Every time I went to my computer this week, quotes from “The Right to Write” by Julia Cameron would go through my head and finally I realized that what I really wanted to be doing with my time was rereading that book. So yesterday I pulled it off the shelf and flipped it open and read this quote, “I learn by going where I have to go.” And immediately a tension I didn’t even know I was holding went out of me. I read on. Words of balance and sanity, reminders that writing is a reason unto itself, that “writing rights things”. It does.
My very smart unconscious brain knew that before I was ready to sit down and start producing stories again, I needed a reminder about why it’s worth doing, no matter what.
It’s easy to stop listening, as she says, and start talking on the page instead. And then there you sit, full of tension, feeling self-conscious. But stories aren’t about self. They’re bigger. And to get to something bigger than me, I have to listen.
Today I don’t care if I produce a page, a paragraph or a sentence. I want to remember to listen, to get out of my own way, to learn by going where I have to go. And let writing right things, in my head and in my life and in my story. Thanks, Julia, I needed that.
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