There are certain things I just can’t write about. I may be able to write around them but I won’t write about them. This has been an ongoing issue with writers I know, concerned about writing something that might “get them in trouble” with their families.
Normally I am slightly if not completely hard edged about this, but for now I am going to instead take a different path.
Sometimes I don’t even feel right about fictionalizing whatever story it is I cannot write about yet. Usually that is the course I take: either tell truth via fiction or tell truth via my pseudonym.
This entire method of handling truth via fiction starts debate and derision. It is not my intention to do either of those. I am using my own process to sort through it all and no, right now neither claiming the name of my pseudonym nor writing a work of fiction will do.
Instead I will wait.
I will sit with the story, untold, in my core for a while, to digest via my body and my spirit. It may find some root in my notebooks where they are safely tucked away for my eyes only, but there are certain things I can’t automatically divulge to any sized audience, even an audience of one’s best friend or one’s sister, brother or cousin.
Poetry may hold it in place, with carefully chosen and mindfully crafted words.
For now I know I will hold my thoughts close, perhaps whispering those thoughts into prayers and allowing the quiet, inexpressible to eventually weave into some form of understanding.
I don’t need to write about everything. I can pick and choose and modify in order to express myself and honor this precise moment along this sometimes wacky and confusing path I call my life.
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Spring, 2014 and beyond.
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