Funny how a comment can send you on a quest; that’s what happened
to me last week.
I was talking with a woman in my office whom I consider to
be a talented photographer and writer.
She commented that sometimes she looks at something she has written and
wonders, ‘who wrote that mushy stuff; where did that come from?’ She
went on to say that sometimes she feels there is someone ‘in there’ doing the
writing.
That struck a chord in me because I have a good friend who….well,
let’s say she doesn’t care for my blog.
She says it’s sappy and that I am much wittier and more caustic than the
things I write. I can’t guarantee I’m any
funnier in person, but I know I have a sarcastic bent that may not come off in
my writings. I’ve also written things
that I would not, likely could not, put into words and wondered where it came
from.
As the editor of Heart of Ohio Magazine it’s been my good
luck to get to know Barb Haller; she is now a contributing columnist for
us. I wrote her to ask if she ever feels
that her writing is somehow different from the person others seem to perceive
her to be. Her response was that she
believes writers access and reveal a deeper part of themselves through their
work. Writing helps her sort out her
thoughts and feelings. She says she,
too, has experienced a “who’s that?” when she reads something she wrote because
it often reflects deeper things than day to day life.
Now my interest was really piqued. I called another friend, this time a male, and
asked if he ever experienced this split between his every-day life and his
writing. He laughed, “Well, now that you
mention it I often go back to read things I’ve written years before and wonder
who in the heck put that in my file.
Sometimes my work can come off as stuffy and cerebral, and you know that’s
not what I’m about!”
I’ve been writing this blog over a year and a half now; the
magazine over four years. I went back
through old blog posts to see if any of them struck me as having been written
by some ‘other’ personality. Here’s what
I’ve decided:
Writing is a very solitary and private thing. In our day to day lives we interact with
other people; their reactions, needs and expectations can change how we behave;
even who we are. Writing isn’t like that….writing
doesn’t happen to anyone but the writer.
It seems to me that writing is the pure distillation of who we really
are; if you cannot tap into that you’re not a writer. When I write the product is pure “me” without
anyone else’s input. Even the creation
of fiction is pure because the source of the material is right inside the
writers head; processed and stretched and chiseled by no one but the author. In its purest form writing is ones interaction
with oneself.
I suppose in talking with other writers I’ve answered my own
question. The outer ‘me’ is who I am when I react to other people,
demands and unavoidable daily stress.
The writer, the inner ‘me’, is
who I am when left to explore my own thoughts and feelings. I can only speak for me, but the only way for
that inner person to be heard is to write….and so I do.
Life is Good
Life is Good
