Why I Write (and Get to Live Twice)

“Writers live twice.”  Natalie Goldberg

Maybe it’s because the frenetic pulse of early summer, with all its heat and promise, has started to slow.  Or maybe it’s because my own intense and consuming projects will soon come to a quiet close–their messy ends gathered, tucked, and woven into near completion.  But whatever the reason, my urge to write has drifted back.

For me, this urge is usually associated with a thirst for solitude and quiet contemplation.  It’s as though my social side has danced wildly, and now seeks repose.  Extroversion replaced by introversion.  Talking replaced by noticing.  Living not just once, but twice. 

As Natalie Goldberg explains, “[Writers] go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning.  But there’s another part of them that they have been training.  The one that lives everything a second time.  That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it.  Looks at the texture and the details.”

This living twice?  It takes time.

And for me, it takes a willingness to allow my memories–of the shadows which played across the sand that lovely afternoon; of the conversation that went so wrong–to thunder around in my head until they wear themselves out.  Because it’s only then that I can fully discern their heft and meaning, and see both intimately, and with perspective.

It’s not coincidental that this urge to write–and to live twice–coincides with changes in my children.  In most ways, the intensity of early motherhood has diminished.  No longer inclined to remain tightly tethered to their mom, my children have expanded their orbit.  And with this new plasticity, they go farther afield to learn this wide world.

Which allows me space to ask my own questions, to come up for air and wonder big thoughts.  And it is writing, more than anything else, which structures and clarifies these thoughts–which provides a framework for question and answer, or for muddling about in the chaos.

There is something deep and vivid which can be extinguished by the day-to-day drudgery of responsibility and requirement.  But through the process of making something—through word or paint or lens—we’re given the chance to relinquish our need for certainty, and to float buoyantly among the sublime unknown.

And so, I write.

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What creative outlets do you have?  Does being a parent make you more or less creative?  And how do you find time and space to get those creative juices flowing?  

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A special thank-you to Mara of Medicinal Marzipan for her beautiful post on writing; it inspired my own.

Photo by   eflon via Flickr’s Creative Commons.