The Reason I Write

I am writing this while taking a short (two day) break from work to celebrate the start of the “Basketball Holiday Season”, more commonly known as the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

That said, I aspire to have a Cal Ripken-like “Consecutive Weeks of Writing ‘Thoughts For the Week’” streak, where I write this weekly epistle for 2,632 weeks. This means I will run out of ink at age 115. Sweet!

So this version of “Thoughts for the Week” may be shorter than normal.

Or it may not be shorter than normal…

It just depends! 

I strive to stick to a practice called “automatic writing” when writing. Automatic writing is when you get out a sheet of paper and a pen (or a pencil or piece of charcoal). You then put the pen to paper, and you start writing. You write down any thoughts and words that come to mind, regardless of what those words might be.

If you come to an impasse, you can just write gibberish, or write the same word over and over.

And over and over, and over and over…

Just kidding, I wasn’t really stuck, I was just trying to make a point.

This practice builds upon itself. What I find is that my pen is way ahead of my thoughts. The pen reflects a river of thoughts, that are surprisingly interconnected and sometimes coherent!

Two individuals get credit for me adopting this practice.

More recently, it was my friend and Davidson basketball teammate John Gerdy, who encouraged me to take up the practice of daily journaling in the early days of COVID. Gerd also turned me on to “Bird by Bird”, a wonderful book on writing (and life) by Annie Lamott. The practice of journaling helped me sort out things that were particularly vexing.

The person who introduced me to the practice of “automatic writing” is Dr. Charles Cornwell, one of the all-time great English professors to have ever taught at Davidson College. (I say this knowing full well that there are no “Auditors of Who is An All-Time Great English Professor at Davidson College” but just trust me on this one).

 Dr. Cornwell taught a creative writing course at Davidson that I took from him during what was the nadir of my time at Davidson College. When I reflect on this time now, I realize the time spent with Dr. Cornwell was truly a godsend.

It wasn’t just what I learned about creative writing from Dr. Cornwell that was memorable. It was actually the “talk therapy” that Dr. Cornwell administered from the back porch of his apartment at Jackson Court in Davidson. Little did I know that Dr. Cornwell’s creative writing course was just a vehicle for his helping me work my way out of a period of depression.

While our paths crossed periodically in the days since Davidson, over the course of the past three years, we have reconnected in ways that have been quite special. And you know what?

I am still the beneficiary of Dr. Cornwell’s “talk therapy”.

Some things never change!

And, selfishly, I never want them to change.