I vowed when I started this blog that it would be all about writing – the journey, the universal experience and travails of writers. I wanted to share my journey, connect my road with others, create and explore our crossroads. Since I started on this path I have been singularly focused, not allowing myself any deviation, no side path sojourns. I figured it took me long enough to even get (back) on this path – there was certainly no time for anything else. But I just abruptly discovered that such a narrow, exacting vision and course isn’t reality. In any journey there are inevitable detours. Intrusive, unwanted, unwelcome, but there nonetheless. Perhaps it is a reminder of the fullness of the journey, that we can’t just choose one path and say; “This is it. Because I say so, this is the only path I’ll ever tread and I will not stray. I choose this road and nothing else.” What’s left then when something unexpectedly knocks you cleanly on your ass, light years from that path?
I had a heart attack last week. Monday my chest and arm hurt, Tuesday I was in the emergency room, Wednesday I was having a stent placed in my collapsed artery and Thursday I was home with a bagful of meds. My right hand is in a support cast so I don’t bend my wrist and disturb the healing, just a little hole to indicate the trauma from where they snaked a catheter following my arterial path into my heart. There’s a bruise from the back of my hand where they had to start drawing blood when my other veins could take no more, all the way up my forearm.
Up until the stent was in my heart, I denied anything at all was really wrong. It was all a mistake. Maybe, at worse, some meds would be needed to right 
As I field the calls from family and friends, the containers of food I can’t stomach right now, tell my unbelievable tale over and over, it is starting to sink in – this is now a fact of my life. Done deal, no coming back, no way to avoid, no shortcuts to scurry into. There is no running away from this one. The collision and detour has happened. Now, where will it lead? Will it turn me back along from whence I came? Do I have to start all over again? Will it be some sort of new inspirational launching pad like a cheesy Hallmark after school movie? Or will it leave me stranded between the crossroads, unable to move ever again from this spot right here, right now, in pain and confusion? I don’t know. It scares me I don’t know. I built my path methodically, stubbornly, single-mindedly. Now I can only sit here on the side of this new road, not knowing which way to turn, what to do, how to reconcile the ‘why?’
I relive unrelenting flashes from the hospital: The vampire nurse with the wild exhausted eyes so close to mine in the middle of the night, jabbing the needle over and over again into my collapsed vein, moving it around seeking blood; the confused roommate recovering from hip surgery, screaming and moaning throughout the unending night; the next night’s roommate with the obnoxious extended family who took over the whole room, loud, invasive, blocking the bathroom even, hesitating to move when I needed to get in; the thick viscous goop I pulled off in handfuls, left all over my body from the monitor and EKG tabs; not having even a toothbrush or a comb, no offer of a shower, sweating in my narrow bed, strapped to a hundred cords by needles in my veins that bled when I tried to move; the chaplain who came in to offer services to those interested, then sat with me while I choked down sudden unexpected sobs; the frightened eyes of my son when he saw me, the unbearable knowledge that I had in one moment ruined the 
innocence and excitement of his pending move across the country, and changed our relationship forever; the screaming catheterization lab nurse who was convinced that by virtue of my occluded artery, I had also gone deaf and lost about 100 IQ points in the process.
I awake aching, with “why?” on my lips. I search for a reason, a catalyst, something, anything I have done – ever – that would explain, that I can fix; the doctors shrug and mark the “atypical” box. There doesn’t seem to be any answer.
I am now forever defined by this event. I must wear it for the rest of my life. It is suddenly my new identity, who I am, and I must always fully disclose it, to random strangers on the street apparently. I have to have a bottle of Nitroglycerin pills on my person at all times, as well as a medical card disclosingI have a stent and the exact location it resides within my heart. This miniscule stent is now struggling to integrate itself into my system, do its job, without being rejected. It will take up to a year for my cells to encompass it, cover it completely, for my system to quit fighting it, accept its invasion and existence, allow that it’s helping, that it is saving my life every day.
I can only wonder how long it will take me to do the same.
I was just this week suddenly informed the writing group I’ve been waiting for was finally beginning. It will start in less than a week.
So here I am, backed into a corner once again. I have to face this writing 
group, just like I did the time I took off, to test myself out. Maybe the universe got sick of my incessant whining and rationalizing. “Okay, enough already – you think you need all that before you sit your butt down in the chair and stay there for more than a half hour at a time? Here you go. You’re move. So now what?” 
Now what? Well, now what if it doesn’t work? What then? Does that mean I’m not a writer after all and that I will be forced to face that once and for all? What will I do when I have to read aloud and have nothing on the page at all, or what I do have is pure crap, or I open my mouth and nothing comes out because I’m terrified of public speaking? What if I make a bush-league amateur grammatical error and they all snigger, roll their eyes at one another, “who let this one in?” What if the other kids don’t like me and are mean to me; what if they make fun of my writing? What if the teacher hates me and picks on me?
What if I truly see myself through their eyes and am embarrassed – mortified – by the pathetic fake I see reflected? The rest is only jitters on top of that one. Is this writing group really the thing that’s ultimately going to make a difference – make it or break it for me? Just like having the time to write, it’s no magic bullet. These things may be essential, but are not sufficient.
They aren’t enough on their own, or in any combination, to “make” me write. If I have all the time in the world, it doesn’t mean I’ll write. It’s a subtle point, but so very important. It needs to be kept conscious. I can’t set myself up by virtue of wanting something so badly like the group; to then expect that thing to be "the one to save me", lift me up and place me just where I want to be. These things are, at the end of the day, just tools, components of what I need, what can help. But in themselves, they are not going to be the thing that makes me write.
Only I can do that. And the only way to do that is to do the work. If you think about it, that’s really the good news too. There’s freedom – ultimate freedom – in that. I don’t have to wait for 
A very empowering concept to hold on to; it means the only thing I need to write, to do what I truly want to do, is just me. That’s it, that’s all. Nothing else to hide behind, nothing left to wait for. Holy crap and double gulp. I wonder what my writing group will have to say about all this.
I took some time off from work to see what it would be like – to just write, see where a test run would take me. After I navigated the machinations of the 
I did write though. I wasn’t perfect, didn’t achieve that ideal of up every day at 5:00 a.m., writing to the exclusion of everything else. But I set goals, kept them for the most part, checked off some steps on that outline. Still, in a really baffling turn of events, I feel like I somehow wrote myself into a corner. For everything else that abysmal day job is, where it really shines is in its wonderful capacity to be the scapegoat; the ultimate airtight, unshakable excuse ever. ‘Poor me – I just don’t have the time to write, I’m so enslaved after all.’ What I was forced to face by doing this little experiment was that writing still scares the crap out of me.
I fairly easily accomplished the mechanical steps in my outlining, even completed the expanded plot synopsis, albeit less easily. I organized all of my notes, coded them, cut them all out, put them up on my board in satisfying order, dove into more research, forced myself to stay in the seat for some timeevery day. Then – it was time. Time to build from those bits and pieces and start stitching the whole thing together. Boy did that seat get uncomfortable and suddenly there were SO many things to attend to. My dirty house, the deplorable adherence to exercise, my dying garden. All of it suddenly needed to be done right now. Even my impressive denial system couldn’t avoid that abrupt and obvious stall.
I have this really annoying habit of calling myself on my unconscious shit before I ever realize what’s even lurking there in those scary depths. I set myself up, time and again, force myself into showdowns, put up or shut up. Tough love. Let’s hope it’s love anyway – maybe I’m just a masochistic saboteur. But this time off was in fact a set-up. ‘You wanted time? Well here it is. Now whattya gonna do about it?’
Why, why, why is it so very punishing to write? Why? How can two of the strongest forces within me be polar opposites? It seems so self-evident that if something feels that aversive, you avoid it. If it feels that intimidating then it is obviously something negative, dangerous even – all of your warning bells are telling you so. Ok – I’m with you so far. But then why do I passionately want that thing as well? Why have I built my entire ‘self’ around the very concept, taken it as my identity, my meaning, my path? How can opposite core drives simultaneously be true? I intellectually know there are reasons for the dynamic – learning, reinforcement principles – but my logic centers can’t quite get over it.
I want the joy of the flow of writing, to look forward to sitting at my desk in front of the window – the work being its own reinforcement, feeding on itself.
And sometimes it does. On a good day, I can touch it - it’s not just a wild myth I’m chasing. I know I just need to keep moving, load up my resources and reinforcement more and more until it forces the see-saw to tip over to this side,leaving the negative still over there, but unable to push its fat butt back down into my business to leave me dangling in the air again, helpless. My instincts are right – I do need to keep forcing myself into those corners where I can’t squirm away.
I remember a story about my grandmother, my dad’s mother, for whom I’m named. She was a full blooded Irish girl; strong, passionate, quick to opinion and apparently not shy to share it. As the story goes, she was sweeping the front porch when a wicked West Virginia windstorm came up. She didn’t retreat inside and patiently wait for the storm to recede. No. She had already put a lot of work into sweeping the porch; had planned this chore for that moment and it just wasn’t negotiable. Therefore, the wind was the enemy, keeping her from completing 
her goal. How dare it? She kept sweeping. The wind kept blowing, depositing more dirt before she could even finish a swipe. As her family looked on from inside, she began talking to, then yelling at, the wind. Women didn’t really curse like that back then. She threw the broom, not into, but at the wind, striking it, beating it back. And she never stopped what she was doing. She swept throughout that storm, only able to finish once it receded. But finish she did, on her own terms. Logical? No way. Efficient? Nah. But she was willing to pay her own exacted price to herself and continue. Because. Because no wind was going to dictate to her. 
Who am I to deny my legacy? I’ll keep going too, regardless. I’ll do it the hard way if I have to, if I want to. But I’ll do it. My own internal tempest is not going to get in my way. I have my broom handy.
I remember an anecdote about Helen Keller. She wrote a story that was precious to her and gave it as a gift from her heart to a dear friend. She ended
up being lambasted for that story, accused of stealing it as it was so similar to something that had already been written. Plagiarism. The most evil demon lurking around writers and writing. I found a website with excerpts from her autobiography that in horrifying detail recounts the episode and her devastation; being accused, losing a cherished supporter and friend through the incident, and actually being tried by a panel to determine her intent and guilt. After reading it I’m terrified to quote any of it, so I refer you to the link to peruse. The Story of My Life, © 2014 American Foundation for the Blind. All rights reserved. http://www.afb.org/MyLife/book.asp?ch=P1Ch14
In this missive, that reads like a confession, she racks her brain to remember if she had ever heard of the story she was accused of plagiarizing. She puts together a chain analysis, going back, and back more, trying to determine if the story had ever been told to her. She ascertains that it must have been, and that she unconsciously called it up, and copied the memory in her own story. Think about that; a deaf and blind young girl, her only way of absorbing information through tactile symbolic communication. The stories that were “read” to her – how were they stored in a complex brain without the experience of sight or sound, how those experiences would otherwise be stored and called up as a resource when trying to depict something new? We write by analogy. We describe what we’ve seen, what we’ve heard in life, composing by contrast and comparison based upon our experiential contact with these things. But being ‘told’ something was the only resource for analogy Helen Keller could have, her entire store of resources from which to draw.
This story is truly tragic and it breaks my heart and terrifies me at the same time. Everything we read, hear about, becomes an ingrained part of us. How can we separate the stories we hear, that we now see in realistic surround sound, three-dimensional display? How can we separate that from any other life experience that is “ours”? What still belongs to the author and what becomes ours by virtue of its integration into our own network of interpretation and experience? How the hell to tease all this apart? Can we?
That’s my worse fear. How many times my oh-so-profound and epic thoughts, epiphanies, story ideas, inevitably turn up already chronicled in something I end up reading. Had I pursued that thought into a story, wouldn’t I too be accused of plagiarism? Where’s the line?
I believe the only line that we have is our own voice, and our integrity. The best thing I ever got from a writing class was reinforcement for my own voice; the concept that our unique voice is what writing really is, how you tell your story – not that the theme has been told already. I clung to that. I still cling to 
Collectively, we know our stories, our shared ancient history, our epic “Hero’s Journey” tales. We will never stop telling these stories; the same stories, generation to generation, culture to culture. It is the telling of the story wherein the magic dwells. Our lives, both big and small, would diminish without being reflected back to us in the story. It is how we claim our lives in a vast, empty and terrifying universe; it’s how we know we exist, that our existence matters, has meaning. We need to hear the stories of ourselves. It is our humanity, how we remind ourselves that we all have a story, each of us. It binds us, connects us as much now as it did round campfires at the dawn of man. The stories are repeated but are fresh and unique by virtue of the voice of the storyteller. We know there is the “who, what, when, where and why” of any piece of writing. But another lesson that stuck from a writing class so long ago – the ‘how’. I wrote a short story on assignment, loose parameters that I don’t recall. I ended up with an alien at what turned out to be a soccer match that through the alien’s eyes was a gruesome trial and punishment of the ball, which to them was sentient. Fluff. My teacher said it was well executed, technically flawless, that she ‘couldn’t find anything wrong with it.’ But? Well, the ‘but’ 
If we have chosen to take up the mantle of ‘writer’, then we intimately know the truth. It is the clay in which we sculpt. And if we are truthful and write from that core, we will not copy other works. That is my story anyway. And I’m sticking to it.
