The Life of Words

Oil Pastel on Paper - Part of Subjugation Series

Gillian Cornwall, c. 2009

I am re-posting this piece from 2014 as I am feeling a bit wrung out this week. I have a need to conserve my depleted energy cells and I have been working on my book and several other works this week so this post is a sentient explanation of my feelings for the act of writing and it has held up well over two years. If you have thought of writing or enjoy writing, I hope this resonates with you in some way. 

Some days it comes more easily than others, this business of writing. There are days when the pages fill as though the lines of the story are forming queues in my mind, awaiting their turn to travel from my brain down my neck, across my shoulder and down my arm and through my hand where they travel down a river of black ink in my eco-friendly pen and out through the minuscule opening onto the pages of my notebook. Imagine them as workers awaiting the subway at rush hour or as foot passengers, anxiously awaiting the opening of the single lane gate to board the BC ferry to the mainland. They are players on the sideline at the football match: ready, trained and poised to do their part to bring the game to an acceptable result. I'm sure you get the drift. 

Conversely, there are times aplenty when the story plays a game of hide and seek: the words, the plot, the reason is out there, or in here, somewhere, evading my search. Perhaps I wasn't clear about the boundaries for the game and the words have run over hill and dale, escaped across a border for which I do not hold a current passport. Just as easily, there is a chance they are around the next corner, down the hall, giggling under a pile of coats in the hall closet, holding back a sneeze born on a whiff of mothballs and dust. 

This week has held both experiences for me, as is often the case; nonetheless, I will write. I write. I have written. This is my path, my need, my feed, my breath. It is not choice. Whether parading the queue out in orderly fashion or letting it spill out in chaos, whether stumbling over hidden roots, far from home in a forest previously uncharted and unknown as darkness gathers, this is what I do. 

If I had no need of cash, it is all I would do. I love it. It is my closest companion and the conduit between me and the world. It is possibility and passion, fear and triumph. It is Peter Pan and Captain Hook, wine and water. It matters to me and I hope you can tell.

I am grateful to you for playing alongside me. Thank you for reading and expressing your thoughts. I hope it brings you something: inspiration, thought or learning. You are integral in this process. Thank you for sharing your time with me here, for walking beside me each week. 

If you have ever wanted to write, I hope you do it. Pick up a pen and scratch the surface. Keep digging - the treasure is there. If you require a nudge or an all-out shove, consider a course offered at a community centre or a school. Pick up one or two of the many books available. I turn to courses and books as often as I can when I need a push back to my desk (which is actually a dining room table). Here are a few of the guides that help me reset my bearings:

Bird by Bird - Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

A Passion for Narrative - A Guide for Writing Fiction by Jack Hodgins

Writing Down the Bones - Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg

 Happy reading and writing. Enjoy the journey.

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-Gillian Cornwall, re-posted May 1,2016

Originally posted, c. April 6, 2014

Russell's Rare Books

Gillian Cornwall, c. 2015