7.8.21

The act of writing is dramatic because it entails pausing your own narrative and stepping into another. Writing temporarily removes you from the reality timeline you are existing in and brings you to a parallel universe of possible narratives, alternate timelines. Writing forces a break from the rhythm of life. Writing borrows your brain from its daily duty of investment in the narrative of day-to-day life and requires your brain to enter a new space of creation. Holding your own narrative at arms length, your brain temporarily looks away and beyond and thinks about something new. 

Maybe this is why it has been so hard for me to actually sit down and start writing. I have had in my mind this sense that I want to write, that I want to flesh out my ideas on the page, tell stories both imagined and remembered, write poems, write songs, write. But I haven’t yet. But I am today. And I think the reason this is happening is because I realized that writing requires this pause in the present. I have such a stake in living in the now and I think it’s hard for me to remove myself from the current moment long enough to reflect. Realizing that writing exists in a separate space, a space of solitude and separation, not just from other people, but from my own brain as it normally is. When this thought occurred to me, it felt like an epiphany. Like oh, that’s why it’s so hard for me to write. I have to let something be in order to do it. Let the chatter of my life fade into the background and create a period of quiet in which stories can materialize.