The Devotion of Writing

and patron saint Patti

“Why is one compelled to write? To set oneself apart, cocooned, rapt in solitude, despite the wants of others. Virginia Woolf had her room. Proust his shuttered windows. Marguerite Duras her muted house. Dylan Thomas his modest shed. All seeking an emptiness to imbue with words. The words that will penetrate the virgin territory, crack unclaimed combinations, articulate the infinite. The words that formed Lolita, The Lover, Our Lady of Flowers.

There are stacks of notebooks that speak of years of aborted efforts, deflated euphoria, a relentless pacing of the boards. We must write, engaging in a myriad of struggles, as if breaking in a willful foal. We must write, but not without consistent effort and a measure of sacrifice: to channel the future, to revisit childhood, and to rein in the follies and horrors of the imagination for a pulsating race of readers.”

Patti Smith, Devotion

I have a closet full of notebooks, stacks upon stacks of them. I have filled these up over the years with dreams, ideas, half-written short stories, tiny indignities, and complaints. I have filled them with my endless need to put pen to paper. It’s apt that Smith starts this essay at the end of her book Devotion. To choose to write is to devote oneself to the written word and to an intimacy with oneself and the world we inhabit. It is a continual noticing. As Smith puts it: “We must write, but not without consistent effort and a measure of sacrifice.” I have written my whole life as a way of making sense of my experience.

Devotion to something saves many of us from ourselves. The devotion I feel for writing this newsletter, in all its iterations, is sacred. It may sound trite, saccharine even — but to show up consistently for something in this way for as many years as I have with my history, fears around using my voice and considerable trauma — it feels like a sacred venture. I started writing a newsletter in 2018 after shutting down my blog in an effort to market myself as a newly minted nutrition coach and meditation teacher. I found it less interesting to market myself and was more inclined to write what was present for me, though, in retrospect, I really could have spent more time on the marketing part. My lack of interest was mostly due to fear of really showing up. Of trusting myself as a healer and a teacher.

I have come a very long way since then: in the healing of my own body, in the way I show up as a teacher and in my writing practice. I write every day in the privacy of my own stacks of notebooks, but that I have somewhere to come and share with others, to reach out in moments of contraction or grief or joy or inspiration — it’s really a gift. The thing is, I would be writing anyway. And it is an effort: I don’t always want to. I don’t always trust that it’s wanted, needed, or even received (both literally, thank you spam and figuratively, thank you inner critic) — but I write because I must.

My parents had a friend when I was a kid who referred to himself as a ‘professional observer’. He was a Mancunian with a fast wit and a wry, self-deprecating sense of humour in that way the very best Northerners are. Every time I’d see him, he’d say it. After a while, I felt he was ushering me into a club. The club of quiet ones who sit on the sidelines, contributing only when necessary and sussing the whole scene out. Perhaps as a professional observer, he noticed that I had something in me that was also compelled to notice.

Seeing as I aspired to be as funny and self-deprecating as him, I decided I, too, wanted to be a professional observer. I think many of us walk into a room of people and want to understand the dynamics at play and the personalities therein — it gives us a sense of safety. Much of the motivation around doing this mostly has to do with having trauma, but I’ll take it because trauma also gave me a sense of humour, and I’m not giving that back either thank you very much. A consistent writing practice is a way of noticing, observing, transmuting, and ultimately transforming the sense one has of an entire life. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand why I love to write or why I continue to do it. It’s not high up there on the list of lucrative careers (and my friends in the WGA who spent all summer fighting for a fair contract can tell you as much), so the love really does have to be deep. I don’t think my love will ever stray, nor my ‘seeking an emptiness to imbue with words’ will ever expire, as my patron saint Patti put it. Thanks for being here to witness how it unfolds.

With love,

Nora x