I know the answer will be different for different people.

Writing means so many different things, even though we try and contain it into one value-laden, assumption-heavy verb.

For some it truly means the chance to work towards and realise a dream, to be a published, recognised, properly grown up Author, and I take my hat off for those who have that level of skill, commitment, ambition, patience, determination, and outstanding ability to write.

For me it means shaking things out of my head, creating patterns, images, making shapes from moments to stop them from fleeting, knowing they will linger and last in my written remembrance.

For me it means sharing the words, and seeing what happens. Opening yourself up to the possibility of connection, in ways that you cannot imagine at the time of writing.

It’s what blogging lets us do, this free or nearly free medium that still amazes me in its power. It opens up the possibility of connection.

It lets you share a story, a moment, a fragment of the edges of the truth of your life.

It lets you tell a truth, without needing to dig into all of it, to share beyond what is right for you, or compassionate to others.

It opens up the possibility of connection, and connectedness, in a world where, despite all the social of social media, we feel increasingly isolated, and alone.

It opens up the possibility that you may return home from a day when you’re losing faith in the point of it all and find an email from a stranger, responding to your words.

I got one of these out of the blue messages the other day, someone I didn’t know asking for a poem of mine on dementia and remembrance that I’d written and kind of buried. She’d read it once and missed it. Needed it.  When I sent her the poem she wrote back to thank me. She wrote back to tell me that she’d pinned it up on her board, to remind her of what it means to remember someone when their memory is going and your understanding of the meaning of memory and remembrance is changing every day.

That one email, that one reader, reminded me of what matters, and what is enough.

Enough in this case being the knowledge that my words of grief and loss and remembered Christmas baking have a life of their own, creating their own resonance, leading to their own connections, forging new stories.

When all the other reasons and justifications and points to it all fall away, that for me is what matters.

That is why I write, and keep on writing, and blog, and keep on blogging, even were I to be the last woman standing.

Why write, indeed, why write.

It’s part of what keeps us human.

It’s part of what keeps us connected.

It’s part of what keeps us alive.

(I know: again. Still, this time I think I am there. There being where I want and need to be, for just now.)

This morning feedburner sent me a post from the site, to my inbox (perhaps you got it too). It was from September last year, one of many posts I updated yesterday. I have no idea why it selected this one to send to you, to me.

That being said, it was precisely what I needed to hear, and read, as I move into another next chapter of writing here.

Permission to be ordinary, it said.

Yes, I replied, breathing out, in relief.

I read on.

What would happen if we allowed ourselves to write, think and create in an ordinary kind of way? How many more different voices would we then hear? How much material would live to see the light of day, not stopped before it was started? How much more richness would we uncover in all its glorious everyday ordinariness? Couldn’t we then stand back, relaxed in our human sized form, and watch the collective effort unfold, in all its wonder and glory?

Why yes, I thought, yes indeed.

That is it, entirely.

What I think, what I mean, what I wish to teach and pass on, what I wish to help be born and come to pass.

And what I was working on with the reconfiguration yesterday.

Yes, indeed.

~~~

It also reminded me how powerful RSS is, and how much we take it for granted. Such a simple, powerful way to communicate with each other, to reach an in-box, to stay in touch.

Such a simple way that lets me still, after something of an absence and hiccups of stop-starting, reach you, talk to you, and be grateful to know that you might be reading and listening, still.

It reminded me what an astonishing medium blogging is: how it gives us permission to write and share, not needing to be brilliant, but just ordinary, human, extraordinary.

Woven connections between everyday human hearts.

Really simple sindication, at its best.

In sharing it she wrote:

A wonderful example of emotional contagion. Notice how your attitude shifts during this brief video.

And I know it’s Monday, and I know watching videos might take a whole few minutes…

But if you do happen to have a few minutes to spare, please do watch it, and see what happens…

(If you can’t see the video in the feed / your e-mail version please do pop over to the site to watch and enjoy.)

It got me thinking: that’s it’s not just emotions that are contagious. Not just music that’s infectious.

Words and writing too can have an emotionally contagious effect.

That doesn’t mean we all need to start writing happiness and sunshine.

There are lots of other positive emotional states that could be infectious, contagious:

• Words from the dark places of the imagination, sparking stories, creativity, desire
• Words that evoke curiosity, possibility, the beginnings of a sense of wonderment
• Words that are written to provoke, to get us thinking, to stir the sluggish parts of the old grey matter
• Words that come from the heart, a little slice of humanity, humbly offered, to touch the heart of another
• Words that are infused with compassion, pulsing with the music of kindness you’ll be itching to pass on
• Words that are dripping with the jewels of poetry: rhythm, beauty, meaning, nonsense
• Words that truth-tell quietly, reminding us of who we are

Words that ask simple questions:

When you think of words going viral, what is it that you’re hoping to pass on?

Sometimes looking at things in a big scale: global, universal, internet-sized, can be daunting.

Intimidating even.

Rather than fretting about how to live up to the demands of the bigger picture you might find it easier to shift perspective and reduce the size of your frame.

We’re using frames all the time, even if you’re not consciously aware of so doing.

You use a frame when you’re taking a photo of an image, a person, a place, a moment.

A blog post works in the same kind of way: a frame around an idea, a set of thoughts, a story, an incident, something you want to package up, share, organise, and yes, frame.

(More on blog posts and framing here: 10 ways to frame your words.)

A blog site is another kind of frame again: a container for a whole series of thoughts, stories, questions, provocations, conversations and reflections, organised, however loosely around a theme or organising principle, even if that’s simply: you.

That frame can be adjusted.

If you feel your scope is too small, if your writing is getting constricted: you can make the frame bigger. I suspect this happens fairly naturally for most of us – it’s something you can and will do organically, over time.

There might be other times though when the scope seems too big and then, like I said, just a bit too difficult to handle, too hard to get your teeth into.

I realised that I’d fallen foul of this same trap myself.

In working my way back into this site I’d set up the writing task – the writing frame  - in too big a way to be meaningful, too daunting to be doable.

This is one of those occasions when I’m glad to have a healthy blog archive: I knew I’d find the answer in there somewhere

I figured that the best way to generate more ideas for writing that would be interesting and enjoyable both for me and (hopefully) for you was to follow my own advice and reduce the frame. Pick one or two aspects of the big task, and focus on them, and see what opens up. (The answer: lots.)

As for what appears through the window… wait and see.

Photo Credits: Joanna Paterson – frames at Broughton House, Kirkcudbright

Not the night time sort, wild fragments of story-telling from my beautiful sub-conscious mind.

No, I mean the daytime sort of dreams, those that come clearly defined and neatly delineated, the things others talk of dreaming about, dreaming of, planning for, working to make happen.

I go to that place in my mind, in my heart, where I think the dreams might be, and there is nothing. Silence. A blank screen.

I write, to myself, and some others whom I trust, that I feel lost without dreams, disconnected from the world of dreamers, puzzled by their dreaming, disconcerted by the absence of my own.

Then it occurs to me, with a jolt, that I do have dreams.

They are just stored in a different place, playing to a different kind of soundtrack.

I dream of a world where compassion is the currency of everyday life.

Where random acts of kindness form the soft, sweet tokens of daily exchange.

I dream of a world where poems are left at bus stops, in railway carriages, in the hospital toilets where people stand, weeping, falling apart, desperate for a fragment of comfort.

I dream of a world where we go slowly enough to listen, and notice, and care.

I dream of a world where we have time, where we make time, for those who do not fit, and speak slowly, and have trouble articulating their words.

I dream of a world where we gather in response, with poetry, kindness and care, to those who are suffering, to those who are mentally ill, to those who are suffering the anguish of mental ill health, coupled with the belief, the insidious belief, that it is somehow all their fault.

I dream of a world where dragons roam, and unicorns dance with delight.

I dream of a world where copies of the poems of Hafiz are sent scattering through the sky, like poetry confetti.

I dream of a world that is softened and shaped by compassion and kindness.

I do not know how to help make this world, how to help birth this dream other than:

the practice of kindness,

the sharing of poetry,

the commitment to writing with the language of kindness, compassion and gratitude,

the belief that the sharing of fragments of our stories, our worlds, our lives can help us learn to be kinder, less judgemental and more compassionate,

the determined holding on to the belief that  tiny ripples, of compassion, kindness, poetry and care can help to birth a dream.

~~~

First drafted in response to reflections on the absence of my new year dreams; brought into being through these posts written on Martin Luther King Day: Patti Digh at 37 Days: Because I too have a dream and Susan Piver: I have a dream, what is yours?

~~~

Inspired by the launch of Patti Digh’s site: 37 Days, and all she teaches there.

Not the declaration or the affirmation.

Not the clearing away and beginning again.

Not the liberation that comes with jumping off into the unknown

Not the delight in the feedback that follows when you share a piece of your world, a glimpse of your vulnerability, a slice of your humanity, a fragment of your dreams.

No, it is the next thing that’s the stumbling block: searching for the words, the actions, the evidence to match the grandeur of the leap.

Perhaps there’s nothing for it but to begin again,

and again,

clearing, jumping, falling every day,

breathing through the doubts of your own most tangled fears,

writing past the taunts of your own most fearsome critic,

knowing the next thing will always be the hardest part,

the biggest stumbling block,

trusting there is nothing for it but to keep on taking off another layer of the heart,

sharing another piece of your world,

a glimpse of your vulnerability,

a slice of your humanity,

a fragment of your dreams.

What if you said that writing too was an art, and not think it has to be visual or musical to count as art?

What if words too were beautiful, could be beautiful, you knew, know, have always known that words were beautiful?

What if they too could be soft and dripping with honey, healing hearts?

What if writing could be like the most soulful of photography, not seeing harshly, but writing with the eyes of the heart, how would that be?

What if you could find a way to talk about all of it, the things you have found, about sweetness, imperfection, the soft gaze, of love?

What if you could work poetry into that?

What if confidence was really about allowing the work to be imperfect as it was?

What if it was simply about finding the way to write about the things that matter?

(Journal notes to self)

Words can trip us up, and set us free.

It is time for me to begin again.

The words you speak become the house you live in ~ Hafiz

Language shapes the world you live in.

It’s just a thought, as part of the frenzy of list making and intention setting and goal declaring, to think about the words you want to use in the year that’s coming.

This might be choices about what you want to write about.

Since what you focus on increases: what would you like to see more of?

It might not just be the words in themselves, but also the way that you use them, shape them, mould them, carve them, play with them.

It might be the way you treat your words after they have been written. With kindness, or compassion, or gratitude, or absence of apology.

It might be the way that you write, editing and reshaping your work so it better expresses the language of gratitude, or compassion, or possibility, or absence of apology until that form of language becomes engrained, a part of you, until that practice of gratitude, or compassion, or possibility or absence of apology starts to feature not just in your words, but in your daily life.

Just a thought.

Just playing with words, in case they shape the world we live in.

Yes, it is a fact that the net teems with words: crafted, polished, witty, worthy. Wise, and true.

Yes, it is the case that the idea you had for the book that would change the shape of things for ever, has already been written.

Yes, it is true that googling of your topic reveals experts and authority, authorship and expertise that you can only dream to fashion.

Yes, there are books being kindled every day.

Yes, there are poems flowing, freely, through the links of soft exchange.

Yes, there are words, astonishing in all their brilliance, whichever way you turn.

Still.

Still the words lie curled inside, waiting to be born.

Still the words burn with a pent up energy, like a child cooped up after days of illness, or bad weather, itching to get outside again, to run and play, to dance and sing.

Still your words want to tumble, to cartwheel, to arc across the sky, carving poems, painting stories, opening hearts.

Not least, your own.

Still your words do not care what such-and-such has published. What so-and-so has said with all their kindness, truth and wisdom.

Still your words want to run, flying free, outside.

So:

Take a deep breath.

And write.