Last night in bed I was crafting a blog post in my head, and the words and ideas flowed freely. That would have been the time to get up and write, but I was exhausted and needed to sleep and promised myself I would hold onto my thoughts, reassured myself they would continue to be present for me in the morning. I arrived at an overall idea, “A Pretend Blog,” just before I drifted to sleep.

Morning came. While writing in my journal, I remembered and typed “A Pretend Blog.” Having the title did not lead me back into my twilight narrative. Having the title stopped me.

I got up and went into my garden, harvested a few ripe berries, pulled out the spent corn stalks, repeated my new mantra, a pretend blog, a pretend blog, a pretend blog, hoping the words and ideas would come to me, thinking that if I did something physical, I’d have more success with the writing later on.

Funny thing. Now that I’m sitting here at my desk, my hands stinking of tomato vine, I see that I’ve consistently typed “A Pretend Journal” rather than “A Pretend Blog.” And that little Freudian slip (which I’ve since corrected) might provide a clue to what’s holding me back.

Learn more about Jane Kenyon in Joyce Peseroff’s anthology, Simply Lasting. Read an excerpt here.

Hearing My Voice

I’ve only recently resumed my journaling practice after a long hiatus, so perhaps I’m worried that starting a blog will mean giving up my journal—again—sort of like I’ll be cheating on myself if I don’t write just for myself anymore. Perhaps I’m worried, too, about the tone of my bedtime blogging voice; it was quite journal-like, deeply interior, yet with an audience in mind; it made me think of something Joyce Peseroff said in “The Quality of Intimacy in Jane Kenyon’s Poetry,” an article published in the Sept./Oct. 2006 newsletter of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. She said that Jane Kenyon “once gave her definition of poetry as the inside of one person speaking to the inside of another.” But is that really the kind of tone that I’m aiming for here?

Hugh Prather authored more than two dozen books.

Taking a Risk

Last night I thought of Hugh Prather’s published journals. As my ideas about blogging and my pre-draft words came to me before sleep, I felt a kinship with Prather. Now I see that I marked this passage in I Touch the Earth, The Earth Touches Me, a gift from friends in 1973: “It’s this simple,” Prather writes. “If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.”

Today my prose is not at all turning out the way I had loosely conceived of it last night in bed. Which is so often the way writing goes. I have lifted text from my journal and am oh-so-gently crafting it into this post. I am writing toward meaning, taking a risk, finding my way.

How and when does your writer’s voice come to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Comments