“It’s very important to transcend the places that hold us.”
~ Rubin Carter in “The Hurricane”
The air is weighted with disappointment, fear, anger. You walk around in a daze, watch ridiculous shows on TV, flare up in anger at the slightest setback. You could stay in that corner, grow silent, be polite. (But you have been polite long enough.) What holds you back from speaking your mind? What stops you from telling your story? It’s one thing, it’s a million. It’s the pounding of your heart in the face of a stranger, your arms frozen at your side. It’s the pull at the back of your head and the voice inside that says, whatever you write down will not be enough. It’s the fear of being vulnerable. Will they listen? Does it matter?
Yes. You are not alone. Our stories connect us. Those connections carry us forward. Speak up, in person or on the page. How else will we transcend?
You’ve got a story. You’ve got that urge to write. But where do you begin?
There were the windows, the solitude, the pride in calling that space Mine. There was the feeling that having a writing studio somehow makes me an official writer. And in many cases, that has been true. I did a lot of work in that space: wrote plenty of blog posts, revised several essays, peeked at my novel time and again. In the end though, getting there became a challenge (there’s the day job, time with family, trips out of town…things I couldn’t or wouldn’t give up for a few hours in the studio). So I wrote the email to my landlord, let it sit in my draft folder for the day, sent it the next morning. Got a little weepy when packing up books and sweeping the floor.
