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Fear of Writing/Creating: Finding Your Footing
"Walking in the dark is like writing. When I first came to Hedgebrook, I was afraid to go out after dark. I feared many things--bogeymen, monsters, some psycho with a grudge against women writers, even the other women who I thought might be psychos in disguise--but mostly, it was just not being able to see that bothered me.
"I wanted to confront my fear so after a while, I ventured out at night, first in a group and then by myself, wielding my flashlight as a weapon against the dark. I didn't go far from my cottage-- to the bathhouse and back again. One night I got very brave and turned off my flashlight. I stumbled at first, but then found my footing. I felt the gravel beneath me and I knew I was on the path. I followed it to the bend by the pond. Then I felt for the softness of grass. If I stepped on a bush, I knew I'd gone wrong, or, I was about to forge a new route home. I realized I'd become too reliant on seeing and less reliant on feeling.
"When I quit panicking, I knew the way. Just like when I'm writing, I have some instinctive sense of where I'm going even if I can't see beyond the blank screen. I've walked this path before. My imagination has gone ahead of me and charted the way. If I pause and listen, i can hear her footsteps on front, guiding me. If I listen even closer, I can hear other footstpes of the writers who have come before me and the writers, like you, who are still to come.
"We are not alone in the woods groping in the dark. We are wlking on paths that have been walked on a thousand times before. We are saying things for the first time that have been said a thousand times before."
from Hedgebrook Waterfall Journal #5, Lynn Dixon
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