Joy in Writing

I've put aside at least two posts this weekend. I also left a couple of post ideas festering in the fantasy stage of the process. My writer fantasies usually involves: 1) a blogpost changing the world for the better 2) it goes on to make me independently wealthy without damage to my soul 3) for my efforts, I am interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. It goes something like this:

TG: Un Till, I have to say, your posts are well-written, inspiring, and worth the outrageous wealth that has been showered upon you. Yet, you keep rejecting a stable career as an Abercrombie model to type on the internet. What is your secret?

UT: Well, Terry (may I call you Terry?), it all comes down to my humble refusal to obsess about myself.

Ahhh.... (dreamy smile before coming back to earth with a frightened shutter)

But the aforementioned posts tempted by anger, and anger, while sometimes appropriate, is a dangerous emotion to publish on the Internet. There is something to this, though. Part of writing's charm and joy is processing our emotional responses to something.

I've been thinking about why I enjoy writing. I wish I enjoyed building machines as some of my relatives do. Building things create beauty and discovery and economic stability, not to mention tremendous opportunity to practice generosity. But I enjoy opening up one of those glowing built things and typing words on it (in between reading words at other growing places). Writing helps me make sense of my reactions to what I read and experience; it helps me sort out my messy top drawer of emotion, imagination, thought and memory. When I'm finished, I better understand close things like my daughter's voice or distant things like another country's national tragedy. Not that I ever truly understand them, but it takes me down the road, loosening some convictions and tightening others. Posting these thoughts where others can read them gives them a measure of discipline and accountability that was not otherwise there. I've journaled before, and I'll probably do so again, but the results are usually (not always!) a fire hose of free-writing gibberish, offering me only outlet without light. The idea that someone may actually read it means I have to make the swarm of bees that I call my brain somehow coherent. And (to the best of my abilities) fair, honest and respectful. Or completely silly.

When he completed the Narnia series, C.S. Lewis received a lot of mail from children asking him if he would ever write any new books about the land of Aslan, Lucy and Caspian. Lewis always wrote back, "no," but he encouraged the children to write their own Narnia books. "It's most fun!" he would write (at least I think that's how he put it - my copy of Letters to Children is elsewhere). And it is, for many of us. Give it a try. After all, part of the great fun of the Internet is we all get to write on here for free. If you find your posts are angry, though, be careful. Shouting "you fool" is a dangerous indulgence.