Here’s what I love about writing. Yesterday, I sat down at my computer thinking about a conversation about online education I had with a neighbor, which led me to search YouTube for videos about editing and writing. Next thing I know, I’m remembering my high school A.P. English teacher and trying to recall whether she wore black and white saddle shoes or red Converse high-tops. Footwear issues aside, I am happily surprised to find myself writing about a beloved teacher I haven’t thought about in years, an incredible woman who died young but influenced my whole life.

I finish the blog post having danced down memory lane and ended up in a place I never, ever expected. It was a treat, really. Yet if I hadn’t plonked myself down in front my keyboard and started typing, no pre-formed conclusions in mind, I wouldn’t have started down the path, let alone end up where I did.

I’ve spent the last few years focused on visual arts, so I’m familiar with the concept and the experience of starting with a blank canvas and letting an image or impression emerge. When the right side of my brain kicks in, I never know where I’m going to end up. Time races and yet stands still; I am both completely focused and entirely relaxed. With painting, my right brain leads me to reach for new colors and different brushes to explore ideas, shapes, and marks on the canvas. When I’m writing, it helps me gather images, associations, and connections from all directions and weave them together with linguistic threads. In both painting and writing, the failures are as important as the successes. Sometimes a canvas or a sentence – or the whole darn thing – needs to be deleted with white gesso or a few keystrokes. Either way, the shadow of that erasure still exists. It beckons me down an unexplored path and leads me on a journey that, somehow, always turns out to be exactly where I need to go.