Writer’s Tourette’s, Also Known as Word Vomit

“You write like I talk,” he said.

He is a now long-gone ex-boyfriend, who had to get used to getting emails from me instead of having face-to-face conversations about whatever was bothering me about our relationship, or important things that I needed to tell him in general. The subject of each of those emails to him was “Verbal Diarrhea Part [X.]”

The last email I wrote to him – that I wrote but did not send – was called “Last of Verbal Diarrhea,” and never made it farther than my writing folder.

When he said that I wrote like he talked, he meant that I could say things in writing that I could not say out loud – and that many times, there were things written there that I wish I could take back, but some part of me refused to edit and rewrite, because writing that email was the most authentic thing I could do. If he couldn’t take back hurtful things he said to me in the heat of the moment, I sure as hell wasn’t going to censor myself in my emails to him…even if I often went back and corrected the grammar.

I am a writer. I write every day, for my own good, for my own sanity, and my own peace of mind, but even if I didn’t, I would still be a writer, because regardless of what is happening to me I find myself trying to find the words for it in my head; to best describe it; to best apply prose to my feelings, thoughts, emotions and adventures.

This sometimes gets me in trouble. Aside from my need to write, I have a need to write OUT LOUD: to an audience, so someone can hear me, read me, know that there is a part of me that fits best into the words that I have just strung together in a sentence, that may be prosaic and painful, but goddamit, so is the feeling I just had.

It has to come out or it rots. Yes, there is some part of me that wants to share my story so that it can possibly help others to know that they are not alone, but that part seems to be shrinking by the day, leading me to become more and more hesitant about wanting to publish the book I came to Panama to write. It is so personal, so vulnerable, and cuts so deeply through the muscle, the bones, the very marrow of who I am, that I am afraid to show it. I am afraid that people will think that I have not only lost my mind, but that I will never get it back – that if I have felt as low, stuck and depressed as I was during the time I was writing about, it means I will always feel that way. The first writing that lasted in society was written in stone, and it seems that that is the impression: that I took a feeling, painted it with words and stuck it up on the wall, and the people who came to look are looking at a single, raw moment in time, and mistaking it for a long term state of being.

I write because it is the easiest way to clear an emotion. If I am angry and I write about it as if I were tearing the flesh off of someone, the act of creating those flesh-tearing sentences eases my anger. If I feel alone and adrift in a sea of nothing and I can describe that in terms of an ocean of tears below me, I suddenly find that there’s a life raft; that I am no longer drowning but buoyed. If I write about my happiness in terms of the sparkling starlight and standing naked in the full moon, I may or may not have actually been naked, but I was happy nonetheless.

It is not transient, this writing. Even as my emotions flee in front of me as my pen meets paper or my fingers clatter over the keyboard, the words stay, and they are bigger there; they do not dissipate into thin air like my ex-boyfriend’s sometimes hurtful speech, with only the ability to paraphrase later, depending on what I did or didn't want to hear and what he did or didn't want to say.

Do I feel more deeply because I’m a writer, or do I write because I feel deeply? I don’t know. All I know is that the best way for me to let go is to hold on: to grip the pen, put it to the page, and let the ink tell my story. Once it’s out, I have to push send. Not because I am seeking redemption, approval, or even to help someone. It’s because – much like an artist friend says about her work – my writing just happened. It often doesn’t feel like something I could have consciously produced, more like something I stood aside to let my unconscious unleash. When that’s the case, I don’t really feel like I own it anymore: the writings are not mine, and neither are the feelings that sparked them. If it’s not mine, I don’t own it, and I have to let it go. Like a songwriter, a painter, a sculptor or a child throwing a tantrum, sometimes the best, most healing, cathartic and authentic thing you can do is share what it is, because even if it started out as yours, the only way to prevent the rot is to let it out into the light, wishing it well as it floats away.

Love and writer-freed emotions,
Morgan

Choosing to be Authentically Me

“I read your blog. I loved it. It felt so real; so authentic. You talk about the things that all of us experience and yet no one really says out loud. It’s wonderful.”

My new friend Jemma and I were sitting at a restaurant on Boca Brava Island, on Panama’s Pacific coast. We were eating yucca fries and drinking fresh tropical juices. As it always does, it made me incredibly happy to hear that someone had read my blog and enjoyed it; even more so that it sounded authentic, because that has recently been an important part of what I write here: that it presents me: the truly, deeply, unequivocally human Morgan.

I thanked her, and I told her something that I have felt hesitant to share, and yet have been telling people anyway, as if my mouth has attached itself to my heart instead of my head.

“I’ve been writing my book as fiction, but the truth is it’s going to be based on my life, whether I present it as fiction or not. It’s starting to feel important to me that I write and present it exactly as it is: my life and experiences, as I have understood them.”

Of course, she said. Not as simply as that, but that is what I heard, and what surfaced in my mind as I explained to her. Of course it has to be a memoir. Of course the only way I can even pretend to live authentically is to present my story authentically. Of course.

As I step further onto the path I have sought for myself, the easier it seems to be to consider this possibility. The more space and time I have to think about what I want and need, the more it becomes clear that my need is to tell my story: all parts of it, the joys and sorrows; the large and small everyday miracles; the pain, anger and betrayal; the realizations that came along with each of these emotions, and the eventual ability to let them go.

This realization could not have come without my final decision to stop worrying about what people think, because that is the only thing that has stopped me from writing this book already: how others will react to what I have to say, about myself, and about them as part of my story.

I am less worried about what others would say about me, because it is my story. I can take responsibility and appreciate that not everyone is going to agree with what I say; what I have learned; what I need for myself to feel fulfilled and joyous in my existence. I have learned that the hard way, and I am not letting go of the lesson.

What worries me more is something I have only imagined I have any control over: how others will interpret what I have to say about them as part of my story.

I have often wondered at the courage that Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and now Cheryl Strayed (Wild) exhibited by writing such raw accounts of their lives in their books. To me, it seems that they were able to discuss their relationships and interactions in a way that made it clear that they valued and honored the people in their lives, even when the lessons they learned from them were hard ones; even when heartbreak was the result. I’m not sure how those actual people feel about what was written about them, and yet I find myself compelled to try for the same idea: to present the things I have learned from people without laying blame at their feet.

This is important for two reasons. One – and most important – because I don’t blame anyone for what has happened to me anymore. That would make me a victim, and I am tired of giving away my happiness and power to others by making them the reason for my actions. Two, I have realized that every single person in my life has been put there to teach me something. Often it was not the lesson I wanted to learn, and rarely was it the way I wanted to learn it, but all in all I have come to the point where I realize that I can take what I have given and use it to make my life what I want it to be, or I can hold the pieces up as excuses for why I’m not somewhere else. I feel more empowered by the first option: it allows me to take responsibility for myself and own who and where I am today.

I have to let go, invisible audience. I could write the most loving, amazing account of someone and they could be insulted; I could rip the same person apart and find that they thrive on the attention. I can’t control that. All I can really control is myself. I can only hope that my humanness will come across in my writing in a way that will show I am not out to hurt anyone; that being included in my story at all means that you have made a deep and lasting impact on me that I found worthy of sharing. I have to remember that it is my story, after all, and I have a right to tell it.

I have decided to write authentically, in first person, telling my life as my own, and I have to trust that if I do it from the heart, from a place of love instead of a place of revenge or victimization, the people that it is supposed to touch will be touched. As much as I wish I could keep anyone else from reading it, anyone who would not understand, there is only one way to do so: to not write it at all.

In my search for authenticity, there is no room for that kind of silence.

Love and authentic kisses

Morgan

I Used To Be Funny

NOTE: This blog was first posted on Haley Whitehall's website on March 3 when I was her guest blogger. I am reposting instead of writing something new because I have an awful cold and can think of nothing to say that does not involve whining and moaning.

Long ago, when I first went abroad, I would write hilarious emails home. Even before that, I wrote fairly funny top ten lists over whatever it was that came to mind. It seemed like no matter what I was doing, there was a comical way to look at it and I couldn’t wait to get to a computer to type out my long (overblown) email about Montezuma’s Revenge, children skidding sideways down long ski slopes into lines of people waiting for the chairlift, sheep-turd-tasting cheese or smelly persons.
In fact, I have a whole book of these stories. It’s called Confessions of a Travel Addict. It’s nearly 200 pages of funny stories about traveling abroad, and although I recognize the work as my own, I have come to the realization lately that I probably couldn’t write it again because I don’t write funny things anymore.
If it’s going to be funny now, it’s a one-line status update that has about 15 people chortling, versus emails to 50+ persons that I’d like to believe read and enjoyed them.
So, what’s changed, you ask? Well, me, obviously.
When I first revealed to one of my friends that I had written a book about my traveling, she asked, “So does it have stuff about, you know, how you felt, your emotions, the things you were going through and how you grew as a person?”
I don’t think I laughed at her, but I thought at the time that it was a stupid thing to say. Who on earth would be interested in how I felt about things? Merrily I tripped along, continuing to write funny stories with no meat to them, no context, no person behind this shadow that traipsed all over the place having mishap after mishap.
Now, I realize that there is a time and place for everything. I realize that I may be hard on myself here, but the truth was that nearly everyone who has read my book has said, “Well, there’s not really much about you, you know? Since I know you I feel like I’m taking a trip with you, but if I didn’t know you I would feel like I was missing a very essential piece of the story.”
They’re right. The book lacks substance. And suddenly, that substance is all I can come up with to blog about. Suddenly, even my funny posts don’t seem as funny. All of a sudden, I want to talk about myself in serious terms.
It may seem small to someone on the outside, but this shift seems like a monstrous chasm that has opened up in front of me. I don’t see myself as some sort of bubbly, exuberant bouncy ball ricocheting off walls and screaming “WEEEE!” until everyone wants to shoot me, but neither do I see myself as a depressive lump of coal sitting in the corner, sucking the light out of anything that comes near like a black hole. I feel both these things often – if I’m lucky, I feel these and a whole range of emotions every day – but what I feel more is the change that has come over me in regards of what I want to share. I’m no longer as interested in simply giving the funny story of what happened to the stupid gringa while skimming over how I cried when it happened. A part of me is more than a little alarmed by this. It’s no longer a game to see how loud a person will laugh; now I’m tapping something deeper and sharing because I feel like a have to, and this is what bubbles to the surface, needing to be shared.
I think one of the strangest things about this shift is that I don’t feel afraid or excited about it – I simply recognize that something has changed. I look at it objectively, like a thing that I’ve just found in my house, and I study it, knowing it has a use but not yet knowing what it is. I’d like to think that this means that I’m finally maturing to the point where I don’t feel like I have to mask my emotions and can say how I really feel, but somehow that seems very, um, mature of me, and I can’t quite believe it. So for now, I’m just going to roll with it, and hope that maybe one day I’ll get to the point where I can be funny again and meaningful, too.

Love and not so funny kisses
Morgan

Sometimes, it just doesn’t get any better…and sometimes it does

I enjoy writing so much that I will do it in response to nearly any occasion or happenstance. I write when I’m afraid, angry, introspective, happy, depressed, or euphoric. Sometimes words spill out of me and onto the page for no greater reason than they need to be there; sometimes, I’m fairly certain the words weren’t even mine to begin with.
There’s a great talk by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) on TED.com. Gilbert talks about the creative process for some of the greatest writers, poets and musicians, and how many of them feel that their creative genius is actually a separate entity. Gilbert talks about how the Greeks (or was it the Romans?) used to refer to a genius as if were a small elf that people had at their disposal that would help them with their artistic endeavors: no one was a genius, one simply had a genius.
Gilbert wants to make the general public aware that the creative process is not always easy, or creative: for a lot of people, it involves a lot of self-discipline and sticking to a schedule. It involves sitting down to write at the same time every day and dedicating a certain part of your day to the pursuit of your dreams, regardless of what else you might want to be doing. I can definitely agree with her and identify with her remarks, but man oh man, when that genius comes through the door, you know that she’s there.
I’ve written posts before where I called my genius Creativity and spoke about her as if she were a fussy adolescent who exasperated me with her inconsistency. Now, I think of her more as a perfect day: the day where you do everything the way you’ve always done it, but for some reason on this day everything goes perfectly and you’re left perched on the top of the world, wondering how exactly you got there.
Some days, the writing is like that. Some days, I get an urge to write and what comes out is so packed with emotion, so incredibly amazing, that I read it and wonder how on earth something like that came from me. Although I can’t ultimately control when those days occur, I have noticed that I get them more when I’m in beautiful surroundings, under a new moon, or embarking on a new adventure. My genius arrives when I’m reminded of all the amazing things that life is comprised of. Even though I can’t yet control how often my genius comes to me, I can make sure I help my circumstances to be exactly what she’s looking for when she stops by. Maybe that way, I can eventually convince her to stay.

Love and genius kisses
Morgan