To bring being to the writing, and to the reader.
The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to everyone for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted.
The how of writing is secretive, mysterious, just beyond reach—writing that matters requires vulnerability, a brutal honesty at the very moment of placing the pen to the page, and demands that the writer give up any agenda, allowing the writing to emerge from one’s true self, ever stumbling into the unknown.
—Anton Chekhov, letters
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
I make it a point to write without a conscience.
• To affirm an individual, and therefore unique, writing practice: through the risk of writing comes the writer’s voice
• Through a writer’s innate and individual form comes the
full force and idiosyncratic power of her voice
• To cultivate one’s love of literature feeds a writer’s process and incubates voice, through voices that inspire good writing
• The writing of being emerges through authentic expression and ordinary brilliance, fine-spun through individual play and experimentation
• Awakening the writer to an intimate appreciation of her individual curiosities and attractions fosters writing that is alive and compelling to the reader
• A writer taps into innate creativity through ordinary adventures, finding the entrance to Dante’s wood through one’s own back yard
POSSIBILITIES