Drafts from the Heart and Head
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
The first draft is written from the heart. The second draft is written with thought. When the heart is uneasy, there is only stunted paragraphs, ill-conceived ideas, and over-beautiful phrases authored by a writer who is trying with force to color his paper with black marks. Words from the struggling writer might as well come from another person – one who has never considered the world, exposed and loved its flaws and has never been discouraged by its most brutal ones, then wanted to tell about it. The mind, then, is reliant on the heart to attach itself to a subject so the words can be unstopped, assuming the writer does the most important step, which is to write. The mind but it still tries to rise when the heart is at work. All that matters in writing begins with the heart.
This is the morning of all mornings. I’ve written about many in the last three years, but this one brings with it a reckoning, a true dawning with high stakes. The birds are back in the trees for the spring, not the false February warm streaks in which they must abandon there homes after briefly settling back at them. This morning I can imagine the feeling, to arrive home and not be allowed in, fully, to be an outsider and watch life go on through the wrong side of the windows, the children framed in panes, the pains framed in division, and the division in short exchanges drowned out by train whistles and the college kids who live in their parents’ basements drinking at the curb. I was thinking last night about how things began – the writing, the loving, and they happened almost together. One came first: the writing. And I felt a maturity in it, a wisdom, an ability to reason and feel. I suppose it was an outlet, a hobby, and all those trivial type terms that are accessible to anyone who finds it in themselves to take a pen in hand. I didn’t realize the fun slipping away, and the relationship I had with writing, like one you would have with a lover (three posts in one week on this subject?). We spent time together, but it was idle time, what I did because I was supposed to, a routine, and routines become dependable, effortless, boring or worse. So when I went to tap the well, it was dried up.
The beautiful words come to the ones with the most beautiful perspectives, but that does not make them beautiful people. I’ve learned that it often makes them cynical. The ones who expose all its flaws and love it for what it’s worth, are the ones in happy relationships with their words.
