The Weeds of Writing
May 7th, 2013 at 12:43 am (Twigs at Twilight)
I remember days of writing term papers in college and how hard I tried to discipline myself. I became very disciplined at washing clothes, sorting through papers, and cleaning up! Often I would ‘fuss at myself’ for not being disciplined and stifle my creativity even more! And as a teacher, I would end up with a clean classroom, way before I would finish my reports or evaluations. And then there was the teaching year I decided that parents would much rather have drawings of their children than pages of written evaluations! And now…today I found many ‘disciplines’ to exercise as the twig characters in my growing book, get frozen on their page along with words that I can’t seem to find for their next crisis.
Today, my ‘discipline’ was weeding! I weeded til my fingernails grew dirt and with courage and zeal to dug deeply into the dirt with no age old fears of snakes. The flowerbeds are nearly as immaculate as the next empty pages of this book! Yet what I’m learning is that this also is part of my process…sifting through ideas, weeding out ones that won’t work, and clearing away all the extraneous clutter in my mind that’s between me and the result I’m wanting to create. So ‘no fussing’ at myself this time. I’m trusting the twigs to show me next moments in their twilight adventures. And I’m trusting that they will make it back into their wise old tree before dawn. So as the weeds pulled easily from the wet dirt, and the rains soaked me and the dirt, I’m trusting that we are reaching the saturation point and that tomorrow will be a new day… for scattering seeds onto the fresh moist dirt, and sprouting healthy ideas for the fresh pages before me! Sleep well!