Write On Wednesday: 50 Shades

No, not that "50 shades". I wouldn’t waste one second of time writing or thinking about that atrocity of modern literature and cinema (and I use those terms loosely). 

I’m talking about the shades of my own creative life, particularly my writing life, and the different types of writing I’m called to do. 

Recently I had an opportunity to return to work at the office I “retired” from about a year ago. This time, I would be helping rewrite the copy for a new website, and also helping revise their Policy and Procedure manual. This latter project at first sounded deadly boring - but surprisingly enough I’ve found it quite interesting. Their policies are old and outdated, so I’ve been researching the latest trends in policy making regarding electronic and social media. With medical information involved, it’s a touchy subject, so there is much to consider.

The website copywriting is also interesting. I wrote the copy for the current site six years ago, and I’m hoping to really streamline the copy and the site itself into a more readable, user-friendly format. 

This week I’ve been involved in creating a power point presentation about the services our company provides. Again - a learning process for me, both in terms of writing and the mechanics of power point itself.

So I’ve been pounding away at the keys, and even though it’s not the kind of writing I’ve been focused on here on the blog, it’s another shade in my writer’s rainbow. The kind of writing that involves research, clarity, organization, consistency, engaging and informing the reader...

Wait a minute - Isn’t that what all good writing should do? Aren’t those the Primary Colors for every successful writing project?

Although I’ve been spending a lot of time on these projects, which means my other writing projects are on the back burner, I haven’t felt deprived or guilty. I feel as if I’m sharpening up some old skills and honing some other new ones.

My writer’s palette is glowing with new colors that will surely find their way onto other canvas in due time.

Write On Wednesday: Creative Confabulation

When my son was in elementary school, he developed a fascinating creative friendship with another little boy in his class. The two of them spent hours together creating a multi-layered cartoon series based on the Star Trek TV show, but replacing all the characters with cartoon animals. (Kirk was a kangaroo and Spock was a spaniel.) Their version was called Car Trek, and it included written stories, books and books of cartoon panels, as well as audio and video recordings.

It was serious business for these two 8 and 9 year olds - more important to them than almost anything else (including school work, of course). They talked on the phone every night, plotting and planning the next episode. They had long discussions about the proper shade of Prismacolor pencil, and their biggest disagreement once occurred over whether to use Gray Number 2 or 3 for the Enterprise. (If my son reads this, he’ll probably correct me on the color numbers because I’m sure he remembers them 25 years later.)

The point is, they learned early on the benefits of creative collaboration, and in the process produced literally hundreds of drawing, stories, and recordings. 

Over the years of my writing online, I’ve made a lot of marvelous and inspiring friends - other writers, poets, photographers, and artists. We’ve communicated back and forth on our blogs, on social media, in e-mail exchanges, and once or twice on the telephone. 

Mostly though, these creative friendships are conducted from afar.  For a while now, I’ve been craving a creative friend in “real time,” the kind you can meet for coffee every so often to share ideas and cheer each other on. Although I have a lot of friends who are creative, we don’t connect on quite the same plane. We’ve met and forged our friendship over different areas - church or music groups or volunteer activities -  and it seems that’s where they’re destined to stay. 

Recently though, I made contact with a professional creative who is practically in my backyard. Christa is an astounding musician, who performs professionally throughout our area. She lives in the same town I do, and is a full time artist/entrepreneur, who makes her living through music. She has been so supportive of Life In General, and we decided to meet and see how we might help bolster each other in our respective creative pursuits. 

We met last week for our first creative confabulation, and it was fabulous. It was energizing and inspiring to meet someone like Christa, who is doing the hard work necessary to make a living pursuing her passion. It reminded me again how relatively easy I have it in comparison, but inspired me to work all the harder for that very reason.

lthough we’re not in exactly the same creative fields, I think our collaboration will be mutually beneficial anyway. Here’s why:

1. Mutual accountability: During our meeting, we brainstormed some things we each could do to promote our latest ventures - a CD for her, and Life In General for me. Then we each came up with a list of things to do before our next meeting. Having that accountability factor, knowing we’ll meet again and have to “report in” is a great motivator, especially for a couple of perfectionists like we are. 

2. Creative Energy: There’s something about verbalizing ideas that incites a different sort of creative thinking. As we talked, ideas seemed to appear in the classic light bulb manner. “What about creating a book club package for Life In General?” Christa suggested when I mentioned I’d been invited to a couple of local book clubs who were reading the book. “You could offer a complete package including copies of the book to local libraries, and I bet they’d love to feature a local author!” Ambitious and creative ideas come from brainstorming out loud.

3. Mutual Support: It’s wonderful to have the moral support that comes from someone who understands the creative process. But as we talked we realized there were concrete ways we could support each other as well. Writing reviews for each other’s books and CD’s, linking to each other in our social media accounts, being a source of connection in the real world as well as in our individual creative sphere.

“Every man works better when he has companions working in the same line, and yielding to the stimulus of suggestion, comparison, emulation.” Henry James praised the power of group activity long ago, and certainly some of the most creative work has been born out of artists circles like the Impressionist painters, the Bloomsbury group of writers. Although I’ve always considered myself as someone who works better alone, I’m seeing a great benefit to spending real time with someone who provides the stimulation of “suggestion, comparison, and emulation” - Creative Confabulation.

Write On Wednesday: Going Deep

“The risk of writing is an internal risk. You brave the depths of your being and then bring it up for commentary by the world. Not the work of wimps.”  Laraine Herring, Writing Begins With the Breath

A friend who read Life In General had this to say: “I loved your book, Becca, but there were times when I wanted more of the story, times I felt like I wanted you to expand it into even more directions, emotionally and literally.” 

At first I was tempted to defend the short essays which fill the book, reminding her they were all originally blog posts that are, by nature, small slices of life and not meant to be long-form essays. 

But I didn’t. 

Because deep down, I know she’s right.

I recognize it myself - I come to a certain place in the writing, a crossroads in effect, when I could either stop traveling or continue on into the unknown. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I stop dead in my tracks. It’s visceral sensation, a need to jump up and hurry away from the keyboard, put down the pen and close the notebook. 

It’s fear, plain and simple. 

As Laraine Herring says, “the risk of writing is internal. You can’t really prepare yourself for what’s in there, because you don’t know all of what’s in there.” Writing unearths ideas and emotions and opinions we aren’t always aware of. Sometimes these are uncomfortable. Sometimes they are empowering.

They are often revelatory. They are always surprising.

 “When I coach students through essay writing,” says Anna Qundlen, in Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, “I invariably give the same direction: go deeper, go deeper. In each iteration, reveal more, of who you truly are, of what you really think.” It’s like opening a series of beautiful nested boxes. Each one contains something unexpected. Each one takes you a little step deeper into the inner earth of your soul. As you lift the lid, you run the risk of exposing something you aren’t quite sure how to handle.

So yes, “going deep” into the psyche is scary, and I’ve never pretended toward intrepidity. But I believe another factor in my tendency to stop short is a fear of inadequacy: not only as a writer, but also as a thinker. I’m not sure I possess the kind of analytical mindset required to process complex issues in writing. I shy away from the kind of deep thought necessary to plumb the furthest depths of an emotion or an issue, and stay on the surface where things are simpler. 

Where will I find the courage and the ingenuity to take my writing and my thinking to this next level? 

Two words: Focus and Stillness.

“There is so little time for stillness in the everyday world,” I wrote in Life In General. “We itch to fill every second with stimulation, entertainment or productivity, and modern technology gives us a million opportunities to do just that."

A friend and I were talking about the concept of children and boredom. She said that on the rare occasions her son complained of boredom, she would remind him how lucky he was. “Now you have an opportunity to really choose what you’d like to do, even if it’s just sitting down and watching people go by.” 

It’s the quality of quiet contemplation that I lack: the ability to slow down, observe, wonder. To think about what I’ve read or listened to, heard or seen. And it isn’t as if I don’t have time - my time is mostly my own these days and the hours in front of me are often spacious (at least in comparison to many people I know). It’s mostly that I feel the siren call of busyness, the urge to do something “productive,” one that is provocative and pervasive in my life, as I imagine it is in yours.

Again, it’s like opening the nested boxes, looking at the deeper meaning of each level of experience. 

That sounds kind of intense, does’t it? 

I’ve been re-reading Marilynne Robinson’s novels Gilead and Home, preparatory to reading her latest, Lila. These three novels are nested beautifully together, each one delving deep into the experiences of two families in a small Iowa town in the 1950’s at a particular slice of time. Robinson is a writer who forces her reader to slow down and focus. Her writing is stately and diligent. It unfolds ideas about grace and faith and fealty in powerful language that begs re-reading. I cannot imagine a woman who writes this way as anything other than one who moves slowly and thoughtfully through the world, leaving little trace of herself on the modern thoroughfares of social media or public acclaim. Yet she is fearless about exploring the hunger and thirst of the soul. She ponders questions that pertain to us all: where do we find the grace to forgive ourselves or those who have disappointed us? how does faith matter in our relationships with family and friends? what constitutes a life well lived? 

She is one who goes deep, and perhaps can begin to teach me how it’s done. Reading these books, reading them slowly as this author mandates by her writing style, is such a pleasure, especially on these cold and snowy winter days that seem perfect for slowing down and savoring the stillness outside my windows. 

As I think about the new writing I want to do this year, I know I must move forward to that next level my friend urged me toward. I’ll have to “brave the depths of my being” to explore a larger panorama of my life, seek more details from my memories, and unearth some of those emotions that, until now, I’ve left by the side of the road. 

How about you? Do you eagerly open the nested boxes containing your deepest thoughts and fears? Or do you leave them closed tightly by the side of the road?

Write On Wednesday: What’s Next?

Long ago on another blog far away, I held a weekly writer’s roundtable every Wednesday. It was anchored by a short essay, and I invited writers to weigh in on the topic of the day. Connections were created around this table. It was where I first met Andi Cumbo Floyd, Jeanie Croope, Kerstin Martin - women with whom I continue to draw inspiration for creative work (not just writing). 

Since Life In General was published, I’ve been thinking about what’s next for me in this writing practice which I depend upon, and I thought it might be fun to explore that in a new series of Write on Wednesday posts. For the past two years my writing goals were focused on putting Life In General together. It was a satisfying process and a superb learning experience. Publishing it put a cap on eight years worth of writing and tied it up nice and neatly.  

But Life Goes On. That’s the theme that seems to be emerging for my online writing, the essays I write here on this blog. How do I use what I’ve learned in this decade of my 50’s and go forward with it into my 60’s? You know those guiding principles I talk about in the Afterword of Life In General? How are they working out for me as life moves forward? How will they help me handle the inevitable changes yet to come? 

Beyond that, though, I feel an urgency to try something new, to start from scratch on writing something that might turn into another book. I’ve hinted at it here from time to time, I’ve made a few false starts and even have part of a “shitty rough draft.” It’s a topic that fascinates me, that makes me ponder family legacy and how it affects our personalities and the choices we make for our own lives. It’s also about roads not taken, and how our lives are steered by what we don’t do as much as what we do.

But there is much work ahead, and much to think about. I’m reading a lot right now, reading even more memoirs than I usually do (which is saying a lot). But I’m reading them with an eye to form and structure and voice, rather than immersing myself solely in the story. I’m studying books about writing memoir, starting with my friend Beth Kephart’s challenging text Handling the Truth. And it is challenging me - to think and re-think every early assumption I made about this project, with an eye on the “universal question” within which to frame it.

But it’s all good. I’m not in a hurry. 

It feels like a hike in the wilderness on a cool spring day. A fresh breeze tingles on my skin, clouds scuttle across the blue sky above, my feet crackle and crunch on the forest path, one step after the next, my gait steady but unhurried. The day is long, there is plenty of sunlight, and much to see and hear. I’m simply enjoying the walk. 

That’s what’s next for me.

Writer and artist friends: What’s next for you? 

On Stewardship

Be a good steward to your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.  

Poet Jane Kenyon intended these words as instructions for writers, a set of inviolable regulations to both promote and protect the creative thought process and the work ethic. Like most people who want to write - or pursue any kind of artistic lifestyle - I yearn for a set of rules to follow. I want someone to lay it out point blank, someone to give me a roadmap. Just do this and thus and so, and at the end you’ll have the masterpiece you want so badly. I want the protocol like the doctor in the emergency room, or the chemist in the laboratory. I want the boilerplate an attorney might use, or the set of formulas an engineer would employ.

In the sense that there are any such things for a creative person, I suppose Jane Kenyon’s principles come as close as anything to fulfilling that role. Protect your time. Have good sentences in your ears. Work regular hours.  Be a good steward to your gifts.

Like anything worth doing, being a good steward to your gifts takes a conscious effort. It starts when I stop scheduling appointments in the morning so I can have that hour or two to work. It continues when I disable the internet (the 21st century version of taking the phone off the hook) and bring both dogs upstairs to my office so they aren’t barking at every other Fido, Max, or Maddie walking by. It’s fed by the inspiration in a select group of books on my desktop, the words of my “teachers” - Dani Shapiro, Katrina Kenison, Anne Lamott, Karen Maezen Miller - who stand before me with gentle encouragement and well-wishes.

Most often the things that derail me from good stewardship are the demands of ordinary life. The grocery shopping and doctor’s appointments, the dog whose hair needs trimming, the laundry that overflows the basket in my closet. These tasks are my job. They don’t pay the bills, but they keep our lives humming smoothly along, which is important for me.  Truth? I am obsessive-compulsive enough that I need that full pantry, clear calendar, and empty laundry basket in order to focus my attention on anything else - like writing.

Or at least I think I do.

Good stewardship, the kind Kenyon talks about, must start with the belief that this writing thing is worth all the effort. And there is the most difficult concept of all. The belief that what I do matters, that the words I try to weave into a coherent whole can make something meaningful. That even if I’m the only person who feels excited about what I put on the page, it’s still necessary to spend the time putting it there.

What I need more than anything is an unwavering conviction in the value of my gift. Only then can I make the dedicated and concerted effort necessary to protect it, nurture it, fulfill it by following Kenyon’s prescriptions. And if I look at her precepts even more closely, I see that they fulfill most of my personal requirements for a good life, irrespective of writing at all.  They are the backbone of a calm and collected way of being that is among my highest aspirations. Feed your inner life. Read good books. Walk. 

Anne Lamott writes about this kind of life in the final pages of Bird by Bird. “This life of reading, writing, corresponding...is nearly ideal. It is spiritually invigorating. It is intellectually quickening. One can find in writing a perfect focus for life. It offers challenge and delight and agony and commitment. We see our work as a vocation, with the potential to be as rich and enlivening as the priesthood."

“In this dark and wounded society,” she concludes, “writing can give you the pleasures of a woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your nest and say, ‘This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong.’"

So here I am, in my quiet room at the top of the stairs, my notebook on my lap, my dogs napping peacefully beside me, surrounded by words of my own making and those of writers I admire.

This is my niche. This is where I live now. This is where I belong.

This is my gift.