I opened this blog to have a public space to write and
think, to share, openly. I began this blog, typed out a draft of a post, and
promptly actively worked to avoid posting anything to this new space. What is
this hesitation? Why do I suddenly wish to avoid writing here and yet yearn to
fill it? My partner and I have been diligently writing every morning, a practice
of free writing where we have worked our way up from writing for 15 minutes to
writing for an hour. This writing experience has been the most freeing for me.
I have no audience except for myself and whatever I happen to share with him. I
have no need to perfect any of what I write. It usually comes out as a
scribble, an illegible scrawl depending on how quickly I am writing, how easily
a flow is pulsing through my mind and forming into letters, words, sentences.
To have experienced this sensation while writing is virtually freeing. This
practice has thus opened up a cavern of awareness, of recognition, that writing
for a blog makes me hesitate at its permanence. As if writing were not already
a version of permanence. As I visualize myself writing for this blog, I allow my
imagined audience to criticize what I write before I’ve even written it. How debilitating
this is, and yet it is not an unknown phenomenon to so many writers. This is a
topic that greatly interests me right now, particularly as I am diving into an
MFA degree program and have just completed my first semester. There was a book
assigned for my Narratives of Illness class that we ran out of time for called Prolific
Moment. I am hoping read this on my own and weave it into my writing practices here along
with other texts I am currently reading. I will leave this post for now with a
couple of questions that I mean to consider along my journey: How does one
practice reading multiple texts in concert with each other, with the further purpose
of writing about those texts to deepen my understanding of them, and of the art of writing? How can I tap
into my free-flowing writing skill while simultaneously being aware of an audience,
that is, writing that will be public without being concerned with judgment from
others? And lastly, at least for now, how do I learn to perceive poetically?