Fill the Well, Stock the Pond

I find I can't just sit and write. I have to fill up the well, stock the pond. So I invest in myself by keeping my skills sharp and my knowledge deep, becoming a learning machine, reading everything I can, and approaching writing as a craft that will never be mastered. One day, you might figure out how to write pitch and the next how to write a sentence that moves people to tears and the following day be able to write just the right words to say what needs to be said, but putting it altogether, now that is the hard thing. You build and build, but sometimes forget. A writing journal could help.

What Woolf Said About Style

Woolf: sytle is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm.  Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.

 

 

Creating the Life We Want

For many years, I was unhappy, stressed out, closed off to possibility. By the time I was thirty, I wasn’t sleeping at night and I was angry with my husband. Not until a friend gave me Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way and I started the journey toward giving myself permission to create the life I wanted, was I able to play a piano again (I bought myself a piano for my 30^th birthday), explore painting and drawing once more, and get back to writing. The first thing I had to do was give myself permission to take time for myself, because I was worth it. My life isn’t perfect today, but I have no problem with taking my artist on a date with a walk in the Metroparks or browsing the galleries of Tremont. I have a lot more passion for my life than I had when I was younger. We can create the lives we want:
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Wordworthian Openness

 “There is ecstasy in paying attention,” says Anne Lamott. She recommends it because you can achieve a Wordsworthian openness to the world with God at the helm. If you go with it, in writing, the writing’s fun. Anne suggests that “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.” Later, you can edit it, pull it together in a way that makes sense, mold it into something someone else can read and appreciate, but first, have fun, let the words that come from the God within take over, the words tumble out, unbidden and unedited. Like I’m doing now—is this first draft shitty, or is it saying what I need to say? Oh, I meandered a bit like Virginia Woolf, but that’s what I do, and I’m paying attention, in an ecstasy that’s very akin to what I feel when I’m on a good walk.

Space to Remember Who I Am

I think now and again about how Virginia Woolf said a woman who wants to write needs an income of her own and her own space in which to practice her craft. Her long essay A Room of One’s Own is a phenomenal read for where it takes us in women’s suffering, even in the 21^st century. All writers need to take care of the writer’s soul with journaling, walking, yoga, meditation, anything that helps your mind wander, free itself of junk, and settle into telling a story. You need space, a place where when you sit down and open your laptop, your mind quiets and focuses on writing. You also need a time when you can be alone, not so much for social media and correspondence, but for the real writing to take place, and this might mean blocking out a Saturday afternoon when you’d rather be at a matinee. Once I started making money from my writing, I got myself a studio with a desk, a nice comfortable chair, sunny walls, and lots of mementos from my life to remind me who I am. I need it for quiet, but I also need to remember who I am.

 

My Writing Group is Skyline Writers

Writing groups are good for telling you where you wandered off the path, when you are unclear, and which characters are weak.  But grammar and punctuation should be second-nature.  If they’re not, you’re in trouble. Nothing bothers an editor more than someone who seems to have no command of the language.  It’s a red flag that the writer is not a real writer but a wannabe writer. And I see that all the time—writing that could be really, really good, because it comes from the soul, and then the writer falls down with the grammar and punctuation and sentence structure. The kernel of truth is lost in the mess of it. We writer-educated people pay homage to Strunk and White’s Elements of Style by keeping it close by, even though, if we read a lot, we instinctually know how to do it.  

Zinsser on Writing

William Zinsser:  the fundamental rule is: be yourself . . . No rule, however, is harder to follow.  It requires the writer to do two things which by his metabolism are impossible. He must relax and he must have confidence.

Another Historical Novel by Brooks

I read Caleb’s Crossing in a weekend.  There’s something to be said for a cold Winter weekend when no deadlines loom and there’s nothing on the calendar, to sit and read, even all night. That’s how I read Geraldine Brooks’ book. That long span of reading only made the good book even better. I’ve always admired the way Brooks imagines a life, a tale, a time in history, and weaves a story around it. This story takes place on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1660s, when the island was a place where people went to live life the way they wanted to leave it. I liked the story of the Native American who made it into Harvard, the descriptions of the way of life in Cambridge and the island, the interaction between the indigenous people and the European settlers and all the philosophical thought on that subject, as well as the Biblical quotes about how to live life best. I loved the quotes about God and his plan: “Yet all knowledge comes from God, who creates and governs all things. You will find many excellent divine moral truths in the works we will study together in this place—in Plato, in Plutarch and in Seneca . . . we study no art for its own sake but to help us restore our connection with the divine mind.” I’ve always believed that. The main character was Bethia, raised to be a mother and wife, but thriving on stolen knowledge, whose life takes unexpected turns. In the end, she writes “I am not a hero. Life has not required it of me. But neither will I go to my grave a coward, silent about what I did, and what it cost. So, let these last pages be my death song—even if at the end it is no paean, but as it must be: a dissonant and tragical lament.”

More on Writing

On writing, I tell people that if you have something inside you that is real, it is probably a universal truth and worth telling to other people. We have to trust our inner voice, and be true to that voice. You get that from writing, writing, writing, in journals, in blogs, in private family writings. That type of writing allows you to just be yourself, say what you need to say, and not worry about that nagging internal editor. Writing is spiritual in that it comes from somewhere inside and outside ones’ self, and it’s an amazing thing, but you don’t do it alone--you may think you do, but when you’re writing and the words come out perfectly, there’s no way it’s just you talking. What does Julia Cameron, the passionate believer in the God-connection in writing?  She says, “At its base, for me, love is what writing is about.  As an act of love, it deserves our protection and our deepest respect.  Writing is an act of connection, but it connects the writer first to the Self and second to the world.”

 

Don't Start Too Late

To live as if we will die soon, gives us a chance to choose how we spend our time wisely. I read it’s only too late if You Don’t Start Now by Barbara Sher in preparation for my February retreat. Many of us reach middle life and realize all of a sudden that we’re not immortal. When we figure it out, we start to live like we don’t have enough time to get it all done, and we’re motivated to live our lives to suit who we really are. We grow up, as Bob Dylan sang, “But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” In middle age, Sher says. “you stop being driven by instinct and wake up to a different level of consciousness—complex, subtle, and intense, loaded with revelation and insight.” I want to know why people don’t tell us about how we outgrow wanting to be a star and take up gardening and all kinds of other wonderful endeavors because we fall in love with life and start to live authentically. What we all crave, as much as we crave being close to God, is to be free to live our lives. “The freedom that counts is the freedom to live your life with your heart and mind and emotions wide open.” That will make you young again.

Trying Not to be Perfect

 “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.” That’s a quote from Anne Lamott, who was drinking heavily by the time she was sixteen and found she couldn’t write when she was thirty. Fortunately, she stopped drinking. But she’s right; we spend too much energy trying to be perfect. We want a perfect life, a string of perfect days, and I think we can have that, if we change our attitude. My perfect day is always without hardship and filled with people and things I love. I write, walk, practice yoga, lunch with a friend, write some more, have dinner with my family and friends, and fall asleep with a good book. It occurred to me in an Artist’s Way study group that we can create these perfect days around the lives we have, and if we string them together, one day at a time, we birth a creative life. I decided to have 30 perfect days and write about them. What if we find our perfect day as we savor, reflect, and throw our souls into having a day that’s memorable and satisfying and worthwhile? Know what I found out? There’s no such thing as a perfect day, but we can have an excellent day, a day in which our problems are just passing nuisances and we’re moving on to something better. Still wondering if my book 30 Perfect Days is worth publishing.

Wisdom from Vonnegut

Vonnegut: Your own winning literary style must begin with interesting ideas in your head. Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.