"To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know."

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Letting Go (or, finding just how "not alone" I am)

I've started a blog to improve on my writing before... and it lasted just a little while before it fell by the wayside in favor of my master's program.  I was worried about being able to write at the caliber required of me for my graduate studies - I had taken a year off from school, and felt like I was out of practice.  As is the case for me (far more often than I would like to admit), my worries were exaggerated and things ended up working out just fine.

This blog seems to be less about improving my writing, and more about becoming a writer.  Words are the place in which I find myself most at home.  I've always seen myself as a reader, and my husband can attest to the fact that I'm definitely a talker.  But being a writer - that's more intimidating to me.  Writing is about output, about actually producing something that can be engaged by others, can be criticized, can be interpreted, maybe in ways I don't mean or didn't intend... I love words, but I love being in control of my words, and writing requires letting go.

I think it's time for me to start letting go a little bit.

My friend Jacquie recently posted a note on facebook that listed the fifteen writers who have been most influential to her.  I not only took her cue and wrote my own list, but I'm also following her lead by blogging about them.  It seems like a good way to start being a writer - writing about writers...  So without further ado, number one on my list is...

Barbara Kingsolver

Her place at the top of my list is shocking to no one who has spent any time with me in the last two years.  My senior project at Vanderbilt Divinity School involved a literary analysis of The Poisonwood Bible in conversation with my own autobiography and the work of process theologian Marjorie Suchocki, so I spent a lot of time immersed in Kingsolver's work.  Something about her writing sticks with me, speaks to me in a way that is different from anyone else I've read.  I feel like I've become friends with her characters, and I'm invested in what happens to them far beyond just needing to know what happens at the end of the story.  Her commitment to the environment, to the interconnectedness of all beings, to the power that love and relationality have over destruction and violence - these make her work sacred to me.

She has also been the first example I point to when I describe what I imagine my writing to look like one day.  She is able to intertwine complex ideas - theological, historical, sociological, scientific - with very real characters in a way that is accessible to folks who have not been inducted into the Society of Those who Know Big Words.  And her everyday-ness does not in any way detract from the beauty and depth of her ideas; rather, I think it enhances them.  Truth is not the property of those who can describe it to the most elite audience.  By expanding her audience, by writing fiction that is popular, and by tapping into some of the most visceral human experiences, Kingsolver confronts me - my arrogance, my love of big words, my desire to know more than someone and to tell people things they don't know.

And as much as she confronts me, she comforts me as well.  In the face of uncertainty, of transition, of change or doubt or fear, I find in Kingsolver's work characters who are responding to things not far off from my own experience.  Beyond familiarity, these characters show me that I am not alone.  Perhaps that might be the greatest gift of Kingsolver's writing - through her work, I am learning more and more to live like I am not alone.

...Which somewhat brings me back to where I started. Becoming a writer seems to be the best way I know how to live like I am not alone.  By opening myself to the vulnerability that comes with writing, I am starting the process of letting go.

1 comment:

  1. This is really quite lovely. I'm glad I read your words on Kingsolver before writing my own words about her... you say it all so perfectly.

    I'm especially glad that you are writing publicly! It is a pleasure to read what you write. Truly. Here's hoping the words continue!

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