Writing, Love Letters, Relationships – It’s Complicated

This week I received a letter, an old-fashioned non-digital letter, from myself. My adult daughter, who is staying with us at the moment, brought in the mail and said “You have a letter from yourself.” Sure enough, the return address said “yourself”. The letter was addressed to me. I did not recognize the handwriting. Stamps indicate it had been mailed from the United States. I looked closer at the return address. It read “yourself c/o sojourn”. I then realized what this must be.

During my winter in Arizona, I attended an afternoon writing workshop with Mary Sojourner. At the end of the session, she asked us to write a love letter to our writing. Not to the works we’d produced, but to the writing process or our writing spirit. When we’d finished the letters, we folded them up, and wrote our addresses on them. Mary kept them, saying she would mail them to us at some undetermined point in time. I had forgotten about the letter until it arrived in the mail.

Many writers might describe the relationship with their craft as “complicated”. We spend a lot of time in that relationship. Sometimes things flow swimmingly and all is good. Other times, we become impatient and even angry. The words and ideas don’t come easily. We look for ways to avoid writing. Sometimes we might even consider ending the relationship. We fear we aren’t and never will be good enough, and wonder why we are expending so much energy.

Writing is hard. Our output may not match our expectations of perfection, no matter how many times we rework it, never mind the crappy first draft. If we actually manage to complete the first draft! And yet, writing is part of who we are. The longer we spend away from it and avoiding it, the more unsettled we become. When we actually get back to writing, the tension flows out of our bodies. We are right where we are supposed to be.

My letter arrived at a time when my relationship with writing was a bit rocky. I’d been doing a lot of blogging, but neglecting my other writing. I struggled with how to complete revisions to a story and wondered if the story was even worth completing. Recent mail in my inbox included one more rejection notice. The letter reminded me of why I was in this relationship. It was one of those many magical moments of synchronicity that fill our lives if our eyes and hearts are open enough to see them. In the letter, I valued the patience of my writing muse for continuing to be there and wait for me. I spoke about how grounded I feel when I am writing and my delight in the unexpected places writing takes me.

If you are a writer, or any other kind of artist, what kind of love letter would you write to your creative spirit, artistic process, muse?