“Creative people have to play with terrifying things. ... We’re kind of compelled to, and I think it makes all creative people just a little bit wacky, in a really good way. Creativity is to play with what scares us the most, and what an honor to be able to do that. . “In order to do any good creative work, even in you’re just practicing trying to put words together, we have to get into territory that’s frightening. There is no greater exercise for a writer than to try to articulate what is impossible to articulate.” . —Kate Inglis (via the Good Life Project podcast)📓 ..... I am cheerful by temperament and optimistic as a lifestyle choice. Enough people in my life have commented on how positive I am that I stopped questioning that this is how most people experience me.📓 . So, it took me a long time to reconcile the way my attention would be snagged by something terrible and stay there for a while, especially when no one else seemed to be bothered. For example, one afternoon, junior year of high school, I read my assignment from my AP History textbook about the end of WWII, and I had to stop doing my homework and go for a walk in the woods. I came to the shore’s edge and stayed out in the cold with rage and grief. I went to bed still digesting it. I spent pages dissecting the events and the motivations of the players in my journal.📓 . I remembered that moment while I was listening to Kate Inglis on the Good Life Project podcast, and other moments too—It wasn’t the last time I took history personally, whether it was my country’s, my family’s, or my planet’s. 📓 . But I also remembered that my reaction wasn’t just a horrified fascination. I was examining what was terrible until I could write a way through it, clear to the other side. 📓 . If I can name it, if I can put it on paper in my own words, it becomes part of a bigger story, and that allows for the possibility of a whole new chapter.📓 . #writing #authorlife #writinglife #creativelife #writethrough #anewchapter #goodlifeproject https://www.instagram.com/p/B34u4woHgee/?igshid=sm5fmk34l6fp
