I have a tee-shirt I use for exercising that says ‘Find Your Own Trail’.  I love that.  Why?  Because ‘Find Your Own Path’ is a cliché, a therapy phrase, a word that conjures things like group hugs and synergy and sidewalks.  Finding a trail brings visions of originality, mystery, and uniqueness.  The trail I seek curves around boulders, humps over tree roots, secrets itself under overhanging sword ferns and salal, peeks shyly through shadows and rain drops and the very occasional sunbeam.  It smells of sap and cedar, moist forest floor, clean breezes and granite.  Really.  Have you ever sniffed granite?  Pick up a rock and hold it close, especially if it’s been in the sun.  You’ll smell that distinct scent of rock. And let’s not forget the miniature world bordering the trail, where Kinnickinnic and pippsissewa bloom.  Say those words.  Don’t they sound more intriguing than if I’d just said, ‘tiny bell shaped pink flowers’?

A trail wanders so that you can’t see the end, only the next bend.  A path is straight and clear with no suspense.  There’s no wonder, no discovery, no way to dream yourself into a story about what you might find as you round that boulder or tree.

Really though, aren’t they both the same word?  Path and Trail.  You walk a path and follow a trail.  You walk a path with head up, arms swinging, breathing easy.  You move along a trail watching where your feet go, sweating as you climb, swiping spider webs and mosquitoes.

These two words bring home to me the importance of choosing exactly the right word in writing.  What a difference it makes if you pause a moment to seek out just the right thing to say, rather than taking the easy way out and using a word that’s okay, but not perfect.  Or, god forbid, a cliché.  There are many times in writing where I have stumbled on the wrong word, not able to pluck out of the air the exact one I want.  I highlight that word and keep going, not wanting to lose the flow of writing.  But then I go back to that spot of color on the page and worry it until the right word appears, fully formed and perfect.

And then I choose to hike that trail.

Those who know me or read this blog have most likely realized I’m fascinated with poetry.  Probably because I can’t write it. 

So here’s my latest poetry comment.  I’d like to challenge you to write a Cinquain.  I’ve attempted this and laughed myself silly over the results and would love to see someone succeed where I fail.  Below is the description of a Cinquain and an example.  Can you create one?

A Cinquain is made up of five lines.  Line 1 is one word, a noun, and the subject of the poem.  Line 2 is two words, adjectives to describe the noun.  Line 3 is three words, verbs ending in ‘-ing’ to describe the noun.  Line 4 is four words, a sentence about the noun.  And Line 5 is one more word, either a noun or adjective related to the noun.

Personally, I’d like to smack the person who thought this up.  It’s torture.  Anyway, a sample is over on the sidebar.  I apologize for the structure in the sidebar; for some reason it’s not formatting the way I’m entering the words.  You should be able to tell the separate lines by the capitalization.

 Have fun and hope you share your results.

I spent the weekend writing.  That is a very big, important statement for me to make as writing has been extremely difficult since radiation treatments.  And so it was wonderful to spend a rainy weekend with words flowing as fast as the rain.  Actually flowing, with no stops and starts, no discouragement, no fears that the writer in me had died.  And then, because writing is my business, when I finished I was a good girl, and documented the hours.

To prove that I actually write a few years ago I started a writing calendar, where I would go in and track the date and time spent on writing business.  When it was time to do my taxes, I gave that information to my accountant.  But then it dawned on me that it wasn’t proof at all because there was no way to show that I hadn’t pulled numbers arbitrarily out of my head.  So I started making notes of exactly what I was working on.  Which chapter in what story, problems with characters, problems with plot, things I discovered that worked or didn’t.

Yesterday as I was updating my writing calendar, it hit me that this was a writing journal.  Can you hear the word ‘Duh!’ in all caps, shouted out?  No this isn’t in a pretty, bound journal and written with the perfect pen.  But it is a record of my struggles and triumphs, especially over the past two years as I’ve waited for writing to return, achingly tracking the loss of words. 

All this time I’ve fought against the idea of keeping a journal, and all along I was keeping one and not realizing it.  It’s so amazing how we deceive ourselves.  By calling it a writing calendar and telling myself that it was for taxes and business, I was able to journal. 

This past weekend was one of discovery, and one of welcoming something that’s been missing, and one of realizing that I may slowly be healing.  Because for me, writing is proof that I’m whole.  This was a tentative step, but a pretty big one nonetheless.

Oh, and I do have the perfect pen by the way.  A garnet Waterman that my husband gave me.  What a smart man.