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Writing
The Hardest Thing About Writing — Aimless Wanderers
On writing and doubt
The hardest thing about writing, at least for me, is not to edit or to come up with amusing metaphors or narratives. It is to have the bravery to bring the words, feelings, and emotions to the page, and to open the page to the world.
I believe writing requires honesty, but it also needs to be illuminating, show a path forward, and give a sense of hope. Writing needs to emulate Orpheus’ journey to rescue Eurydice, his wife. We need to be able to go to hell and back to the land of the living. However, it is tempting to stay in hell, perhaps because it is warm and there is no other place to go to, because in death, there is respite.
If we are dead, there is no need for hope. Hope requires effort, bravery, movement. To aim at something that is not there but promises something that it is not yet. Hope requires imagination.
The hardest thing about writing is facing the possibility that what we imagine will not come to be; her lips will not graze ours, our words won’t be valued, our efforts won’t be seen.
The hardest thing about writing is that our words will not fill the page — or that they will overflow it with emptiness. That, as we think we are emerging from hell, we are just wandering…
