There have been a lot of “hard things” about writing and generally interacting with people since my marriage split up over a year a go. It isn’t the usual things you would think as the split was not emotionally difficult for me. I know that sounds like a horrible thing to say, but it’s true. Once it happened, once he moved out, I can honestly say I have never missed him a day.
See, that right there. That’s been one of the hard things about writing now. That sentence right there is where I have to start and I know it will sound awful and hurtful to people because it is awful and hurtful. But to me, and I have found I am never alone, it is also beautiful and magnificent.
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
I’ve never been to Paris, but I have sat on the shores of big water and watched as the tides moved and versions of my heart who live outside my body play in its offering. I know what it is to feel inspired. I know what Hemingway is saying. And it is easy because there is always a true sentence. And it is hard, because there is always a true sentence.
“There is nothing to writing,” says not Hemingway. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” That sounds like Hemingway. His name is often attached to it. It isn’t his. But I am sure he felt it. I find it impossible to believe that one would comprehend the “one true sentence” theory without feeling it.
Concerning the idea of bloodshed, the question isn’t ever confined to the writer alone. That would make it easy. To offer up oneself in fullness in order to release the pounding of nouns and verbs stuck inside a writer’s head is a ready option. All writers know this. There are few things as painful as a sentence on the inside that wants, needs, to be on the outside.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Although I love the phenomenal Maya Angelou, that quote, contrary to popular opinion, isn’t hers. It is actually from Dust Tracks on the Road by the brilliant Zora Neale Hurston. But you can find it everywhere, shared and shared again – just like the bleed quote – by folks from all kinds of different backgrounds.
I can only conclude then that it is a common struggle – to find the true sentence and then address the agony of considering the bloodshed. If it were simply the writer’s blood, my blood, the sentiment would be less than a fleeting thought. Writing is as much a life force and a necessity as the heartbeat. But it isn’t bloodshed of the singular. It is the bloodshed of the many. I do not live in isolation; I do not write about myself alone as my experience did not come in solitude. It occurs in the world and intertwines with the experiences of those in it. Others with ideas, memories, perceptions different than, sometimes in direct opposition to, mine. Others whose, deserved or not, feelings I consider.
As such, writing for me has been convoluted, disjointed, dishonest, vague to the point of absurdity, confined, or stalled completely. Working through that has been a slow and fearful process. The fear of writing is not new to me. For many years I was afraid to write. But the source was different. It came from the others. That’s a beautiful, albeit cowardly, hiding space as I decided I had to take no personal responsibility for it; I want to write, I should write, I have to write, but because of forces outside my control, I simply can’t. That isn’t true anymore. It really wasn’t very true then. But now I can’t even pretend that it is anything other than my own fear and hesitation.
And there is so much fear and hesitation. Every sentence is checked and double checked. Ideas that may come across as anything other than conciliatory and nice suddenly require encyclopedic levels of explanation and clarification. Caveats to thoughts in an attempt to tourniquet a paper cut that I fear may be a hemorrhage in the eyes of another become so numerous as to be exhausting and overwhelming. The writing becomes nothing more than a nearly incomprehensible apology for my very existence and a purposeless martyring of ink.
Even today, this is not what I sat down to write. The idea that started my time at the keyboard was allowed exactly 54 words before it went sideways into palliation. I decide to jot a few notes in hopes that one day I finish that thought. It was clear to me that I was risking nothing with that option. If I lose the idea as the moment has now passed, it really is okay; without doing this work first, that idea never really had a chance of survival anyway. None of them do.
It has become clear to me that unless I can honor the space where my true to me sentence can just breathe, I cannot write. That is not an option. Through the ages writing has always been a scandalous venture. Nouns and verbs remain the harbingers of misunderstandings, condemnation, ridicule, and ostracism. Yet still the quill was inked, the pen moved, the key stroked. In the face of obvious and time tested proof that the writer has control only of the delivery and not the reception, we still write. Why?
You write because you need write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.
Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine
One day (hopefully sooner rather than later) I will go back and put nouns and verbs to the awful beauty of that true sentence and other true sentences like it. Today however, the ability to just leave it there and not delete it will take all the moxie I possess. Maybe today the point is to mend something broken. Maybe that is how we bring things back to life.