Process and Reflection: Some Thoughts on Writing
I’m not done writing about California, yet I can feel the next chapter upon me. Washington, in all its glory, wandering along the bluffs by the sea and peering into the windows of cafes and bookshops down the cozy streets. A new adventure, and then another after that. This year is about a catalog of experiences for me, and then, eventually, how I process and write about them. Yet, I’ve discovered something in my travels. Often the present moment is too bright and surprising and real to record, and once you’re done wandering the streets or tilling the fields or cooking the community meal, you’re tired in your bones, as it should be, and not ready to put pen to paper. What excites me about all this is the learning curve. In recent months, I find that within myself there are always areas to improve upon. I say this, not in a harsh or overly critical way. If anything, this realization is a point of excitement for me. Understanding how much more there is to learn, how much more I have to find out about myself and about life and writing—this is a true privilege.
Being a travel writer is a dream of mine, and making that a reality on this blog has been a fascinating process, far more challenging than I ever could’ve expected. What I have learned, above all else, is that there is always something new to grow into, and right now, I’m trying to find my writing rhythm. While I’ve spent my mornings at home chugging away at a longer writing project, I’m still trying to decode what it means to be a writer on the road. When is the appropriate time to slip away and bang out an article about your travels? When is the writing the boldest? The strongest? Surprisingly, I hardly wrote at all when I was at Mandala, and I think this did me a lot of good. I found that taking a break from the constant overthinking, the constant mental cataloging, was a relief, and it generated priceless lessons that were far harder to write down. Some of these lessons were beyond words, and therefore priceless and novel for my writer’s brain.
All this to say, I am learning balance. It is a virtue that I heartily believe in, though I’ve never tried to find it in my writing career. Often, as Elizabeth Gilbert describes in interviews, I write in seasons. It all comes to me at once, flushing through me like a great summer storm, and then there is a drier time, a colder time, while I sit and wait in reflection and gratitude for the next deluge. But bearing in mind that all writers write differently, I would like to set the intention of writing in a more regular way. I don’t want to force my hand, but I’d like to find a steady flow.
It is January, a time of reflection and a time of turning ahead. To the new year, to the spring, to the pleasant change of cold into warmth, the snowmelt, the resolutions, the shifts in a life. These things are all intertwined in this month, and meant to be taken with a strong cup of tea. I recently read the book Wintering by Katherine May, and I was moved by the way in which she reflects in the colder months, the way that she takes a hibernation state and creates something beautiful on the page. Her thoughts on wintering make me hopeful about a new spring, but not too soon. First there is thinking to do, and rest.
If winter was a season of writing, it might also mean a kind of hibernation, but not the kind that requires sleep. Winter requires thoughts to swim in that place between the brain and the page, developing and growing before they burst from the womb in spring. It is hard to see this change occurring. It is hard to know that anything is happening at all, but waiting for the words to come is like waiting on a birth or a seed or a summer breeze. It takes time, and often the changes are undetectable. While I adjust and try to find a writing rhythm, I am also waiting for the spring, waiting for the next season of writing.
Finding peace between these two ideas, between the intention of writing more and the desire to slow down and reflect, this is something I am curious about. It means something different for the blog. As always, I am playing on this platform and learning day by day, article by article. What I’d like to do is make a space that feels less formal, a conversational, reflective place, as I alluded to in my manifesto here. As the year turns, and the writing grows, I return to this intention, the place I had hoped for my blog to go, as a reminder and as a direction for new growth.
May you all be well, and for those of you who are writers, may you find this balance that I speak of. May your pen never run dry. May you be quiet with your thoughts. May you grow.
Authentically yours,
Caroline