A writer’s mind is a muscle.
When regularly oiled, it runs smoothly and seamlessly with life itself. Creative thoughts emerge like swollen clouds dancing across one’s mind. Ideas blossom in the dead of winter, creep through frozen concrete of the brain, begging to be noticed.
Law school flicked the off switch to my writer’s mind. It forced me to see writing as an equation. Issue + rule + analysis = holding. Flowery words were considered fat on the steak — to be trimmed off immediately. The punishment for using the word “was” in a sentence? Death by hanging. Be brief. Be concise. But most of all, be right.
As you can imagine, these high expectations permeate beyond the four corners of the page, and the four walls of law school. Once the legal mind has fully consumed the writer’s mind with one big *gulp,* the equation becomes a way of being…
.
Instead of staring into an abyss of Colorado mountains and seeing stoic peaks with melting ice cream on top, where sunlight makes the snow twinkle like slow falling sequins, I would see “a snowy mountain range.” Instead of looking into a Manhattan crowd and seeing people for their stories, wondering what happened to the woman whose eyebrows are sewn together with fury before she arrived at the crosswalk; I would see “a crowd.” My mind would be so focused on myself that I’d forget to be present and let my creative mind explore. My shallow eyes could see, but they weren’t truly seeing.
Now that I’ve graduated from law school and its intellectual confinements, I’ve begun to read for pleasure instead of for testing purposes. I’ve turned my creativity switch back on, and it feels like a reunion with my soul. Slowly but surely the buzzing flurry of technicolor words come rushing back. Finally, I am home in my own mind again.
As a child, I remember seeing the world through a kaleidoscope lens. I made tiny forts for invisible fairies out of moss and twigs. I dreamt of tree fortresses high in the canopies of sweating, breathing jungles. I studied my alphabet animal books and imagined creatures made of the aspects of dozens of different animals morphed together. Most of all, I turned to my pencil and leather-bound journals for answers. I turned inward when I felt lost or questioned the world.
This gravitational pull towards creativity cannot be not taught in the classroom. Somewhere deep within my being, where the answer spreads its roots, a tiny heartbeat sings it’s incessant song: I must write. I must write. I must write. Against all odds, against the wishes of my family, the demands of my environment, my financial security, my emotional stability, against everything — I must oil the untethered machine that is my writer’s mind.
I must write.
