Heart Sutra of A Writing Life

Heart Sutra of writing life:

any pressure is always self directed, that if I ever have a demand for words and only find their absence, than it’s my own issue of complaint, and not one of inspiration. There are infinite things to write of and an endless flow of words. There’s also silence — and it’s essential to the writing process. Really, it’s essential to all of life, silence is the holy underlie of order, the foundation for words to appear and flourish. Here, I’ll use silence and emptiness in synonymous fashion, offering both in the same manner as an allowing space for words and form to come to our notice, the Heart Sutra of a writing life…

silence is no less than words.

words are silence in disguise.

emptiness,

form.

it’s all the same.

the issue is my interpretation of silence, my failure to truly listen to what it offers in reply to my demand for words. Silence urges me to pause, to give consideration to something other than the voice of ego and author. Silence allows me to write with a greater sense of purity, writing more from inspiration than demand. To write like this means to honor silence as often as it comes to my attention, a sacred pause to honor and not move forward with words until they appear without apparent cause —…