my Ink my Marrow

I want to write how I paint.

When I pick up the paintbrush, there is a canvas and a commitment. A commitment to paint until the canvas disappears. When I wrote my morning pages these past two days, I found it was a little more like that. It doesn’t really matter how well I write. Just that I fill the pages, or fill the time with words.

When I paint, I know I cannot execute my vision perfectly. Thus, the expectation is simply that I do my best. Success is easily found when the Canvas is full, a moment that overflows, too much paint piled up to adjust anything further until it dries. In a way, I then trust the paint to figure the rest out and usually take the painting for what it is after that. Occasionally I will revisit the next day with a couple of alterations. These are usually fairly quick and minor. Superficial enough that they do not risk changing the spirit of the piece once it’s been set or risk the need for further changes.

Writing always requires editing, though. Sometimes thinking too much kills art.

I like poetry because it can be anything. I don’t have to worry about when to start a new paragraph or line. It is obvious. It is part of the process. It follows my rules.

When I write prose I have to fit my creation into rules everyone knows that were decided long ago by dead men. There is more pressure in that structure. And yet, that structure gives extra meaning to the aberrant rule breaking that I cultivate in my poetry. 

In some ways, I think painting is easier for me because I know less. I don’t have to choose between too many methods, styles, techniques, because I have none. And yet I feel that more knowledge, skill and technique would make it easier, not harder, to create paintings. 
I want to feel about my writing that way I feel when I read certain pieces to my heart’s friend. Safe, confident that my flourishes and little touches will be appreciated. Like how a fellow painter can appreciate line work, or intentional emotion put into a specific brushstroke. When I write I want to drop the fear that people will think I was trying too hard. To drop the fear that I am inadequate and that through sharing my writing, people will see through me to that fragile core of a shattered self.

I want to learn to write how I paint. With utter abandon at times. With determination. With vision. With that obsessive focus, that anxiety and the courage to overcome, and put the brush of my pen on the canvas of my story. Stroke after stroke, mixing color, zooming out and looking critically, then addressing without self recrimination. When I paint, it is not about myself. When I see flaws in my work, they are not the flaws in myself. It is all about the work. It is all about the piece. All about completing the vision. Bite sized visions.

Maybe that is what I need with writing. Bite sized vision. Not a barrage, a single arrow.

I wish I could write from my bones. My ink my marrow.