I used to think writing was a puzzle I had to make. I'd make one piece and then another and another. Some pieces would fit the puzzle and some would not. But my goal was always to create and finish a puzzle. I felt failure a lot when the pieces I created were shiny and bright and interesting--but did not fit the puzzle. I'd start out simple, and through draft after draft, my writing would become more and more complex. Often the writing felt like a spiral spinning farther and farther out from me. I resisted what I thought were the tight structures of many kinds of writing thinking that structure would withhold me and limit and restrain my writing rather providing me a platform I could attach to-- one that I could simply step out from and easily return to.

But then I started to understand writing differently and more comfortably. When I wrote, I saw I had already had the puzzle pieces and the puzzle. Sometimes I'd know a lot when I wrote. I had books and data and notes and files to support my thinking. Or I'd start to write and I'd discover that I knew so much more than I thought. Sometimes I'd write and I realize there was so much I was wanting to say that I needed to read more, learn more, feel more, play more, before I could really write. But what I came to understand is that whenever I started writing, all the pieces of the puzzle were there--and many were already in place. If I kept my heart and my mind on what was core and central, I could hold the complex experience, the complex ideas, the complex circumstances informing my writing, and I could find my way out of chaos, out of confusion, out of the spiral and spinning into clarity, insight and simplicity.

Continue....