As I Live and Breathe

On Writing Toward Existence

Photo by David Klein on Unsplash

I’ve been in a reflective mood, chewing on life’s little questions. You know how it goes:

WHO AM I? Why am I? What am I doing, exactly? And how will I know when I get where I’m going? (All Up in My Head, 2023)

Not coincidentally, I’ve been crafting a YA graphic memoir* for some time now, and the closer its script comes to matching both my vision and a few industry-vetted expectations, the more blurred ’n’ blended the identifiers writer and human become for me.

Those stumpers up top could end with “as a writer” or “as a human,” for example, and my purest replies each way would match in spirit. A nod to the beating heart of this writing life. I think?

I’ve known since filling my first dear diary — a little gold-lamé-covered lock-and-key number — that writing helps clarify my thoughts and feelings. It shows me what’s driving life’s story, and who is driving mine. (Writing is like reading but more affective.)

Put more succinctly, writing is how I know that I’m me.

I’d bet that most writers feel the same. No matter the genre or format or content we’re working with, we write about the life we know. We write around it. We write for and to, despite and because of. Any writing we do is who we are at the time, that moment in life.

What’s more, we can’t not do it. Writers gotta write, amirite?

The having-to sensation inspired This Writing Life, and I’ll use this space to explore my own writing life — and yours, theirs, and ours.

I’ll share writerly musings and screeds about my work at hand; lessons and reality checks from a 30-year career in the field as both writer and editor; intersections among writing and other endeavors; creativity boosters; nosy conversations with colleagues about their writing lives; biz-focused talks; and whatever else bubbles up.

Feel like coming along for the ride? Please subscribe!

P.S. A spoiler alert! As 2024 dawns on us all, look for a special series dedicated to working through Julia Cameron’s January 9 release, Living the Artist’s Way. The six-week program introduces writing for guidance as a fourth creativity tool to be used in concert with morning pages, artist dates, and walking. I’m intimately familiar with the original tools and eager to see what I think of the new kid!

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*Hey, thanks for sticking around for the asterisked note! As you may already know or can well imagine, memoir writing is uniquely trippy work. Meta to the nth degree. I’ve come to view it as the easiest and most difficult writing forms rolled up into a You-shaped ball of dough. Because my book is still in progress, I’ll refrain from publicly detailing its storyline until it’s done-done and (knock three times on the ceiling) sold. In the meantime, though, I have plenty to say about the specific writing experience.