutes passed by and our lives slipped off in directions that we could never have predicted?

Who can count the number of words or sentences or stanzas that we’ve written or the journal pages onto which we’ve poured our hearts?

Each year December comes like this, dark and dreary, with freezing rain and sleeting snow and a sense of doubt and hopelessness—and yes, with regrets, too—and then the sun makes its turn, and days begin to lengthen again as the earth sails into a new year.

And just as surely as the return of the sun and the dispersal of darkness, our words come, too—if we believe in the process and in ourselves—shyly, at first, perhaps, but they come again with a fresh urgency and need, seeping up out of the thawing ground, pouring forth like a melting stream onto a new page.

If we can hold onto our belief through the darkness and doldrums and frigid days of silence, if we can trust in this mysterious process to bring us what we need when we need it, if we can keep sitting at our desks and doing our work, waiting however long we might need to wait, then we can say we have written without regrets.

We’ve done our best.

And that is all anyone can ask.

It doesn’t matter whether we write fiction or poetry, memoirs or investigative journalism, short stories or novels, journal entries, notes on scraps of paper, forgotten thoughts in the margins of books that we've loved over the past year.

What matters is that we are still writing, still using pen and paper to explore the world and our life, still curious about what we might be thinking and eager to find out (thanks to the words that we put on paper) what thoughts are swirling through our heads, what emotions are hiding in our hearts.

It takes a stubborn determination and unrelenting perseverance to write.

Some writers may give up after only a few minutes of facing a blank page, the critical voices in our heads growing louder and louder until the voices become unbearable and we can’t stand to hear them anymore and have to push away from the desk and shout “Enough!” 

But other writers may just glare at the blank page and say, “Really? You think you can scare me? You think you can win?” And we stand up and go into the kitchen and brew a fresh pot of coffee, or steal a cookie from the cookie jar, and return to our desks and wait for the words to come.

And we wait for as long as we need to wait believing that patience is stronger than impatience and that words are stronger than silence.

Thanks to all for stopping by Wordswimmer this past year. Your presence in the water has helped keep me afloat more than you can know. May the the year ahead bring you a sweet-flowing river of words and stories.