Everything, Everywhere, Write #8 | Writing is a Relationship
"What is true is that love is what drives us, and that our writing life is everything, everywhere, all at once."
A column about embracing and nurturing your creative journey daily, allowing for growth and flourishing while releasing guilt and self-doubt.
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A quote from Adrienne Rich touches me for many reasons, and it speaks to what a writing life is–a relationship. In many ways, we often separate ourselves into “Writer” and “Everything Else I Am” (EEIA). Bear with me as I break down this quote into how it relates to a writing life.
An honorable human relationship–that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
When we begin to claim ourselves as a writer, it is almost against our will, which is keen on control and order. Our writer is initially a two-year old, running around, smelling the roses, climbing up on chairs to declare their thoughts, and crying when told it is time to go to bed. Writers are enamored with ourselves and the world as we experience it. EEIA is not amused; thinks the Writer needs to grow up and be responsible. This sense of separation makes the relationship initially a suspicious one.
As our relationship matures, we begin to foster an honest baseline. If our writer insists on following the chaotic emergent path of a writer’s life, then EEIA must face some tough decisions. We have to make time, money, and energy choices. It can create issues with other people who are either shutting down their own creative path or prefer control and order. If our writer is willing to work with the reality of EEIA, then we start “refining the truths” we tell each other to break down “human self-delusion and isolation”. This relationship is challenging because we must “do justice to our own complexity”.
A scary and delicate relationship grows, one that requires commitment. Most of us cannot rely on a trust fund or wealthy partner; many of us have a child or two; maybe we are a caregiver; and then there is the usual work, friends, communities, and sleep needs. We have to trust each other and tell each other what we need and want, negotiate, manipulate, yell and plead, avoid each other, kiss and make up. All this amid what is already a life full of other beings. Delusions are useful when we must make a way out of no way, and debilitating when they isolate us from others. While it is true that no one understands our journey fully, it is also true that love is a verb.
Our writer cannot survive without EEIA and eventually the opposite becomes true. Writing is a heartbeat that cannot skip a beat repeatedly without injuring its EEIA host. Our writer and EEIA must decide to count on each other, to be in a relationship for the long hard way. Through writing innumerable drafts, broken relationships with writers you thought you could trust, agents and publishing houses who are still #sowhite, too much alcohol or other ways to manage anxiety and rejections, we carry on together, saying yes again and again. We literally cannot live without each other and therefore we must constantly honor each others’ needs. Hard to say who gives up more or receives more. What is true is that love is what drives us, and that our writing life is everything, everywhere, all at once. Write on.
Linda González’ (she/ella) writing and coaching practice is focused on supporting BIPOC to embark on a journey of love and healing for this and future generations. She works with BIPOC writers to claim their voice through a sanctuary program that includes coaching, writing sessions, editing, and craft workshops. She is the author of two books and has published many essays. Breaking Through Your Own Glass Ceiling is based on living a full-hearted life with healing at the core, despite daily inequities. Her award-winning memoir The Cost of Our Lives is a family story of unearthing secrets in search of redemption.
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