It's The Ride

The creative process is a roller coaster ride: up, down; over, under. Most of writing is just putting up with the hours of nausea and terror that bookend the few, very brief moments of blind exhilaration.

As I’ve been tossing and turning through the past few months, speeding around sharp bends of self-doubt, I've been fortunate enough to come across literary voices of great comfort and wisdom.

Louisa May Alcott's journals have become a good friend. The gravity in her voice is refreshing: She worried much about money, working hard at menial tasks to earn her living. And she was never quite sure or trusting of her talent, shunning attention and fame even when it would not stop knocking at her door.

Madeline L’Engle's reflections on faith and writing have been another. She touches on being a mother and a wife, on the many facets of life and how each contributes in its own, organic way to creativity. She even willingly admits to getting a book title from a conversation with a family member--the name of a character from the off-hand suggestion of a friend.

Reading these two women, I’m reminded of the dichotomy of art and life, how much they are at odds with one another. I see it in my own day-to-day routine: I awake in the morning to a mountain of a day--students upon students stacked upon papers, more papers stacked upon piles of dishes, loads of laundry. How does one have time to even think about a poem, let alone a book? Yet the artistic animal is always there, scratching at the door of the mundane. And so is the nemesis, barking at the brain, making it too hard to hear what word, which way is wrong or right. 

As I keep reading and writing, as I keep on going, I see how the exhilaration springs from the fear of it all--the struggle between the high contemplative call of the mind and the low primal requirements of the body, the lack of control of artistic inspiration, the steepness of the climb. The occasional, momentary thrills are just the occasional, momentary revelations that the roller-coaster of life and creativity will never truly stop if one has the childlike faith to take everything one baby step at a time.