Nurturing the Writer’s Soul
A cardinal swallowing a sip of water from a well in the trunk of a maple tree.
In nature, water is contained in surprising places.
In this tree, just under the red cardinal in the photo, a well has been formed by the tree bark growing around the spot where branch broke. Birds, lizards and squirrels stop to drink at the tree well.
We all need water to live, water to thrive.
Wells are often metaphors for spiritual nourishment, for nurturing the soul.
The metaphor of taking in nourishment from a well is still meaningful, even if wells are archaic poetic images in the cities of the world.
Many of us writers draw spiritual sustenance and inspiration both from reading, and from writing. Some of us draw it from speaking, others from listening; (two forms of expressions not always active in the same person).
Where do you as a woman writer draw your nourishment? Where are your wells? Are they in surprising places? Do you share your well with others, as this tree well is shared?
Do you have a special place where you write? Do you have any ritual around writing? Do you have ways of restoring your inspiration when nothing is flowing?
Part of keeping one’s creativity flowing is to continue to allow it space to emerge. Like keeping a little water running through the winter so the pipes don’t freeze. Part of it is connecting with other writers and encouraging or challenging them forth. Part is the inspiration we get when another writer has named what we are experiencing, given it a metaphor that nails the unwieldy experience and gives us a handle for it.
What known or surprising sources of nourishment for your writing life would you like to share with other women writers?
Updated 12/11/2011
Category: On Writing
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I have heart-to-heart conversations with my good friend Dix. We go out to our favorite shop and have coffee and talk for three or more hours. He’s funny, warm, hilariously honest. We both have ministers as fathers, so are prone to “confess.” It’s our special connect, that and our having gone through grad school together. But he brings out of me an eloquence and humor I often didn’t know I had, and I almost always return home with seeds for some new material.
Sometimes emailing him is even better–he’s fabulously funny by email, which makes me fabulously funny, too. It’s a great exchange. There’s something about the direct address of an email exchange (especially with him) which brings good writing out of me. It has everything to do with writing *to* someone rather than writing in a void. The trick is transporting that freshness to the void (or imagining him as my hidden interlocutor in every piece I write)–not so easy!
I buy books – I have given up making excuses as to why I might ‘need’ so many. But simply being on the shelf, when I can run my hand along them (yes, notice the dust), smell that paper-smell – it all reminds me why I do this.
Yes, I walk, I potter in my garden. Have even been known to indulge in a glass of restorative wine. But nothing is quite as wonderful as a shelf-full of books.