Day: April 29, 2014
You and You Alone
I remember in college a professor suggested I work on a paper with another student. I knew the subject matter like the back of my hand, in fact I was passionate about it and could write it cold. 35 pages. I knew the other student didn’t know half as much as I did. To prove it, she went to the library and checked out all the books. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to collaborate. I owned half of them anyway. I would go it alone. I got an A, while she got in the lower end of the alphabet I recall.
Writing is an intensely personal experience and sometimes we feel me vs. the rest. The way we see life is just so different. We need refuge away to make sense of the world around us. We need to write. Even if we don’t enjoy it, it’s just who we are.
That’s why it’s important to understand the journey we take is a long, lonely one and to most of our non-writer friends and family, it seems masochistic. A waste of time. Incomprehensible. But they don’t see the inner flame inside that keeps shoveling coal into the furnace of despair and insecurity. They never had a dream. Some don’t, you know. They’ve told me. Many people just never had a dream, and I don’t mean to get all MLK but think about it, as hard as it is, and as windy and twisty and bumpy as this road is, you can say, you’re living your dream. And you did it by yourself, because no one but you is going to sit down when the ice cream man rolls around, to tempt you with his treats. You’re going to keep sitting down and getting the writing done. You’re going to edit the work over and over. Because if it was easy you wouldn’t do it. Because it’s a dream. It’s all yours and you did it alone.
Now go hit the keys.
It’s just sometimes, I know that’s the way I’m supposed to go….I say someday I will.
jmledwellwrites 