Writing is co-creating the world: On my own I am less than I can be with you, so I am grateful you are here

Such intensity! Amanda at about age five, writing something.

I like my green beans steamed just long enough that a bit of crunch remains. Then served with just salt, maybe a squeeze of lemon — maybe. My favourite green veg, plain, is obviously what it is, there on the plate.

My writing is, I think, a bit like those green beans: plain, accessible, identifiable for what it is — a thinker making sense of her world via words served up, unadorned, for enjoyment and appreciation by anyone who joins her at her virtual table.

Until I came up with the green beans analogy, I had been contorting myself to shape today’s post — to make it fancy, doll it up, hide its inherent simplicity with sophisticated technique and impressive side notes*. And then I heard my mother’s voice exclaiming, “Don’t drown the green beans!” She meant, just cook them and serve them. They are good as they come, naturally.

So. 

I am closing out my posts for this year by saying a simple and sincere THANK YOU to you, Dear Reader, for being here with me on my writing and thinking journey. I write to be read, and I know from comments that many of you make on the blog or send me by text or email that you read what I write. My appreciation runs deep and is heartfelt: Thank you.

My writing friend, Heidi Croot, has written about why readers are so important to writers, suggesting many ways to show your support of their work and their craft. You can read her moving essay here.

My weekly posts to this blog are the heart of my writing practice. I am a writer, so I write and, for the most part, this blog is where I put my writing. I have a happy rhythm of observing the world around me, plucking something from that experience, distilling it into an idea, shaping it into a coherent and (hopefully) meaningful piece of writing, and sharing it in the form of a post here on the blog. A couple of years back, I also spent time chasing opportunities to be published elsewhere, and sometimes I was successful. These days, I am content to publish my own work here, though I hope to submit a piece about my mother, sparked by her thimble box, in the new year to a new site a reader told me about (thank you, Liz!).

Regardless of where my writing ends up, I know that, every Tuesday, my words will land here and many of you will find them, and some of you will be moved to let me know your response. And all of it means the world to me: Thank you.

I know I have no control over how my words land with readers, over what happens to my words once I hit ‘publish’ on the blog. My words are out there — forever, as we well know from headlines (and maybe experience) that prove deleting something online doesn’t really erase it from the deep dark record of the internet. And, yet, I want my words out there, regardless: I am a writer, I write, I send my writing out into the world. If I didn’t give my words (and thoughts and feelings and ideas and opinions) wings to find my readers, I wouldn’t be the writer I am and want to keep being.

So, plain and simple, like my favourite green beans, I shall continue to write my stories and serve them up here (and maybe elsewhere), without embellishment, for (I hope) your reading pleasure.

I am nothing without my words, and I am less without you, Dear Reader. Thank you for helping me create and nurture my writing life, my writing practice, my writing world.

***

* One convoluted idea I came up with (and discarded) was to write this post like a call-out by Miss Lois from the Romper Room TV series of the late 1960s. She would pick up her magic mirror to ‘see’ the children ‘out there’ who were watching her. I watched regularly, never heard her call my name, yet continued watching because I loved her, believed in her, knew she could see me, and lived in childlike certainty that one day she would say my name. Today, here, I hold up my equivalent magic mirror to acknowledge just some of you who read routinely and are often moved to comment: Ann - Barbara - Danielle - Teresa - Karen - Randa - Sally - Mike - Marguerite - Judy - Ken - Jacki - Jenn - Mary - Casey - Liz - Pamela - Debbie - Leslie - EnGee - Celia - Willow - Linda - Ellen - Shannon - Theresa - Kay - Nancy - Jodi - Edna - Val - Steve - Deborah - Miriam - Jennifer - Lynda - Diana…and the mysterious but appreciated Anonymous. I wrote this list, amended it, removed it, then reinserted it multiple times and, finally, left it in. Because being a writer means being bold, taking a chance, making an impression, however flawed. So I have included the list, incomplete as it surely is, knowing that some of you might be saying, 'Hey! I read your words and post comments. What about me?!?' To you I say a special thank you for the grace you extend me in this space in which you land and to which you contribute and in which I have failed to say your name. Keep returning, please. I am so grateful you are here… 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.