Honesty and Me

I have never really considered it until now. I suppose that there are things that we take for granted to the extent that they become a completely ingrained part of our being, like a cell, or packet of cells, that assist in the overall day-to-day business of creating ourselves. We trust that the accumulation of this cellular cache will provide the growth, wisdom and acumen we seek. 

It was suggested to me last night in the marvelous book in which I am currently engrossed, If You Want to Write - a book about art, independence and spirit.  by Brenda Ueland, that if one is to fully tap into the magic and marvel of writing that one must, above even mastering grammar and punctuation, be honest with the transfer of words from heart and soul to pen and paper. All this time I thought that this was ‘understood’ as some type of unspoken agreement, a pledge we all make before sitting down to write. I looked very closely at her demonstrations and examples and painfully saw that I have a chronic issue of avoiding the very thing I set out to examine.

The truth.

The best way that I can relay this fundamental value, really what creates quality, is to call attention to the errors I make on a daily basis. This, of course means to do the one thing that I resist almost as much as I resist corruption in politics, racism and cheating. Editing my own work. I have always operated, especially here over the course of these many days, now at 354 with 11 to go, under the informal guideline that this blog is one of binary streaming consciousness, a journal of my daily place in the eye of this social hurricane and my assessment of all responses, not matter how pathetic or unsavory, to all the shit swirling around my poor helmet less head. This built-in fail safe, cleverly disguised as a way out of the responsibility to edit, change, alter, improve, and learn from the obvious errors of my appalling lack of talent, was held to my face like a rear-view mirror last night as I read.

Be honest with yourself and, especially if you plan of writing, be honest with your words, their impact and the truth they hold. You have a responsibility here and do not take it lightly.

I am humbled. I stand before you in the court of blogging opinion asking for mercy and benevolence. I feel contrite. Yet, oddly perhaps, I feel cathartic as well. Like the proverbial monkey hopping off my back in hopes of scoring a bigger banana elsewhere.

She says, thankfully, that this is a skill that can be practiced. Say what you precisely feel and make it as honest as you able, using your words and sentence structures like power tools. Practice. Review and rewrite. You, we, everyone, will know in the instant of first reading whether or not our writing success is honest, truthful, of value, fresh, new, important and real.

All that simply by connecting those cells and noting the results?