What Comes out as Drivel…

… Is Beauty Disguised.

This week, I launched here the inclusion of more and different writers in my blog.

I desire to propel myself into a different place with my writing, and to create a wider community of conversation around experiential writing online. “Beautiful writing” — on blogs, in books, and in print media– seems to be pushed into hidden margins as a genre mafia takes over.

You know what I mean: it’s a shuffle and two-step of compartmentalization created by an intense need to label writing and file it away onto shelves. This same kind of thing happens with blogs, only more so. In order to succeed, a blog must be as niche as possible — a shaving of a topic, narrowed in order to satisfy preconceived desires of outcomes fractured into page views and “unique visitors” (such as they are).

The writing in these places, to me, often feels so empty. It never-ended bullet-pointing solutions to our problems, and to me it just feels deeply unsatisfying. Like eating ice cream to solve the emotional eating craving, because you were all out of the Doritos.  Numbers drive the content, and what is lost is the way writing makes us more.

More human. More awake. More prepared to be a part of our moment.

My friend, Tricia, writes to me that her own production has become spotty, with energetic bursts paired with long bouts of silence. Her writing, when it happens, she says comes out as “drivel” — a word that means both “twaddle” and “saliva flowing from the mouth.” Either way, it is a beautiful and melancholy image, accidental language in the middle of an everyday email that shows her ability to sculpt metaphor into human experience. Even as she drives through a puddle of her own sadness.

We take a walk (uphill, both ways, without shoes, in the snow) into the forest of words, and we ask us ourselves to examine our choices and our beliefs: it is emotionally packed, filled with heartbreak and humor.

My writer friends, who will be visiting here from time to time, are all writers who have shown me that they are capable of this beauty. I hope we can all encourage them to write into that space of fear, frustration and mania– where the human experience and the art of writing combine to make us more .