A writer I'm reading the the mo, Toni Morrison, reportedly said, "Writing is really a way of thinking - not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet." She also said somewhere that she didn't intend to do without that way of thinking.
In my own life, moments when I can articulate my own thoughts are like oases in an arid waste. I've been writing an essay on a novel that I mentioned yesterday, Sula. And unraveling the structure of the novel, getting inside the skin of the characters, cracking the metaphors - all this has brightened up my days and kept me going this holiday season.
Will there come a time when even this will bore me? I shudder to think....
But the question I'm really thinking of is, "Can I write at all?" Or am I only able to critique someone else's work? Or slightly better, write something inspired by someone else's structure or story? Or at best, write about myself and my fears and my hopes and my dreams....
I feel soon I will have to make the call and give myself that chance. I've been working full-time and writing during long weekends when there isn't any scope for office-work even if people wanted it. But it has been snatched, hurried and botched.
Tomorrow I might post a short story I tried to write in the summer.
