Today my Writer Me was voiced, and heard, and voiced back by a wonderful partner on Mark Silver’s Heart of Money course .. and I quaked… and I still have all the other treats of my own further discoveries in store.. but Pandora’s Writer Box has been opened… the silent voice has begun to un-stick herself. And somehow I’m so glad to read these words here today of all days.

Hugs-of-the-not-so-silent-variety
.-= Lindsay McLeod´s last post … Silent Voice =-.

The hippie and I had a long discussion about this last night. Why I went to the trouble of creating an anyone-can-see-this place to blog and then sat and waited for inspiration. It’s been months. And the creation of that blog has stopped me from posting in my hidden-been-doing-them-for years blogs.

The family has always said I would be a writer and boy oh boy do I have some stuck with blogging in a place where they can see. I don’t want to have a single explanation conversation with them.

So the hippie and I came to an agreement (based on what you told me earlier this month): I will start writing from the heart and I will first send it to him for review. He will review any comments that come through to eliminate the icky ones that might come from family. And maybe, just maybe, this will clear my block and get me to find my voice and start the ranting.

*fingers crossed*

Dawn: I have mixed feelings about this Rainer Maria Rilke quote from “Letters to a Young Poet”:

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

I once thought if I didn’t truly feel this way about writing, about becoming a WRITER, then I didn’t deserve it.
That’s changed.

Now I’m rather like Joan Didion, who says she writes to find out what she’s thinking. Writing, then, is a necessity for me. I write to know how I feel. I’m a writer in that sense.

Lean:
I am not my grandmother, who wrote more than fifty novels. I am not my aunt, who is one of Ireland’s most highly respected poets. I am not even my father, who has published two crime novels under a pseudonym.

It wasn’t until I started working with acrylics and pastels that I began to be able to form the word ‘artist’, that my mouth would shape it and my throat and breathe and tongue could articulate it.

The acrylics and pastels seem to have been a passing phase that helped me deepen into my photographic ‘artistry’.

I’m still learning that just because something comes ‘easily’ or ‘naturally’ to me, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. A thing doesn’t have to be impossibly hard for it to be good.

And right now at this red hot minute in my life, I don’t know anything. All bets are off. Up is down and in is out.

Saying I’m a ‘freelance’ embroiderer somehow seems to remove any of the doubt and gives me ownership of my connection with my bit of creative turf.

I play samba and I’m really not especially good at it but I love it so fun-drummer-me is the bit that gets to say I’m musical.

Seems to work for me!

I like the internal critic interview. I could really do with some talks to my inner critic, I think. We don’t talk a lot, but I think they are behind some of my recent freakouts. Hm…

You hit a nerve here to, Havi: it is Researcher/Academic Me. Or even Professional Me. Does impostor syndrome ring any bells? I guess I’m too aware of the things I don’t know to feel comfortable about giving advice, writing down definite conclusions, even sending in my work to scientific journals. And then the dissertation…

Or maybe it is just my definition of what a Researcher/Academic/Professional is supposed to be that needs some attention. Reality check.

So there. That’s another thing on my list of things to work on.