Madeleine L'Engle and I think alike
***Most of you already heard that Madeleine L'Engle died last night. I've been going back and forth but I think I'll just leave the post up as is. Here's to a long writer's life well lived.***
Who knew? Well, apparently ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
olugbemisola. I owe you. Big.(I'm thinking about the perfect something).
Yes, I've been reading A CIRCLE OF QUIET by Madeleine L'Engle. How did she understand my thoughts so well back in 1972?
Some examples:
"Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody--away from all these people I love most in the world--in order to regain a sense of proportion."
Me too, me too. I go on a walk. Or hide in the bathroom.
"When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware: we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious selves."
Yes, Maddie, yes. That is what I like most about writing. You can enter a "zone" of creativity that takes you beyond yourself and all issues of self-consciousness. I call that a good writing day.
"During the 10 years when practically nothing I wrote was published, I was as much writer qua writer as I am now; it may happen that there will come a time when I can't find anyone to publish my work. If this happens it will matter. It will hurt. But I did learn, on that fortieth birthday, that success is not my motivation."
Ten years. I feel your pain. The writing has nothing to do with the publishing business. The writing is for the act of creativity discussed above. But success is necessary to validate that one should spend time on this act of creativity. Otherwise it seems simply self-indulgent. And the bills start piling up.
"If I am in the slough of despond, if I am in a rage, if I am, as so often, out of proportion and perspective, then, once I have dumped it all in the journal, I am able to move from subjectivity to at least an approach to objectivity."
Yes, I'm a dumper too. I'm afraid that is why my blog is so boring and inferior to so many others that are well written and well thought.
"A journal is also a place in which joy gets recorded, because joy is too bright a flame in me not to burn if it doesn't get expressed in words."
Beautiful. And, I agree. My first instinct, first desire, is to write about something. It adds to my joy. I'll try to remember that if I continue to slog through this blog. And my other writing as well. Yes, I'd like to do some of that too.
Thanks, Madeleine. I'm glad we could get to know each other all these many years later. I'm still working on forgiving you for those childhood nightmares.(I know. I tend to hold a grudge). I bet A WRINKLE IN TIME was never returned to the Brooklyn Public Library that quickly.
I hope you're still writing. I believe you must be 88 or 89 years old. You're one smart cookie.
I'm a dumper too...which is why I often think my blog is bipolar in nature :)
I didn't know WiT gave you nightmares! That's not good -- I remember being a little creeped out by Wind in the Door, though. Especially where Charles Wallace said, "Meg's inside me." I'd just seen that movie where the people shrank down and had to fight viruses and stuff inside a person...*shudder*.