Anne Lamott just posted some thoughts on FB for her birthday, including the idea that the opposite of faith isn’t doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.
What writing lacks is internal certainty. To face the unscrolling blue line across the paper, a thin thread, and my own crabbed handwriting crawling out on it—a bridge over a mile of air, rocks below, a gorge with debris cracked and twisted at the bottom. We see that broken evidence as a threat, a warning of the danger of failure, of risk. But the world is not muttering warnings. The cure is the same as the ailment: attending. Being willing to look at the glorious mix of green shoots and rot, the combination of life and death, what we’d choose and what we’d shun.
Oh how we long to sort everything: right/wrong; boy/girl; truth/lie; good/bad. Writers don’t sort. We copy it all down, gasping, uncertain, holy.
It troubles us humans to stay in uncertainty, to take dictation from faith. Doubt wants to stop the whole experiment. Try to look without fear. Peer close and ask: what would this look like if I were not afraid? You do not have to rid yourself of fear, you have only to pretend, or imagine . . .
How do you keep the faith with your creativity, with your writing?