The Shine Journal

On Writing

by

Sandra Anfang

When I write, I am a lone dancer on a newly washed beach. It is early morning, just after sunrise. Small plovers play tag in the surf by the water’s edge. Mine are the only human footprints on the sand.

It’s an oddly intimate feeling being the only mammal making etchings on the beach. I think it’s the wide open-endedness of it—like writing on crisp new vellum--that makes the experience so heady. There is infinite possibility, with few limitations. No template looms to guide my wriggling words in a predictable pattern down the page. Like walking the beach, writing for ten minutes is dizzyingly exhilarating, yet a little intimidating.

The animals on the beach don’t judge the pattern of my footprints. Each is busy performing its own morning ritual, and I am free to do the same.  Their natural grace in sharing the beach with me creates an atmosphere of intimacy that invites me to weave my words without self-consciousness. I am in good company.

When I read someone else’s writing—especially for the first time—I am thrilled by the quirkiness of their diction, and the idiosyncrasy of their style.  The generic passes me by like too many franchises on a highway strip mall. It is the intimate particulars of the writer’s voice, one’s unique vision of the world that grabs me and summons my attention.

When I write, I strive to create this same brand of intimacy, knowing that doing so means standing naked before the world. When the details of my writing are truly original, they take on a universal dimension that involves the reader in the same way that the details of other writers’ work speaks to me. The personal is particular, and often political.
  
Consider, for a moment, the bird woman in your childhood neighborhood. She’s the one to whom you brought injured robins, fallen from their nests, or perhaps an egg found in the side yard. Although she was gentle with children, there was something feral about her, as if she’d long ago left the human kingdom to join the animals. The details of her life may vary from town to town…the color of her house, the pattern of her apron, the way her porch smelled as you summoned the courage and stepped gingerly up to the doorbell. What is universal is the aha! response this image evokes for each of us.

Good writing can take us around the world and back home again in a single day.

Motivation:I often ask myself what metaphors writing brings to mind. When I teach writing with my elementary students, I try to liken the experience to things they know.

BIO: I am a teacher, painter, and writer living in a small Northern California town. I enjoy taking writing workshops, having new adventures, and listening to writers read their work. I am a new emtpy-nester. It is a simultaneous challenge and joy making my way as an autonomous adult!