Writing on the Landscape

There is a voice that comes; this one is not friendly. It is a loud booming, grate-on-one’s-nerves type of voice. We hear it in stereo reverberating on canyon walls, echoing down the valley, powerful enough to shiver the grasses. Sometimes it rocks the earth on which we stand; other times it simply rocks us back into our cradle of familiarity. Because, though it is a foe, the voice is a familiar familiar. And if there is anything at all that a writer wants during her writing time, it is something known to which she can cling with ferocity. She does this because writing is unsettling.

Those yells and criticisms and demeaning words that come from the depths within are not even telling the truth, or the whole truth, so help the writer! The words and scolding that the voices scare up from behind dark stones on the path are merely telling stories. Sure, the stories sound real. But they are just words, albeit deviously put together into judgments that could stop even the most intrepid in their tracks. Pronouncements. Declarations. Threats. Insults. Even ultimatums. The problem is that the voice is very cleverly seductive. Oh, so alluring. It tells us we are far better off without making the journey; home is safer. Staying stagnant will not hurt as much as moving.

Trudging along weary and aching, the hiker has already forgotten the potent views at the top of the ridgeline. He feels that old knife-sharp pain in his knee, the burning feet with a blister well developed after the day’s fifteen miles, the knot in his shoulder. The T-shirt he wears clings to him unnaturally, sweat moistened and dried repeatedly throughout the day. Each step is a hardship even though he is aided by gravity as he moves downhill. He will soon reach the waiting respite of the vehicle and the hot bath salts on the other end of the car ride. None of these things matter to him. In this moment, he is hurting. The writer can have this experience too; usually it is the inner landscape that is slogging along.

We have emotions. Anger, fear, sadness, confusion, grief, loneliness, apathy, and overexcitement are part of the landscape of daily life. Interactions occur, events happen, and we find ourselves reacting. This is normal. This is human. These can interfere with writing though, and in a very significant way sometimes, too. Many of the practices I offer in this book deal with aiding, nudging, and guiding the writer toward an emotional landscape that is conducive to writing. When emotions are strong, they can impede the writer, and skew the writing. This does not make the writer “bad,” or the emotions “wrong.” It shows that the writer is, indeed, fully engaged in life as a human being, and has the resulting diversity of emotions that accompany life’s journey. We can use these to our advantage, as writers: our despair can be the way we relate to a character we are writing into our fiction. However, sometimes the emotions stand in our way: our despair can strip us of the energy we need to move forward with the difficult task of research on an academic project, for example.

There are myriad emotions, and multifarious ways in which they can stand tall, arrogant, defensive between us and our writing. Softening to them helps. But sometimes we get bowled over by the power of them and we simply cannot proceed. To focus, concentrate, muster the will or strength or courage to turn on the computer and open the document feels daunting. We couldn’t imagine typing something onto that empty page staring us in the face, threatening like a monster with a club. Even the arduous downhill portion of the hiking adventure—with its promise of the return back to the comforts of home, the glory of the abidance with nature and memories of the sweeping views on the mountaintop, the relief and release from our daily obligations—can become drudgery and cast a cloud over the blessing of being out, and free. Sometimes—despite all the fortitude we conjure up and our outward patina of strength, conviction, and attendance to the writing—the frailty of our real condition, the actual emotions we feel but decide not to share, lurk threateningly within.

There is an entire and vast wardrobe of coverings that we employ to make it through the moment, the day, the workweek, and our lives. Some of these are truly costumes: even we don’t believe that we are the character we dressed up as. But we wear them as a disguise, a way to pretend as if we are funny, wise, older or younger, serious, content, or calm. But the writer’s writing knows different; it knows the truth.

As if a sentient being in and of itself, Writing understands the real inner landscape of the writer. Writing does not wear pretense or use facades. It can feel what is really going on with the writer and, at every turn, it betrays the writer’s actual experience. If the writer sits down with hands on keyboard in a fit of despair, but expects to compose a section of the narrative that is singingly hopeful, chances are she will not be able to pull it off. Or, Writing will take over for the writer and perhaps move her to a place of hope by the time she releases herself from that session at the computer.

The writer must put aside the discordant chorus of voices. The committee, the panel, the demons. Perhaps because writing is such a solitary and quiet endeavor, those voices gain volume and momentum. And it is not long before the unsuspecting writer is faced again—for the umpteenth time—with the need to turn down the volume. But, these voices beg for attention. So we give them a little.