Warning: Writer in Denial!

Three years ago, after a magnificent evening launching Living Revision, my daughter asked me what I was going to write next.

“All I know,” I told her, “is that I’m not going to write about writing.”

How is it that I’m neck-deep in another writing text?! I have two dozen essays on various back burners but I find myself, almost against my will, writing about the final stage of writing. Ugh. If ever there’s a self-referential subject, this is it.

When this latest idea arrived, I figured I could take care of it in the course of a summer. What I had to say could fit into a pamphlet that I’d then distribute to my classes.

Three months of drafting later, I admitted that my idea needed more space. Maybe this is a downloadable booklet, I told myself, and kept writing.

Three years later, having recently run my eighty-page “booklet” past two dozen beta-readers, I’m humbled once again. Dang it all—I’m writing a book, almost against my will. Which means I’m doing a major overhaul and expansion now. I’ve moved a huge soup pot onto the front burner.

Now I’m a pretty experienced writer. How is it that, after all these decades, I’m still delusional about what I want to write, what form it will take, and how much effort it will require? Writers like to make fun of doctors who say, “Someday I’ll take a few months off from work to write a book,” retorting, “Sure; and someday I’ll take off a few months to learn brain surgery.” But we know this same ignorance, denial, and deception daily.

Isn’t it curious that, in the creative life, as in marriage and parenting, some portion of delusion is good? We don’t see reality clearly, and this allows us to enter the fray. We’re all painfully familiar with the damage too much delusion can do (look at what a post-truth era has done to democratic process), but is it possible that a tiny bit can do good?

Writers often say that if they knew how much work a book would take, they’d never have started to write. Denial sets us on a path of creativity and growth and change, and this path can then gradually open our eyes to reality in a way we can bear. So inasmuch as delusion and denial keep us on the journey, they’re doing good work.

I suspect a similar dynamic is at play with faith. Maybe faith in a divinity or in humanity’s ultimate goodness or in evolution’s movement toward wholeness or in your capacity to write a book is completely delusional. If living with faith locks you down into a creed or despair, fine, get rid of it. But if living with faith opens you up to vitality and creativity, if it sets you on a journey that helps you see reality more clearly, and especially if its fruits are generous and nourishing, isn’t it worthwhile?

Maybe reality isn’t static or final. Maybe we get to make reality by participating in it. That certainly seems to be the case with writing.  –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

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Dear faithful blog readers,

Beginning mid-October, I will combine my blog and newsletter.  This will help me eliminate an extra publication and streamline my mailing lists.  It won’t effect you unless you use a blog subscription service and are not already on my newsletter mailing list.  If that’s the case and you’d like to continue reading my blog, please sign up here.

I deeply appreciate you!  Know that I draw inspiration and encouragement from you, and hope that my words are able to give you the same in return.

Warmly,
Elizabeth

UPCOMING:

Second Fridays, 1:30-3:30 p.m.:  Wisdom Ways Spiritual Memoir drop-in sessions.