When I realized I had people in my corner...

It came in a short write on a beautiful Sunday with the writers of Dive Deep. It came organically, in the process of the writing. It came to me as truth and I was amazed when I read it out loud, when I heard it hit the room.

 I have people in my corner, fighting for me, cheering me on. And that is why I so love this writing method, this process, where we get a prompt (I don't remember what this one was- I only know I grabbed the word scatter)and we write. Then we read (if we want to) and we hear what was strong, what stayed for people, what folks liked. 

The process is like magic and even though the piece below is raw and unedited I see lines I will use for something, I see things I know are absolutely true. This has happened over and over for me- I learn things I didn't understand were true until that exact moment of wild scribbling, and they are big truths,like this one- an important truth that changed everything for me. 

Excerpt- Dive Deep write May 2012

I am scattered, the house is scattered, the dishes are piled up to the god-damned sky. No-one cleans but me most days and I am not cleaning, I am writing.

Scattered- the cat off my keyboard, papers flying underneath my worn out fingers, my thoughts scatter up to touch on crows, touch on this demanding, healing, sexual, trauma writing and the hard on, hard wring words I write about it every day.

Scattered, lists and to-dos, frantic phone calls from my family in crisis, cranky children yelling in the back, neighbors who blast their music all night, neighbors who want to talk to me when I take my notebook outside, wearing my headphones, my back to them.

Crazy people on the buses crazy thoughts filling my head and no room can be made until I write; it’s like a fucked up tetris game in there and it fills up faster than I can scribble.

Scatter my love 6 hours away if she drives the truck fast enough, my past which pokes into my dreams like a bully because I am daring to take this body back for myself, daring to chase out the persistent ghosts, scatter their moldy sticky leavings.

Because I choose to say this is mine

This mind, body, belly, desire-

Desire- my desire I say it again.

This is a battle that’s raged in my head forever.

A tug of war but the dead child-eaters will lose because I have people in my corner, offering words, offering a clean well lit place to work, offering me a moment to dream of a time when I might have a little square of floor to call my own with a solid red oak door with a hand lettered sign on it that reads: 

Do Not Disturb. Rabid Writer at Work. 

If you write...

Books- by ~GDrocks2431

You absolutely need people in your corner. If you don't have access to actual people, a supportive writing community, they can be your favorite writers, your characters, anyone or anything that makes you feel more you, more a writer, less alone. I  have stacks of books, talismans, rocks, sea-shells and art made by people I know and love. I am never alone. I am surrounded by the ghosts of dead authors, and millions of characters who I know as well as I know myself sitting next to me while I sip my tea and begin to write.

It's a solitary business. It's lonely. It's good that way too sometimes. But support in a world that doesn't take writing seriously (with rare exceptions), or art, or anything that isn't instantly covered in glitter and spray tan and sexy consumer buy me now on a billboard, is important.

For me, the people in my corner, include every teacher that ever told me I could write. It's Raphael Jesus Gonzalez, writer, poet, painter, who taught creative writing at Laney who told me many years ago when I said I wanted to be a writer- you are already a fine writer. You are writing now. Keep going. He also used to say never be intimidated by the blank paper. Crumple it up. Coat it in ashes. Mark it up so that it's not so scary. I thought of that yesterday when I had a little writer's block and I picked a notebook page that already had notes messily scrawled on it and a crease towards the bottom.

People in my corner include every author I ever read who painted a different world for me than the one I had to live in, that taught me the possibilities of words, strung together into story and what they could do- how they could move me.

And now I have this rich lush experience of my fellow writers at Dive-Deep with Jen Cross and Writing Ourselves Whole. This feeling of community and sharing and laughing and writing is the best thing I've ever tasted. Having the shared experience of sharing our 15 pages with terror and hope and waiting to see what will happen when we meet next is the best thing. To get feedback that is rich in precision and respect is amazing. To get support when we feel like giving up, like we can't write anything good, like we can't want what we want- is powerful. Empowering. That's what it is this people in my corner. I want you to have people in your corner too. Reading your words, telling you what they like about them, telling you when they got pulled out of the story a bit, telling you they can't wait to read what comes next. I want us all to have people in our corner until the world is full of corners that become circles that become all of us saying yes to writing, and art, and to women and to queers and to all of us, however we are, whoever we are. Yes I think that's Utopian and unrealistic but that's the other thing about people in your corner- they make you hopeful.