A Good Reason to Write

I hope everyone had a festive Fourth of July. I tried to - really, I did - but sometimes those aren't how the cards get played. With the storms rolling through I had periodic power outages and it basically ruined my Friday night. I had a little recovery setback in the form of a mild fever. With my car sitting idle, one of the wheels decided to deflate (and I had to rely on other people to repair it because I cannot exert myself in that way). And as the topper, I found out today that someone I know was killed Saturday in a freak accident during those horrible storms. It just wasn't a great holiday weekend.

Of course, such a bad stretch of days can lead anyone back to the idea that it's been too rough a time to sit back and write anything. Even the most devoted writers would not be scolded if they had a bad weekend and said, "That's it, today I am not writing a thing." No shame there, but I would make the argument that times like these are actually the kind of situations which should move us toward the keyboard, not away. 

Personally, I find that one of the greatest power a writer possesses is the ability to create a new form of reality. Obviously, no writer can change what has already happened, but they can draw up a different world and explore it for some of the truths not currently available to them. Writing about the perfect Fourth of July weekend will not remedy the shortcomings of this one, but for one glorious flurry of words, we can talk about our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and everything we felt inside that did not get a chance to be expressed. No storms, no fever, no flat tire, no freak accident. For that time on the page, life can be good again.

Some might say, "That kind of escapism isn't very healthy." Well, if it was escapism, maybe it wouldn't be. However, as we develop our skills as writers, we learn not just how to write about other events, but also to pick out the universal truths in those stories and better understand them. Instead of wailing woe and lament for all the things that didn't happen, we can discover just why those things were so important at this point in time and why we are so shaken from their loss. As I wrote about this past weekend, I came to the realization that I just wanted the world to return back to normal again. My recovery has not been too bad, but being cooped up in my house for about two weeks has really made me yearn for the simple things in life to come back, and be frustrated by those things that have changed forever.

It might not be a big revelation, and there's a chance I would've figured things out without having to write a bunch of stuff. However, the tool of writing expedites matters, and grants me a shortcut to some valuable lessons. Now I can move forward with my recovery, hopefully get back to a new kind of normal, and begin to pick up where I left off before everything changed. And for those things that are irreversible, I hope to find peace with them.

RIP, Dana.