STARTING FROM SCRATCH

This is a new writing endeavor for me. As with my other writing projects, I have had many false starts in approaching my latest ambition. Such is true, I have found, not only of writing but also of life as the Lord often has us go through many "false starts" before starting from scratch again. And yet it is this starting from scratch process that is so intimidating. Nothing is more daunting than the blank page (or blank screen, in this case). The white void has swallowed many a would-be writer.

In regards to blogging specifically, there are two extremes I want to avoid. I do not want this space to become a theological soapbox. While that might be fulfilling for me, I doubt it would benefit others. Further, I do not want this to be an online journal. Narcissism terrifies me. I suppose there is a sense in which all writing is narcissistic. Writing is to the soul what exercise is to the body. There is an inherent self-preservation in both. Additionally, writing involves honesty, which when unrestrained, is a hallmark of narcissism. While writing (good writing at least) must be honest, even brutally honest, it is not a self-serving honesty. Not a I-stayed-in-my-pajamas-until-12-and-watched-MASH-reruns kind of honesty. Benefit to others is what distinguishes honesty from narcissism. To benefit someone other than ourselves, writers aim to be honest without being overly autobiographical. Paradoxically, fiction writers accomplish this through lies. We don't write about our own annoying ticks and short temper but we create characters who share these flaws without being carbon copies of ourselves. In presenting the truth of the absurdity and folly of anger through a fictional character, we are better able to tell the truth about ourselves--either because straight truth is too embarrassing or (more likely) because it is too personal and focused on our own insufficiencies than appealing to the universal human condition. Therefore, fiction writers are trapeze artists walking the tightrope of honesty and lies. Lean too far to the right and risk narcissism. Lean too far to the left and risk irrelevance. In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life , Anne Lamott captures the peril of truth telling in writing, “If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive." And it is this vulnerability that defines the starting from scratch process when all you have is naked rawness.

Of course, not all I attempt to do here will be fiction. I plan on feeding my readership with a steady diet of nonfiction as well. Though a different kind of prose, there is still the risk of exposure involved in nonfiction.

I anticipate that someone will ask me about the title of this blog. It comes from a single line from a single phrase in a Billy Collins poem called "The Only Day in Existence":

The early sun is so pale and shadowy,
I could be looking up at a ghost
in the shape of a window,
a tall, rectangular spirit
looking down at me in bed,
about to demand that I avenge
the murder of my father.
But the morning light is only the first line
in the play of this day--
the only day in existence--
the opening chord of its long song,
or think of what is permeating
the thin bedroom curtains

as the beginning of a lecture
I will listen to until it is dark,
a curious student in a V-neck sweater,
angled into the wooden chair of his life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling.

After all, isn't each of us a goldfish in winter? Doesn't each day demand this of us? To watch, to be alert, to be attentive. To find the extraordinary in the ordinary. The everyday has these lessons to teach us if we are willing to learn, I believe. Thus, this is what I hope to accomplish on this blog: to be quiet and make observations. In short, to write with beneficial honesty.