Random Thoughts: on writing and thank you

I write a lot.  I write my feelings, I write my heart, I write instead of doing laundry, I write because I think more clearly when words are organized in neat little sentences. Which is odd because nothing in my house is organized.  I ordered Marie Kondo’s book and went on a weekend bender trying to tidy, but my husband took a photograph of the book itself – the second one that I ordered because I forgot I even ordered the first – under a pile of mail with a coffee mug sitting on top of it.

I can’t write long-hand because my hand starts to cramp.  I find it adorable that people can do this since it seems so old-fashioned and quaint to carry around a leather-bound journal in a coffee shop.  But I can fire off words from a keyboard as fast as a court reporter. My mind is slow, but when I’m writing it’s exceedingly fast. It’s like reading music, and in a choral ensemble when you sightread you have to be singing one note but know what five notes are in front of it, so you can anticipate what is to come.  It’s important for pitch. Are you running up to the third?  About to jump down a fifth? I’m a bad-ass sight reader.  It’s proven more difficult when one tries to predict life.

But thank God I’m a lawyer, since words work well in this environment, as currency, as strength, as a rebuttal, as power.

And thank God I can write humor, since it is a salve to many wounds, it calms me, it creates a patch to my anxiety and helps me breathe.

And Thank God for comma splices because I love them so, and I frankly don’t care who doesn’t.  Maybe you are not my reader, if you don’t like the way my words are formed.  I’m growing into that truth, that not all people like you, not all people like your voice, not all people are your people.  I commit all kinds of grammatical errors when I write.  It’s like knowing the correct word but letting a curse word replace it.  Basically I will always need an editor.  But I have a way I hear the words and like for them to sound a certain way coming off the tongue.  Writing is much like music: it flows. It has rhythm.  And it builds into a beautiful crescendo.

I found a poem I wrote the other day, in my archives.  I think it’s fun to write poetry, although it’s hard.  I write humor, I write epic stories, I write what’s pushing on my heart.  The key is to keep writing, I think.  Pushing past the thoughts that you aren’t going to win the Pulitzer and your book may be called pedantic or thin or written for lazy people.  Maybe you’re just lazy.  I mean, Netflix doesn’t watch itself.  There are so many other people who can outright over-write you.  It’s true.

But there are also a lot of people who aren’t writing.  And you are.   All the various forms, like music.  I have sung jazz and spirituals and baroque music and gospel.  They add a richness to the voice, to be able to pulse between all the styles.  In writing, one has a voice and it ends up shining through the format.

I hope that it does.  If not, it doesn’t matter.  I’ll keep writing.  Because laundry is no fun at all.  And writing keeps my mind moving, which is important as I age.  It’s like wrinkle cream, but cheaper.

Thank you for reading all the words I put down in various forms.

xoxo

Amanda