On Writing

For me, writing is a messy, a circuitous journey of woven words!
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After a night of professional conversation with connected educators, my mind is racing. #TeachWrite, #WonderChat, and #TWTBlog thoughtfully stacked their questions while I sat glued to TweetDeck on my computer. Within a virtual space of connected talk, I sat writing thoughts across my screen. Around me lay the visible artifacts of learning-papers strewn across my desk, scraps of thoughts, start-up ideas, and crumpled notes waiting to be organized-piles upon piles of paper, notebooks, and professional texts congregating in a crowded space.

How can Ideas germinate and take root in this arena of disarray?

You might question how writing can be an outgrowth of my creative messiness. Let my image poem below take you into my creative world of digital space and perhaps provide an answer.

Just like this space, I call my office, is undergoing construction, my writing is too. As I wait for the contractor to arrive this week, I also wait for ideas to evolve and move from a state of clutter and disarray to a finished product, an outgrowth of a meandering, wonder-filled process of creation.

A quote by Frederick Douglas surfaced during one of the connected conversations tonight. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." I immediately copied this into my notebook and pondered the words.

Various rooms in my house are waiting for make-overs. So, too, my writing journey is filled with drafted thoughts and redos. My house needs refreshed spaces of living and my writing needs space to breathe, to circulate, and find its landing pad. While there may be tension and missteps along the way, the productive struggle leads to new growth and a "will do" feeling that the journey is the right path.

I add these thoughts to Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Tuesday tonight and look forward to reading my colleagues' slices.