This week, I’m offering a series of posts on writing – ones I’ve written before, new ones yet unseen, anything and everything that reminds you of just how powerful the act of writing is – whether you have any aspirations of ever being a writer…or not.
Writing For A Change
[1st posted in August, 2010]
A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life. ~ Tobias Wol
There are two obvious ways to look at the title of this post:
Writing for a change (as in finally, and/or in deference to other activities).
Writing for a change (as in having an agenda, desiring an outcome, hungry for
transformation).
Given that I write all the time and would do even more if I could, it’s the latter of the two that applies to me. Over and over again.
Though I am deeply hopeful that my writing invites change in others, what I know with 100% assurance is that it creates change in me. As I think of topics, categories, and themes I am (not always, but often) aware of how they speak to me, compel me, and are what I most need to consider in my own life. As I type words I am (not always, but often) aware of how the language choices, phrases, and even punctuation speak to what I’m attempting to avoid or that which I desire. Even as I choose design elements I am (not always, but often) aware of how particular images touch my soul, or don’t, and what that’s about.
And I’m super-aware (always) of when I’m just trying to make something work when it’s really not. ‘Seems an important metaphor in life…
Writing for a change means that I am willing to pay attention to all of this; that I am willing to pay attention to my own life – as articulated through the very letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages I type. The dignity and the depravity. The celebration and the pain. The clarity and the confusion. The sanity and the craziness. The certainty and the mystery.
We are all a paradoxical bundle of rich potential that consists of both neurosis and wisdom. ~ Pema Chodron
All of it. All of it is telling. All of it tells me of me. All of it is writing for a change.
Change writers are purveyors of hope. ~ Mary Pipher, Writing to Change the World
Writing for a change, for me, means hope.
It is in writing that I feel hope. Yes, what I write offers hope – I hope; but it’s the writing itself that keeps me centered – and invites me to move; that encourages, challenges, compels, inspires, settles, calms, offers perspective, heals, and changes (me). Hope is rife.
And finally (though hardly), I am writing for a change because I’m realizing, more and more, that only I can say these things. Not because I’m such an excellent writer or because I have such incredible thoughts. Only I can say these things because they are words, ideas, stories, and concepts that I alone can say. They are mine. (The same is true for you, you know?)
What can I do that isn’t going to get done unless I do it, just because of who I am?
~ Buckminster Fuller
I am writing for a change – my own. Always. Every day. In hope.
What are you writing for? What are the words (and worlds) that you alone can say?