#on doubt

I must plunge into the water of doubt again and again.

October brought the first bone-knocking chills Every shiver is an earthquake So when my ribs are swords clashing between the tremors, my left hand a stranger to the right, this is sparring on level ground. Well met, well matched, the contradiction. A stroke for blood kisses a perfect parry Sparks, sweating brow The shriek of iron and steel and bone and the agony of ambush Stalemate. A ballet, petrified. So tell them, when they ask, how I turned to salt when I looked back to my inferno city even as my feet flew me away

Maybe the only revelation we can hope for now is an experience of absence and emptiness. We have seen too much religious certainty recently. Maybe this is a time for honest, searching doubt, repentance, and a yearning for holiness in a world that has lost its bearings.

The thing is, I really did think for a very long time that those first assumptions I made during the course of writing a story were “listening to the characters” and “doing what the story wants” because they felt so simple and so natural.  It took me a really long time (and a lot more time watching and learning about people out in the world rather than in books or movies or whatever) to realize that those first assumptions were listening, instead, to other writers, and doing what other stories had done.  And getting to the heart of my story and what my characters wanted to say involved a good deal more second-guessing, pushing past the easy solutions to the ones that would be harder but also more truthful.

My mind is open on pretty much every issue. It’s what journalists do for a living: keep their minds open in the hope that they catch the next new idea out there. Sadly, what a significant minority of my bloggers do is begin their posts with an assumption that everyone who disagrees with them is a ‘moron’… Talk to your fellow blogger as an equal, not as someone to belittle. Your ego may crave the sustenance that comes with adusing others. But trust me, it doesn’t make for good reading.