This Lenten season is rapidly spinning it's way down into Holy Week and most of my discipline during this year's season has consisted of regular acknowledgment to myself that I have not been particularly good at keeping any discipline.
As usual, I have had many intentions on my list. The most serious (and at the same time most traditional) was to stop eating meat during this time. While I have certainly cut down considerably, I have certainly not remained true to this chosen discipline.
I also had - as with so much of what I have talked about in this blog - many personal and professional goals I was desiring to wring out of my recalcitrant psyche, only to discover that, as my friend George Williamson likes to say, "I was born in sin."
It's my thought at this point that there may be something worthwhile in that awareness. Like the liturgical discipline in which one kneels to ask forgiveness for the things "we have done, and the things we have left undone." My greatest repentance this year certainly lies with what I have left undone and perhaps that's the way the universe really is, most of the time.
I could go on and on with regard to the things in my life (both recent and longstanding) that I have left undone, but I've decided that for my purposes here, I really have a single confession, and step of repentance, to make.
I have not loved writing with my whole heart.
I have spent pretty much all of my adult life imagining myself as some kind of writer, hoping to be that writer, and regularly pretending that I am, or was, or will be... that writer.
But something that I learned a very long time ago is that there is one thing that defines you as a writer and it's not the articles, essays, scripts, poems, and books you've written (and at one time or another I've written a fair share... clearly... I feel the need to find a way to defend myself even against my own accusations). There is one thing and one thing only that makes me - or anyone - a writer.
A writer... writes.
SO... today I am beginning again. I am dedicating myself to a daily "words on paper" (or screen) discipline of writing. From time to time different people have commented here about what I might, or might not, do. More than once it has been suggested that perhaps picking a SINGLE thing to work on would be of help in the process.
This time around, I'm taking that advice.
I've made up my mind on a schedule, a plan, a trajectory and an expectation, but THAT I'm not going to write about. I'm going to keep that to myself.
As I have with the other attempts at growth and discipline that I've delineated in this blog, I'll report back on my progress.
Dispatches, as it were, from the front lines of my personal literary (and disciplinary) war.
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1 comment:
Why does it have to be a war? You just said you haven't loved writing fully, maybe it would be easier if it were a long and grand adventure of discovery. You are always searching the frontier of your awareness for nuggets of wisdom and fulfillment. That doesn't seem like an unfriendly endeavor.
BTW, you ARE a writer. Maybe not as prolific as you want to be or think you should be, but you make images come alive in my head as I read your stories and spend too much time reading you instead of writing...
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