To write is to thrive

I recently read the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and her private reflections sparked some thoughts about the writing process. I’ve always sort of known that talented and established writers still “struggle” with the craft of writing. It’s an eternal challenge to feel fully immersed in and/or capable at whichever profession you are in, no matter how experienced you supposedly are. In fact, it’s common for well-recognized and respected individuals within one domain to have the most overwhelming and ambitious expectation for themselves, making their job even more challenging than for laypeople. Realizing that someone so highly esteemed like Sylvia Plath would dread her own job every step of the way and would feel so inadequate that she couldn’t even bring herself to start any writing gave me some perspective and insights about how I can approach my own writing.

Except for a short period of my youth during which I was convinced that I could become a travel writer (haha), I never really thought I had what it would take to adopt writing as a professional option. I have been writing privately my whole life (the stack of diaries from my childhood and adolescent years is proof), and I even keep a blog now. I’d say writing comes quite easily to me, but making sure it’s consistently good is a whole different challenge. I cannot fathom having to continuously put out quality writing and even surpass my past achievements with each new composition, to rely solely on the juice of my creativity for an income, and to measure my worth based on other people’s evaluation of my mind’s work. But then again, these characteristics are shared by virtually all jobs. Maybe for creative professions, especially those that permit only the very top few to get acknowledged and validated, the pressure is ever more amplified. Writing to me is a deeply personal and intimate task that making it anything but (when I write for an audience, for example) negates a lot of the appeal of it. Rather than something done out of pure impulse and guided only by my private thoughts and impulses, writing for others requires discipline, practice, and a level of empathy that at times feels unnatural. Then there is the expectation to make the ideas contained in writing accessible, comprehensible, and relevant to the needs of the reader. These demands add to the challenge and fun of writing, but also exhaust the inherent comfort and freedom of private writing.

Another thing I notice about my experience with writing is that sometimes when I return and read an old blog post, I genuinely find it hard to connect with the person who had previously penned the writing. It’s not that I have transformed so much that I can no longer identify with myself from the past writing the post. Rather, my mind has a tendency to completely erase the contents of what I write once I am done drafting it. Sometimes I treat writing as an immediate outlet for thoughts without much consideration for how it upholds after some time. So when I look back at past writing, I sometimes feel embarrassed for the poor quality prose or wrong use of vocabulary, but I can also occasionally toot my own horn and be impressed by my old compositions. Because I often don’t give two minds about what I write once I have released it to a vast vacuum of written text out there, I end up holding very little connection to the version of myself thinking up these very thoughts and words. This exemplifies one of my favorite metaphors of writing: that it is like a tool used to extract and excavate hidden or messy inner thoughts and release them as puffs of air into the void where they can finally stop bothering me. The idea that writing alleviates the burden and tangle of what goes on in my mind gives me a sense of calm and comfort, especially in facing the intimidation that writing otherwise poses. If I just focus on letting my thoughts out and allowing them to disintegrate and cease to matter, the pressure to have my writing product reflect my worth or ability diminishes. Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal, “I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” Writing in this sense is utilitarian and purely an instrument for letting the mind operate coherently and effectively.

I set out to write this blog because I wanted to have a space where I could be vulnerable and honest, where I wouldn’t need to filter or edit myself too much. Being reminded of what I had originally envisioned this blog to look like loosens that nagging feeling of having to deliver quality writing consistently or to cater to a public readership. Writing is after all one of my most primary and preferred mechanisms of living, and with this blog, it is elevated to a position of something that helps me not only exist but also thrive.