The Perfect Ground

Because of the title of a book I have just published, I have found myself recently talking about what it means to Write Within Yourself. The book is a collection of essays and stories culled from this page, and so each is wholly separate in content from the others, but running through all of them, in one way or another, is this: If an idea to make something – like, say, a book – came to you, then everything you need to make that things exists within the space where it arrived—namely, you. Simple, I know, but oh how easy to forget. I am speaking, of course, from experience. There is a kind of romance to the tragic notion that you could be handed the gift of an idea and yet, by some unfortunate spin of a cosmic or genetic wheel, be unable to share it with the world, as if you were born mute but filled with song. Such is life, goes much practical wisdom. Everyone can dream, but look around you – obviously only a lucky few will get to live those dreams.

What a nightmare such false-wisdom becomes, and how seductively compassionate can sound the voice telling tales of bad luck. Now we remain condemned to live trapped in our own inadequate lives, and all because of some capricious genie called luck. It is nothing less than death within life, this thought. You have lost this game, and your remaining lot is to watch the winners play it.

But it was experience also that taught me the opposite is true. It was experience that taught me that ideas are seeds seeking their perfect fertile ground, and that my enthusiasm, attention, and consistency are the water, sun, and soil that grow that seed to the full life contained within it. It is no different than the tiny apple seed that becomes the apple tree. Everything needed to make the tree is contained within that seed. All that is missing is the attention of the world in which it will grow. You are that world, that garden, and you need look no further than your own interest and curiosity to know if the seed you found belongs within you.

Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion. "A book to keep nearby whenever your writer's spirit needs feeding." Deb Caletti.

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