Everybody Write!

The other morning, as I was sitting with notebook blithely writing away at my morning pages, I had a funny little frisson of thought~you know, those strange notions that seem to pop into your head occasionlly, like a waking dream. For just a second, I had the feeling that everyone in my neighborhood, everyone in the world, actually, was writing too. With a quick mental shake of the head, I came to my senses. How ridiculous is that? But then, a wave of sadness came over me, sadness for everyone I know that doesn't write, because they are missing so much. Using words to express our needs, our thoughts, our emotions, is basic to life, and something every child is taught from the earliest of ages. Unlike playing a musical instrument, or painting, or dancing, learning command of our languge through speech and the written word is deemed one of life's most necessary skills. Isn't it exciting to watch children master the use of words, to figure out that the use of words makes things happen? Who hasn't cherished a child's scribbled notes and poems, written with such excitement and freedom, their first forays into the world of written expression?

Back in 1938, when she wrote If You Want To Write, author Brenda Ueland insisted that "everybody is talented, everybody who is human has something to express." We let that creative engergy, that drive to express oursleves get "drummed out of our lives by dry obligation, and because we don't respect it in ourselves and keep it alive by using it." Fast forward 60 years, and Julia Cameron publishes Right to Write, in which she advises us to "write because it's human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It brings clarity and passion to the art of living. It is good for the soul. It connects us to our insights, and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance." I don't believe writing is just for the "chosen few," but that everyone comes hard wired with this need to express themselves with the written word. The proliferation of blogging as a means of personal expression is testimony to that.

In the high school where I worked, we had a period of time each day known as "Silent Reading." It happened about 10:30 a.m., right after morning announcements. Just after we heard results of the volleyball game, meeting time for National Honor Society, and were reminded to wear red and black for spirit day, the announcer says, "Now it's time for Silent Reading." The entire student body -all 2100 of them- including teachers, stops class and reads for 20 minutes.

I love being there when that happens. I love the idea of everybody stopping in their tracks just to read, to enter into someone else's world for a while. Wouldn't it be fabulous if the whole world took time every day to do that? And, wouldn't it be even more fabulous if the the world took 20 minutes every day to write, to enter into our own worlds a little deeper, express our vision of life and ourselves on the page. Wouldn't we all become more mindful of the beauty that surrounds us, the people that intersect with our lives, and more keely attuned to our own thoughts and dreams? Those are just some of the ways my writing experience has enriched my life.

So, how about you?  Do you make time to write everyday?  Don't you think everybody should?   

Feelin' Groovy

Slow down, you move too fast

Got to make the mornin' last

Just kickin' down the cobblestones

Lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy...

Earlier tonight I was tearing around the kitchen in my usual mad dash to get dinner - putting dishes away, feeding the dogs, preparing a marinade for the salmon, cleaning and chopping some carrots.  I was stymied by the lid on the Dijon mustard - despite my best efforts, I could not budge it. 

My husband, hearing the sound of my aggravated mutterings, got up from his "desk" at the dining room table, gently relieved me of the jar and popped the lid on the first try.

"If you'd just slow down a little bit things would work out better," he advised me.

I know he's right - and he certainly practices what he preaches, for he is a man who moves very slowly and deliberately through life.  His attention to detail is legend, and when he finally finishes a project it is perfect to every nuance.

Last week as we talked about writing in detail, several of you mentioned the necessity of "slowing down" in order to be aware and attuned to the details that make our writing come alive.  Brenda Ueland, one of my favorite "writers on writing," calls it "moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering."  It is only through taking time to let the mind and spirit wander free that our imagination goes to work generating and gestating ideas.  Because it's not enough to just get an idea, is it?  The idea has to develop and grow, and actually turn into something that words can express.

How hard is it in your busy day to slow down?  We definitely "move too fast," don't we?  I can't remember a time in my life when I've even been in more of a hurry than I am these days.  Perhaps it's because there is genuinely more to do, or perhaps it's because I'm getting older and feeling the pull of life's time clock.  Whatever the reason,  I believe the pace of life is much too harried for most of us.  And it's a lifestyle that is not conducive to creativity.

"Our idea that we must be energetic and active is all wrong," Ueland continues.  "Presently your soul gets frightfully sterile and dry because you are so quick, snappy and efficient about doing one thing after another that you have not time for your own ideas to come in and develop and gently shine."  (If You Want To Write)

Interestingly enough, Ueland wrote those words in 1938.  So it isn't just a 21st century dilemma after all! 

The lyrics of Paul Simon's song have always made me smile, ever since I first heard them back in 1968 (or thereabouts). I think they perfectly describe the concept of "moodling"...tripping down a cobblestone road, looking for fun on an endless sunny morning...what could be more "groovy?" 

And what better way to let the imagination rejuvenate, so it can fill with wonderul ideas.

How about you?  Do you find yourself moving too fast through life?  What's your favorite way to moodle and make the mornin' last?   How does slowing down affect your creativity?

Write What You Love

 "If there's a book that you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."  

Toni Morrison               

At one time or another, every writer has been advised to "write what you know."  That's valid advice- to a degree.  Sometimes, it's possible to know too much about our subject, and our writing  becomes  imbued with a sense of boredom or didacticism rather than brimming with the excitement of discovery. 

I think writing should be a journey for the writer as well as for the reader, and the writer who carefully mines their passions and interests for subject matter will do well to look to those areas that are not only fascinating, but somewhat mysterious.

I often write about family relationships because I'm interested in the dynamics that exist in families, between siblings, parents and children, and across generations.  Besides that, I love reading about families and the way they handle the ups and downs in their lives.  In both novels I've written for NaNoWriMo, I've explored different aspects of family relationships and the legacies they leave.   During my writing I've come to some totally unexpected discoveries about my self and my family, discoveries that have led the story into unplanned directions.  The novel I'm thinking about for this year once again pursues this theme, concentrated on the relationship between husband and wife and the way it changes over time.

Write about what you'd like your life to be - have your characters living the dream life you've always wanted, and I can almost guarantee these characters will be exciting and real.  Write essays about something you've always wanted to explore - the Mediterranean, or Asian culture, or gourmet cooking.  Delving into your passions on paper will bring them to life in entirely new ways.

How about you?   Is there a book you'd love to read that hasn't been written?  What do you love reading about, and how could you write about it?  What fascinates you that could become the subject for your next story, essay, poem, or blog post?

Write On Wednesday "Extra Credit" Prompt:  Make a list of 10 things you're interested in learning more about...choose one and write about it in a way that inpsires a reader to want to know more about it as well. 

Postscript:  A couple of weeks past, we talked about The Power of Place in our writing.  Take a look at this video-post from writer Beth Kephart, as she talks about the power of place in her latest young adult novel.

In a Writer's State of Mind

Even though my week has been topsy turvy, filled to the brim with family obligations, car repairs, the beginning of fall musical activities, and of course, regular work responsibilities, I've felt the urge to write quite often during the middle of these hectic days.  You know what I mean - ideas popping into your head unbidden, like gifts you can't wait to open, tickling your brain and leaving your fingers itching to pick up a pencil.  Yet even when you get in the mood to write, circumstances aren't always conducive to actually writing.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could stop everything when the ideas start coming, and write until we're exhausted?  Sadly, that usually isn't the case, and writing all too often goes on the back burner of life.  So we must learn how to rekindle that urge to write, get ourselves mentally and emotionally back into the place where the imagination is free to roam.

The writer's state of mind, says Jack Heffron, is a state of "alert passivity, a state of mind that allows us to trust our instincts and frees us to take risks."  (The Writer's Idea Book)   The writing state of mind occurs when our brains are alert, yet not aggressively pursuing a train of thought.  The phrase my yoga instructor uses is "willful determination without putting pressure on yourself to be perfect." 

Have you ever noticed that your best ideas usually come when you're doing something completely unrelated to writing?  For me, it's usually when I'm driving to work in the morning...my brain is fresh, I'm anticipating the tasks ahead of me, and then it suddenly occurs to me that the character in my story should already be having an affair when the story starts, or that I could write an interesting essay about that one old home still standing amidst all the new office buildings along Haggerty road. 

In her book Becoming A Writer, Dorothea Brande talks about "the mysterious faculty," which produces "the flashes of insight, the penetrating intuitions, the imagination which combines and transmutes ordinary experience into the illusion of higher reality."  Each person has their own "individual endowment of genius," she says.  We must only learn to "release" it.   Often, she advises, it is some totally unrelated activity - walking, driving, cutting grass or scrubbing floors - that puts the writer into a "state of hypnosis" where the unconscious thoughts are allowed to play.

The writing state of mind also occurs when you relax your brain and let your instincts take over.  One of the greatest lessons I learned as a performing musician was to let my instincts take over when I stepped on stage - to stop concentrating all my attention on each note and passage, to relax and let all the practice and preparation do the work for me.  As writers, we prepare for our writing "performances" by reading good literature, studying the way other writers work, and mostly by keeping our writer's mind open to life experiences and the world around us, which will bring us all the ideas we could ever need.

There is undoubtedly a lot of hard work involved in good writing.  But I think there's also something a bit mystical about the writing state of mind.  Perhaps it's similar to what athletes call "the zone"...that place in your mind and body when you become one with the activity, when nothing else in the world matters - not hunger or pain, not ringing telephones or barking dogs -except the work in front of you.  For writers, it's the point where you've tapped into that state of mind where the ideas flow freely from the deepest well of your imagination, and your fingers can barely keep pace. 

How about you?  What's your writing state of mind these days?  How do you access that "mysterious faculty" where insight and imagination are nurtured?   How do your instincts about your writing ability help you?  What's your experience of being in "the writing zone"?

Practice Time

My best friend Lisa and I started taking piano lessons when we were about six years old.  We had the same teacher, and were quite competitive (well, at least she  was).  I recall Lisa was never able to come out and play between 6:00 and 6:30 because it was her set time to practice piano.  There was a wind up kitchen timer always sitting on top of her piano, and her mother would set the timer for 30 minutes, during which Lisa was to practice her Hanon and scales, do the workbook exercises we were set each week, and then practice her pieces. I have to confess, my practice techniqe was much more haphazard.  I would sit down for 15 or 20 minutes in the morning before school, and usually play for a while as a way of relaxing after I came home.  I often did the workbook pages in the car on the way to my lesson.  As for Hanon and scales - well, let's just say I didn't get many gold stars on those pages in my lesson book.  My parents never forced me to practice, or chided me if I didn't.  I loved playing, and since I seemed to be at the piano for a good portion of every day, they were never too careful about exactly what I was doing. 

A few weeks ago, we talked about our writing practice in terms of an activity we held in high esteem in our lives, approaching it almost as a spiritual, ritualistic event.  This week, with the beginning of a new school year upon us, I'm thinking of writing practice in a bit more, well, practical  sense.  Here's how Natalie Goldberg describes it:

This is the practice shool of writing.  Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.  Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway.  You practice whether you want to or not.  You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run.  It'll never happen, especially if you're out of shape and avoiding it.  But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance.  You just do it.  And in the middle of the run, you love it.  When you come to the end, you never want it to stop.

That's how writing is, too.  Once you're deep into it, you wonder what took you so long to finally settle down at the desk.  Through practice you actually do get better.  You learn to trust your deep self more and not give in to your voice that wants to avoid writing.  It is odd that we never question the feasibilty of a footballe team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

I have a long standing writing practice, and I admit it's a bit like my piano practice.  I write every day, with a cheap, ball point pen, in a brightly colored spiral notebook, three pages of anything.  Sometimes it's stream of consciousness garbage, sometimes it's a list of everything I'm worried about, or happy about, or thinking about.  More often than not, it starts out as one thing and becomes something else - today, what began as a simple memory about a conversation I overheard as a child turned into five pages about my neighborhood. 

My favorite time for writing practice is first thing in the morning, after one cup of coffee and about 15 minutes of reading.  Often, something in my reading will ignite an idea for writing -this morning, it was a passage in Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs that got me started. 

I don't hold myself to any time limit (no kitchen timers for me!), but I usually find myself spending about 20 or 30 minutes on these pages.  I write loosely, and messily, on one side of the page.  This writing is for me, and it doesn't matter whether it's grammatically correct.  When I'm really "on," the pen can barely keep up with my racing thoughts - sometimes, I feel as if my brain is running away with me, like flying down a steep hill on my bike.

"This writing practice is a warm-up for anything else you might want to write," Goldberg continues.  "It is the bottom line, the most primitive, essential beginning of writing."  Through the daily writing, we learn to listen to our own voice and trust it, we learn to free our thoughts and then corral them into words, to improvise like a jazz musician at the keyboard, experimenting with the tools of the trade. 

So this week, I'm channeling my friend Lisa's mother - if you don't regularly practice writing, challenge yourself to do so.  Get yourself some brightly colored spiral notebooks (they're on sale everywhere just now!) and a package of pens.  Find a time each day when you can sit down for a few minutes and just write.  No need to pressure yourself - you'll know when you've said all that need to be said. 

By the way, lest you're wondering how our musical career's ended up - my friend Lisa stopped lessons in 10th grade, and hasn't played since.  Me, on the other hand - well, I've been playing the piano regularly for the last 42 years, working as an accompanist, a solist, and just playing for the pure love of music.

How about you? Do you have a writing practice?  What's it like?  How has it helped you become a better writer?  If you're thinking about starting a writing practice, how do you envision it?  What would work for you?

Occasionally, Write On Wednesday  will offer a writing activity to use in your writing practice notebook, or as an idea to blog about.  Here's one to start you off...

Writing Practice Idea: Write about a time in your life when you were learning a new activity - a musical instrument, a sport, a language - and how you went about practicing it.