How Deep Are You Willing to Go?
“Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.” — Christopher Reeve
Saturday I taught my semi-annual class, Writing From the Inside Out. Teaching reminds me of all the things I forget between classes. I have to review the materials, especially the rules of writing practice I learned from Natalie Goldberg, and be awake enough to explain them to other people.
We had an splendid mix of novelists, poets, lyricists, memoirists, and children’s book authors. They asked interesting questions and each contributed to the conversation. One woman lamented that the in-class writing practice was taking her places she didn’t want to go. This gave me the opportunity to talk about Natalie’s suggestion to “go for the jugular” meaning to dive into the dark scary places that come up.
The reason for this “rule” is simple. Those unwanted memories lie below the surface whether we write about them or not. You wind up writing around them. Either they crowd out the more important things you want to say or, more often, they are the important things you need to say. That’s where the heat is, the juice of the writing. If we don’t at least acknowledge these dark places, they fester and interrupt the writing flow. Better to get them out in the open and shred or burn the writing practice later if you must, than let these unspoken truths suppress our writing dreams.
My writing is no different. In my current book project, Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two, I had to face some dark places in my mental health journey in order to show how much running has done for me. There was no hiding. To do so would have cheated both the reader and myself.
Are you willing to go out in the ocean with your writing? How deep are you willing to dive to pursue your dreams?
