Jun 21, 2010

Finding Your Writing Voice on Twitter

"Are you ready for that?"

Kathleen and I were reading Neruda beneath the redwoods. We talked about his exile. I was startled when she lowered her voice, looked steadily into my eyes and asked the question.

"Are you ready for that?"

It seemed unreal. Should I, as a writer and poet, ever expect actual exile? Was that was she meant?

Kathleen was simply asking the question we all must face. Are we ready for exile? Are we ready if our words rile, offend, shock, sadden? Even beautiful, inspiring words can do this. Are we ready?

I am not ready. Never will be. And this is why I, like you, have an inner writing Censor. The Censor isn't all bad. The Censor is trying to protect us from exile.

Yet if we want to share our true writing voice, we must skirt the Censor. Julia Cameron finds she can do this by finding safe places— places where she needn't fear exile. She finds these places in certain people. I find I can hide from the Censor by going to parties at night. Twitter parties.

In a dimly lit, sunset yellow dining room, I set up shop. The house is quiet by 9:30 p.m. I am alone, yet I join others. Friends from Georgia, Missouri, Washington D.C., Oregon, Texas, and more. We write poetry together. We write fast. We write almost without thinking. Before we know it, we have given voice to all kinds of things we didn't know we wanted to say, and maybe a few things we never would have said without this chance to be real. Often, the words have a gorgeous immediacy.

Glynn Young makes sure we do not experience exile as a result of our bold, beautiful words. He gently reweaves them into community-works like this one...

The Grief of Famous Poets

All that I thought would come is
now decomposing. I will have to
rebuild. I will have to rebuild.
Milton?
Keats, Hopkins, Tolkien.
Tolkien?
(Italy.)
( Italy?)
Sidney. Sir Philip? Shakespeare.
Shakespeare? Who quoth thee
beneath the shoulder of the moon
tonight?
But Horace stuffs his grief beneath
Tolkien and Keats. I stuff my grief
under the lavender in the herb
garden by the little silver stones.
I stuff my grief into words
scattered on pages, tapped into
computers, spoken over the phone.
I stuff my grief under Psalms and
between the strong lines of Isaiah 61.
And you?
Where do you stuff your grief?
I have forgotten the place of stuffing,
but it cushions my seat.
Browning. Browning?
Milton stuffed grief into serpents,
bit Eve’s lip with his ink. I do not hide
my grief; I write it on my arms, living poetry
a testament to my story.

Who can ever be ready for the force of his or her own words? Maybe no one. So it is bravery to trick the Censor, free our voice and write.