On Writing And Flow

Vomit on the page. Just throw it all out there. Garbage. Trash. Puke. Phlegm. Gargle, then spit. Wash up, and back again. Shake your head, stretch your muscles, play music. Sing out loud. Dance in your kitchen. Reach out to your laptop. Charge the damn thing. Call from a friend. Hang up. Say you'll call later. Stretch again. Shake your head. 'No I don't want to. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. What now? Can I throw up some more?'  No. Now it's time. Time to WRITE. 

Thing about flow, is that it brings other things along. A crack opens in a door into yourself.
When writing is flowing... the body feels and things come up. Feelings come up. Feelings that even a writer has no words for. Perhaps they are long standing, been there since birth. From the playground. At the kitchen table. Or school. Feelings that are so familiar you love them like family and dread them like, well.... family at times. In Flow, you go on a wave not knowing where it takes you. It may flip you in the air a bunch of times, or drown you to the bottom of the ocean, or keep you in the wave riding and riding and riding away. Thing about that wave - is that it will always lead you to shore. Maybe changed. Maybe drained. Maybe energized and alive. But it's not up to you to know what it would be like on that shore. It's for you to open your laptop, or hold out your pen, and GET THERE. 

Writing requires courage. The courage to face things you may not want to see, or feelings you may not want to feel. Pain, rage, regret. All those yucky dreadful feelings we may prefer to shy away from. To protect ourselves from. But writing also can include profound joy and connection to yourself and the world around you that you may not access in other ways. It's the courage to SEE. After all - I write what I see, and feel, and think. And sharing my writing? Sharing it is the courage to be SEEN, and HEARD, and if we are lucky... FELT by our readers.