Not always torture

My last evening in Pittsburgh I had to myself. After considering looking up the local gay bars, I chose instead to go back to ghostsandrobots's apartment with some treats—chai-flavoured chocolate, kettle chips, soya ice cream and elderberry tea—to bribe myself into writing for a couple hours. No better place that in someone else's apartment, empty and softly lit, with no computer to distract me.

The result was excruciating. Someone said that to write well, you have to open a vein and bleed. It felt that way, that night. Writing is sometimes agony, maybe that's why I'm so afraid. The outcome can be worth it: the satisfaction of creating something luminous and surprising.

When I mentioned this experience in an email to ink_ling, he said he rarely writes from pain. He has too many other interesting emotions to "tamper with".

It was one amongst many of Jason's comments that have challenged me recently. Why must I write about pain? Well, sometimes it is unavoidable. Writing Pilgrim's Cross, a novel about the ex-gay experience, recalled memories more easily left unopened. It was heartrending and exhausting. It is also probably one of the most important things I've done, and returning to that manuscript is my highest ambition.

But it doesn't always have to be that way. "A time to cry, and a time to laugh." One evening back in Guelph I challenged myself to write about something that roused different emotions.

I remembered a July weekend afternoon, laughing off the edge of the dock with Brenna, enjoying the camaraderie of my little girl becoming a woman, then hanging in the water while she snorkeled, seeing the way my arms looked pale and silvery against the dark green shadows, feeling utterly peaceful. Writing that made me happy.