Daily Nourishment for October 15, 2024: When We Write around the Corners of Life
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 50 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 13 minutes
“When we experience large-scale tragedy, our assumptive world is shattered.” —Dr. Gordon Bals
Pause.
Take six deep breaths with a six-count inhale and a six-count exhale. Then listen to a song that helps you feel less alone in the world.
Prompt.
The quote above by Gordon Bals is evergreen, and that makes me sad. But I keep writing.
Here’s an excerpt from a 2023 IG post about how and why I keep writing:
“A year ago I began to understand in more depth how we write around the corners of life because that’s how creativity works. Our creative practice only exists alongside the individual and collective events of our days that unfold in real places among real people. As all writers have done from the beginning of words, we write amid the delight and despair and wonder and sorrow. We write to make sense of life and to hold space for those things that will never make sense.
A few months ago I began again with a new vision for this book because that’s how creativity works. Creativity exists alongside the individual and collective events of our days that unfold in real places among real people. And one day you realize the book you’re writing needs to be a different sort of container.
And you think about the past year and how the book you’re writing has been becoming *this book* for a very long time. You have been filling this particular container for a very long time.”
Practice.
Take 10 minutes to think about what you’ve been writing or not writing over the past year. Is it time to quit doing it the way you’ve been doing it? Is it time for a new container?
May we keep writing and seeing and questioning and trying to find meaning in this beautiful and devastating life, work, and world.
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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