My name is Barbara, and I am a writer. (There! I’ve said it!)
Does this sound like the beginning of a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous? Well, when you are a writer, it can be a bit like having an addiction. You can’t help yourself. Your mind craves words and ideas and the orderly arrangement of them. There is even the pleasurable relief when you’ve had your “fix” of putting words together on paper or on a screen. On Shabbat this can only happen in your mind, of course, which may tide you over until you can wind up—in a sense—going out of your mind, setting its contents on the page or screen.
So a writer can’t help herself. Where ever she is, she is surrounded by her workplace. The world offers boundless opportunities, materials that can be utilized for her craft. Scenery, communications, situations, information. Everything observed can become in some way part of her writing. There is probably an un-named part of her that keeps her attuned at all times to the raw materials—something that keeps a corner of her at arms-length from the environment so her powers of observation are always in gear. The career writer is always working.
In Betsy Lerner’s book, The Forest for the Trees, she quotes the poet Pablo Neruda. For him “…writing is like breathing. I could not live without breathing and I could not live without writing.”
Some people are in agony when not writing, but perhaps more often the struggle to produce the written page can be just as painful. Why, then, do people keep at this solitary endeavor?
The writer writes to communicate, to connect with people in ways that may not otherwise be possible, to share helpful or interesting ideas, to make sense of things that she ponders and thinks others might also wonder about and want to understand.
But at times, while the words are busy weaving their way through the convolutions of her brain and not ready to cooperatively line up on the page, the writer may pause. Then suddenly almost without her realizing it, she may see the design take shape, her purpose being fulfilled. How did it happen?
I would like to suggest that Hashem is her partner, always present, always guiding her in a quiet way. Who better than the Master Writer, the One Who created a single draft to last us for all time? It is much more than words inked on parchment, not merely a literary accomplishment.
I have only recently been published. Through the years I have kept a journal and written poetry, short stories, and essays that remained securely filed. While being sidetracked by the vicissitudes of life, my journal was my constant companion. Perhaps the years have enabled me to mature as a writer so that I can turn the many years of journaling into publishable material. Perhaps this was the Master Plan all along. Perhaps this is Hashem’s gift to me.
When I told a friend who is a caterer that her skill at preparing and presenting food was a gift from Hashem, she was taken aback. “ It doesn’t just happen without long hours of intense work,” she told me. Of course. I knew how hard she worked. We may be given a gift from Hashem, but we won’t know it unless we work hard to discover it.
And so I have worked, and as always, I am thankful to Hashem for giving me the words.
(Adapted from a blog published in the Times of Israel.)
Barbara Cooper writes a blog for the Times of Israel and is currently working on a book compiled from experiences since her Aliyah. She can be reached through the JWWS office.
