Writing from the wounds

by Margaret Swedish
 
"...it’s becoming harder and harder not to see pain as a necessity for creating truth with words..."

That was written by Luke Reynolds for an article in The Writers Magazine back in 2011. The magazine's home is outside Boston and re-posting it was a way to express something of what they were feeling in the wake of the marathon bombings. The article is entitled, "Why We Need Pain to Write."

Yeah, I know. I feel the resistance, too. And the truth of it.

Reynolds reminds us of the John Gardner quote: "Art begins in a wound."

Is that true?

I sat for a long while on a bench at the lake shore this morning just after sunrise. The sky was so soft, gentle oranges and grays, rays appearing here and there through the clouds just above the horizon where the sun could find openings, the water still, glowing silver and sparkling, the ducks and gulls busy with life. 

Rays appearing here and there through the clouds where the sun could find openings...

Lake Superior - Photo: Margaret Swedish

Is that what we're trying to do? But to find the openings, we have to observe the clouds, the places blocking out the light. Naming them is part of what it means to be a writer. And then to remember that all of it was what gave beauty to the morning, the contrasts in color and light, the struggle of life as the new day begins.