Being a Circle in a World of Straight Lines

 "Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies.”

(Hélène Cixous)

I’m sure there’s some inspirational quote I could insert here, but all I can think of as I look at myself practicing the shape of a circle is “l’écriture féminine.”

It seems insane to discuss French feminist literary theory in a blog post, but I gotta do me, right?

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I remember being so relieved when I first discovered Hélène Cixous and her studies on “feminine writing.”

The pen moves as the body moves.

Fluid and circular; magnificent and maybe incomprehensible.

Just like a woman.

As a young, frustrated writer, who was trying to find my voice in creative writing classes dominated by super confident, masculine writers who had Hemingway on their side, I felt like Cixous was signing a permission slip for me to go on a totally different field trip.

It was like going to the doctor, expecting to hear terrible news—something strange like,

“Well, all people are born with their nose on their face, but yours is on your elbow, so...”—

only to be told

“There’s actually nothing wrong with you.”

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Some writers tell their stories in straight lines.

Some writers tell their stories in circles.

Neither is better or right,

just different.

We live our lives this way, too.

Some of us keep our eyes focused straight ahead, towards the finish line.

Some of us look up and down and all around, exploring every little whim along the way.

Either way will get us to the end of our story,

it’s just a matter of style.

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Obviously, this is an extreme over-simplification of l’écriture féminine, but this isn’t a thesis, it’s a blog post, and I’m bringing it back around:

I stopped measuring myself against Steinbeck novels and started reading Jeanette Winterson and I haven’t felt the need to try to write—or live—in a straight line since.