Silence is Golden

Sunrise and Coffee

Silence is golden, a blanket of warmth, like the rising sun on this 7th of March.

But coffee is better. And louder. And far more convinced that there are words to share. Not only my words — but yours, also. I am eager to hear what you’re writing. I’m eager to hear what you’re reading (March is National Reading Month). I’m eager to hear how the things you are reading challenge and shape the things you are writing.

Reviewing and Restewing

I recently stepped out of my comfort zone (more like — I got a good running start and leapt off the cliff of my comfort zone) and read Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (this is not a book review). I won’t lie to you — I did not enjoy it. Science Fiction does not intrigue me, as a general rule. I did enjoy reading a new-to-me author, however. I tend to be far more interested in voice than I am in genre — and Dick did not disappoint in that regard. I can always tell when I’ve truly enjoyed a written voice, because I start to toy with replication — with weaving some element of a writer’s voice into my own writing. I don’t always keep it, but I always meddle.

Many years ago, a friend of mine encouraged me to stop spending so much time and energy on sounding like no one else. Writing, he told me, is something like a pot of stew. Maybe I can reasonably say that the recipe is mine, but maybe I’d better not fool myself into thinking I’m the first gal to throw potatoes in a stew (“PO-TAY-TOES. Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew.”) — or that I’m the first gal to even make stew. In fact, the very reason I make stew is because at some point in my life, some angel made stew for me.

Storytellers and Storyhearers

We are storytellers because we are storyhearers. We captivate because we are captivated. We want our tales to change how others see the world because we have read and heard tales that change how we see the world.

Whether you are a blogger, a novelist, a poet, a biographer, a letter-writer (shout out to my Aunt Kay who’s been waiting on me for a letter for at least ten months now) — voice isn’t found by isolating yourself into a make-believe realm of “my story and my voice is completely unique.” It is found by hearing other voices and joining along.

Silence is golden. Coffee is louder. Writing is stew.

Be blessed, y’all.

And still — from the shores of Wicket Lake;