There is No Escape in Writing

Throughout my life, writing has been a method for me, therapy to sort through my garbage--to take it out, look at it and determine if there is anything in the rubble worth keeping and cleaning. My writing in this context always addressed my problems. Journaling, writing exercises, creative exploration, word art, dream boards--all systems to reach the core me.


In the last couple of weeks, I've been pummeled with a personal crisis. It feels as though there is no time to journal and when the time is available, I want to sleep instead of dig in my trash. Much of this trash isn't even mine, but shoveling through it will still uproot painful things about myself, things I've been unwilling to address. Up until now, any spare moment in my life, after caring for my family, has been expended finishing my current work; my book, which has healed an entirely different portion of my life from a distant time and place.

Attempting to write about pain in the now, or even write through it and despite it, has forced me to evaluate the parallels of myself--my mind, my methods, my life. I'm not trying to bury the current circumstances. I'm not stuffing the pain into a box or down my throat in the form of Krispy Kremes. I am sitting in the pain with all of my being, letting the bile rise, my hands shake and my mind crack just a bit.

But what I've begun to realize is that when faced with a personal crisis, most people can simply rise in the morning and lose themselves in their work or a project. Not a writer. A writer cannot lose himself when he works.  A writer finds himself in his work.

Titles

At the start of creation, man named the things surrounding him. He called a tree, tree. A frog, a frog. Like the first human, writers expend enormous mental exertion naming--trying to describe something in an extraordinarily accurate way with the least amount of words. We live a life full of labels, names, titles. I'm a mother, a sister, a wife. I love that I've become a writer, speaker and painter. But like the names of creatures and plants, these names, meager labels, do not define me. I am more than a mother or writer. Those labels are only things I do.

But the naming of a book is different. A title emerges in layers. At the start of my literary piece, I had already named my book. I called my book by this name though I hadn't even written one sentence towards the start of a first draft. God Thought I Was Atlas. I'm not even sure where the name, the inspiration for this title, came from. One day it was there.

Over the years, I've read chapter after chapter to my reading-listening-feedback friend, Lorene. And with every reading, the two of us referred to the book by its given name. Like one of my children, my book is called out when needed, referred to in dialogue, and thought about with much tenderness. Always with this name.

A few weeks ago, I realized this title limits my book. This is not a religious book. It's non-fiction literature, a memoir. My journey is not a religious journey, though it is a spiritual experience. My journey is more than this, more than this title, and so I had to un-name my work. I didn't realize how painful un-naming could be. Now my work was like a nameless child and drawing it to me, embracing it, felt awkward. I know many writers name their work when it is finished. Or the name arrives as powerful fresh language at the beginning or end of a new chapter. Maybe these writers did not know they had a void in their nameless work. They struggled through each line without the need for a label.

At first I thought I would need to comb through my manuscript. Surely the title was already there, hidden away, obscure, yet waiting to be found. But the weeks passed and...nothing. Then last week, I was working on the eighth revision on chapter 25 when the name lingered on a line right in front of me. There it stood out, stood alone--a new word, something unheard of, something more than fresh, and yet something that embraced this entire journey in only a few syllables. I stifled a small shout. Another layer in the writing journey had peeled away.  My work had a name.

Writing While Living

I haven't written for a week. Not a word and I feel like I can't breathe, like my skin is stretched too far across my bones. Simply uncomfortable. Maybe I feel like I'm not worthy to breathe.

I've been working on a long piece of writing, almost five years now. Literary non-fiction. The journey in writing this memoir has been the most promising part. I mean, I love the layers of piecing together sentences that matter. But the uncovering of oneself in writing--that is the best part. A week ago I sat in my closet and cried. I cried because I realized as much as I have tried to not be like my mother, I am like her. I have followed in her crusty steps down a crooked path of surface and meaningless events that I can barely recall through my life. I cried because I am thrilled that I can see this side of me as well, shameful as it may be. I cried for the chunks of my life wasted and I cried for the pieces I know I've forgotten and buried, never to resurface again.

I'll write here about this journey, the completion of a "master piece" of one's life, the final revision of non-fiction, the struggle to make each sentence sing and the story to come to life. But most importantly, the attempt to capture the truth of one's journey with abandonment and fear.