ur faces are buried, and I don’t mean in the
sand. They’re snuggled into our machines these days
as we scroll and click and finger type away. We travel into
virtual lands, disconnecting from the three-dimensional
one around us. I worry that we’re no longer able to walk in
this world and communicate with each other one-on-one.
I worry that we no longer understand how to be alone.
And being alone and lonely and bored is important to us as
creative people.
Henry David Thoreau wrote: “How vain it is to sit down
to write when you have not stood up to live!” (Of course,
he had his mother do his laundry for him while living
on Walden Pond, so we have to take the simplicity of his
enthusiasm with a bit of an eye squint.)
Standing up to live can be difficult. It takes time and
energy and an ability to see beyond ourselves. An essential
part of the process is cultivating empathy. Only through
living outside of ourselves can we be at our best as writers,
whose job is to capture and translate humans, creatures, and
details of the lived world onto the page.
As a writer you must transform language and yourself. This
personal, internal transformation is as crucial to your work
as is the actual writing of words.Contagious Empathy
Looking up from our screens and going for a walk may be
our salvation. SHERRIE FLICK explores how movement
can inspire creativity and connection.SHERRIE FLICK's nonfiction
has been published in the Wall
Street Journal, Pittsburgh Post-
Gazette, Superstition Review,
and Pittsburgh Quarterly, among
others. Her book of narrative
nonfiction exploring place and
displacement in Pittsburgh will
be published by In Fact Books
in fall 2018. She teaches in the
Food Studies and MFA programs
at Chatham University and serves
as codirector for the Chautauqua
Writers’ Festival.
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