"The Written Gateway"

I was going to share an energy bar recipe tonight that sustained me for our harvesting trip but the 'energy' isn't right for that tonight. It's ready to go tomorrow or the next day, though--promise!

Here are some of the year's first potatoes from the garden... They're from two different plants, that butterball in the back isn't a freak...

In a briefer, more contemplative vein, I want to share the idea of writing as a gateway to spoken expression.

This came up in a facebook group discussion with some of my new cohorts. I spent much of today working on a poem that deals with issues I find hard to talk about: thought this would be both a brave and a responsible move toward being the best "best" I can be as a writer. One of my friends mentioned that she needs to write about difficult things before she can talk about them: that that's why she's a writer at all (and a pretty good reason it is)!

I realize that the same is true for me, in the confessional and yet relatively anonymous format of the blog at least: I definitely write about things on here that I wouldn't be comfortable talking about with most people. Moving this into my art and creativity feels scary but it also feels like being blown open--blowing myself open, merging my 'personal' discomforts and preoccupations, potentially, with a much more universal mind. Allowing them simply to be experience, shared as art, shared. Part of my 'pulling head out of the sand,' for sure. The connectedness is pleasing.

Some tricks: having tended to get all my paid work and chores done before focusing on my writing, I did the reverse today. And felt a huge pressure for my writing to be 'really good,' to justify the fact that I wasn't doing x y and z else. Fortunately, there was so much else to think about with the poem that this pressure got pushed into a corner. As well as engaging some 'hard stuff,' I was writing it as a sestina, wondering right up to the last minute whether this was even possible. Of course, getting all the words to fit together still only gets you a first draft, but a first draft is a kind of closure. At least I can set it aside tomorrow and then look to see if it sucks.

I'm excited for this process. It feels like surrender.

How do you handle making time for your creative work when there's chores and work to do? Do you feel guilty blowing them off?