Why I Write

I am in the throes of taking another online class. This short four week course with Therapy Writing Institute is "The Slant Truth" with Nancy Scherlong as facilitator. Therapeutic Writing Institute – The professional training division of the Center for Journal Therapy (twinstitute.net)

Seeking to become a CJF, Certified Journal Facilitator, I usually sign up for one class per session.

Below is my reflection to Nancy's prompts and poems she included in her first week's readings. 

                                 Why I Write

Joan Didion  writes to “ find out what I’m thinking” and there I be! I write to seek guidance as the pen is more powerful than my intuition. Perhaps the pen is my intuition. No conscious reasoning is needed to make the pen move, to allow the pen its freedom. My pen, my secret weapon? I write to figure out what to do next. I write to figure out what not to do next which just might be more powerful than doing. I share my passions with the pen and as the ink dries the passions drift into nebulous (sometimes) anxieties. Then I know to eliminate the exposed passion. I write to whittle down possibilities. I write to eliminate anxieties, the wrongs, the rights and to face the actualities. I write to have something to cross out. I clarify as the pen displays brilliancy among thistles growing in my garden. Aaahh yes, my garden of words struggling to survive in this prickly word world. Everyone says it better than I. Sometimes I write to keep up with them. Most of the time I am not in the lead. However the option to be persistent outlives my pessimism that this world needs not my words, but my compassion.  And so I write more, to uncover the compassion that hopefully will press me into action. 

I keep writing and suddenly, I am overcome by the sheer indulgence, (the madness,) the meaninglessness, the ridiculousness of this list. (Terry Tempest Williams)