I’m returning to taking writing seriously. Maybe I never left. Maybe the idea of returning is a lie I’m telling myself to motivate myself. But I’ve gotten into a creative writing program, to which I’m about to commit a lot of time, money and effort. The program crosses through fiction, poetry and script writing. Their emphasis is on finding the writer’s voice and, with the help of my lovely wife, I’ve decided to take them at their promise. I’m using the course to write what I feel is true, beautiful and real to me.
Expression and experience are interlinked. So much to the point that we can reasonably say there is not such thing as experience, only increasingly intimate expressions of it. Therefore, finding my voice is a project pursuing my self. (And maybe at the heart of that self, I’ll find waiting for me a voice.) I don’t expect to get there, like an asymptote doesn’t expect to arrive at its destination, but hopefully I can get closer and close and so close that the two are indistinguishable. A lofty goal, but worthy of a life.
To find my voice, I believe, will entail speaking with sincerity as best as I can as often as I can. So I’m posting stuff online. My words. My work. And an aspirational third category reserved for words and work of others that supersede the quality of my own. It’s public because I want to remember that writing is an expression.
(photo credit: Ellen Brady. We thought it looked authorly.)
Expression and experience are interlinked. So much to the point that we can reasonably say there is not such thing as experience, only increasingly intimate expressions of it. Therefore, finding my voice is a project pursuing my self. (And maybe at the heart of that self, I’ll find waiting for me a voice.) I don’t expect to get there, like an asymptote doesn’t expect to arrive at its destination, but hopefully I can get closer and close and so close that the two are indistinguishable. A lofty goal, but worthy of a life.
To find my voice, I believe, will entail speaking with sincerity as best as I can as often as I can. So I’m posting stuff online. My words. My work. And an aspirational third category reserved for words and work of others that supersede the quality of my own. It’s public because I want to remember that writing is an expression.
(photo credit: Ellen Brady. We thought it looked authorly.)
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