You Can't Live There

I’m pretty certain you cannot live in the same place you write. Now, I don’t mean you cannot physically live in the house/ office/ coffee shop/ park bench, etc where you write, but that you cannot stay there if you have to also be, in your other time, a functioning human being.  If you go grocery shopping in the same 'space' you write, you will a difficult and touchy customer.

Writing requires some dropping down into that other place, the place that is messy and chaotic and full of feelings and observations and pain and humor and mud and desert and all that stuff that we cannot bring to the grocery store.

We probably shouldn’t bring it to the dinner table either and give more credence to the classic picture of the brooding alcoholic unwashed cranky writer who is a lousy companion.

So if you have other responsibilities in life and have to switch between several roles you have to learn how to drop down, stay long enough to come up with a story, a character, a sentence even, and then emerge from that place, like Persephone out of Hades, and interact like a normal human being.

I need quiet to write--- I prefer to have the house to myself and not have to chatter or check in with the other people---- but this is not always possible. If I want to produce something I have to have time to submerge into that writing space and root around in the dark for memories or characters or bits of conversation that can lead to a story. Sometimes I have to manage that when I don't have the house to myself, but I find that needs the cooperation of an understanding family who can tell by my expression that I am elsewhere and not available for chatter.

Naturally there are exceptional writers, such as Jane Austen, who managed to produce classic literature while balancing a writing box on her lap and exchanging witticisms with her companions.  But I am not Jane Austen.  And from what I gather, very few can manage that wonderful feat.

I imagine writers like Jane Austen have an ability to be in two places at once, while sitting in the parlor.  She must have been able to navigate between her writing self and her social self.  What a gift.  A rare gift, I should say.

But I'm pretty sure that if I was always in writer mode I'd turn into a curmudgeon and miss out on the lighter side of life. Not to mention getting groceries in for dinner.

Little Bo-Peep

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them. Leave them alone and they'll come home Wagging their "tales" behind them.

I sit at my desk almost every day waiting for words to come.  I probably should be doing something useful like dusting or cleaning the kitchen.  But, I always promised myself that when my kids were grown I'd take all that energy I thought I had stored away for years and churn out story after wonderful story.

Now, I have not been totally negligent in turning out stories.  I've turned out some that I quite like and others have shared my opinion by publishing them. Sometimes words come to me.  Sometimes I wake up from a dream with an opening line.  Sometimes I am in the middle of doing something useful, like dishes or laundry and I receive a word, a line, a beginning.

But, way too often I try to court words and story ideas and nothing sparks. Maybe I'm scaring them away by searching too hard.

I court words in a few ways:  I play solitaire.  Yep, dopey, minimally engaging solitaire.  Sometimes it works, I think, because it makes my brain turn on just a bit to get the gears working  thus allowing words that are streaming in my mind a chance to get together and form a sentence, a picture, a scene.

Recently I have added nursery rhymes to my method of distracting my "monkey mind" ( thank you Natalie Goldberg) long enough to let the undercurrents gain a little strength.

Bo-Peep was going through my mind this morning and I realized that some of my most ancient memories are of sitting with a book opened on my lap as a small child, reading the classics.  The classics of children's lit, that is. Nursery rhymes are a lot like the Book of Proverbs for the pre-K set.

I think Bo-Peep showed up to tell me to let go, stop searching so anxiously.  Leave them alone, and they'll come home, wagging their "tales" behind them..

Boy, I hope those nursery rhymes have as much wisdom as they're supposed to.

To Live, To Write, That is the Question

John is in the kitchen teaching the Tango to one of his friends.  She brought a pair of high heels, because everyone knows a woman needs heels to tango.  A twirling skirt would be helpful too, but this is her first lesson. Our house has resembled a dormitory or a frat house this past week.  My oldest son and his band from Boston are in town for the SouthBySouthWest music festival in Austin. My middle son came in for the weekend, so we had all of our own sons, plus several honorary ones, these past few days.

Being an (almost) empty-nester, I welcome the life, the creativity, the high spirits, and yes, even the noise.

This situation hasn't left me a lot of time to write, but I am of the school of thought that if you don't take the time to live what have you got to write about?

I do know of some purists who go and lock themselves away in a cabin in order to produce their great literary opus, but a very long time ago I made the decision (and life in all it's wonderful messiness led me to this decision) that writing is a reflection on life, not a substitute for life.

Creating is an act of will, as much as it is a function of temperament and talent.  My husband and children all devote a great deal of time and energy to their various pursuits like music, art, photography, writing, and, naturally actually living their lives.  They continue to be my best teachers and have provided the fodder for much of what I have written.

One of these days I'll put on a pair of high heels and a twirly skirt and ask my son to teach me how to tango.  Then, after that marinates a bit, I might write about it.

Grain of Wheat

It's noteworthy that much of the 'self-help' and 'self-improvement' advice sounds an awful lot like phrases taken right out of scripture.  A wide variety of scripture, I might add. I read a lovely essay about a woman who discovered that the child she was carrying tested positive for Down's.  Some advisors advised her to end the pregnancy.  She did not.  The essay was not about 'choice'; it was about letting go of her expectations of what her life should be and allowing life to happen, with all its twists and turns and surprises. She quoted a Buddhist phrase at the beginning of her essay which sounded so much like words from the New Testament reminding us that a grain of wheat must die in order to become more fully itself.  Let go of your little mind and let life surprise you.

What has this to do with writing?  Well, quite a bit actually.

I'm currently working on a series of short stories that I have culled from the novel  I had poured much work and struggle into. I have been banging my brain around the structure of the novel for several months, perhaps even a few years. Recently I decided to let go of the novel format and take the characters, scenes, conflicts and settings that I had invested in and re-shape chapters into work that could stand alone as short stories.

Now it's a bit more complicated than lifting chapters from a novel and re-labeling them short stories.  Short stories have their own set of rules for structure, narrative arc, beginning and end, and construction.  In order for some of my scenes and characters to stand out in the world by their lonesome, not cradled by chapters, I had to (and have to) re-think the direction and let myself be surprised by what developes.

I have sent one such story out into the world to be judged.  I am working on getting the others in fighting shape to join it.

A friend of mine once said what most writers know:  I don't know what I'm going to write until I write it.  Isn't that grand!! It's grand because it demonstrates a letting go, a release, a freedom to become a channel between the thoughts and characters that have moved in to our heads and that process, that encounter, dare I say, that grace that happens between pen and paper, between keyboard and screen, between mind and fingers taking off in a flurry of tapping.

None of this is as magical as I wish it were.  It's hard work.  It takes a great deal of logic and organization and thinking and criticizing and often years of training and straining.  But then, we need to let it go and see if the seeds we have been sowing are strong enough to take root and grow into something we can look upon with delight.

Creative Process

I've had a request to write about the 'creative process' sitting in my suggestion box for several months now.  Mea culpa. When my spouse (who got me started on this adventure) pointed out that I have not yet answered the request for a blog on Creative Process,  I countered with my argument that I write about the creative process all the time.  But, I am informed, I need to be more direct.  So, here's direct.

The 'creative process' is a bit of a slippery fish.  It starts early.  In infancy.  In very young childhood.  In all the reflection and memories and dinner table anecdotes that happen at every holiday and family/friend get togethers.  The creative process takes shape in sitting around with friends and  having a beer or a cup of coffee.  We cannot help but engage in the creative process if we tune into life at all.  It is a default setting for anyone with a brain wave. But for those of us who want to take the raw materials that life hands us and turn them into something more, we pay attention, tune in, remember just a bit more acutely than others.

What if we would like to capture that process on 'paper' though?  Turn the process into something a bit more tangible, like a short story, a novel, an essay?  That's where the work comes in.

And it is work.  It is a re-shaping,  selection, a series of decisions about what to include and what to leave out.  It cannot merely be a rambling, every detail re-telling of some long ago event.  That's what unedited video cameras are for, and no one really wants to spend time with unedited video.

In order to take the raw materials of life and turn them into something resembling 'art' we must ruminate, cogitate, write, re-write, edit and edit again before we present the stuff of life and transform them into a gem that we would like to share. We must 'cook' our thoughts and pay attention to our dreams, where we are off guard enough to let some whispers through. Whether we write fiction or non-fiction, imagination and selection are essential.

In a recent article, Digging to China, I wrote about playing in the mud.  In the creative process you have to get a little muddy-- you have to feel the dirt ooze between your fingers and watch as the worms wriggle to freedom.  You have to slap the mud into cakes and have enough imagination to believe they are hamburgers or cupcakes or mashed potatoes or weapons to lob at your brother.  You have to not mind getting messy and dropping down into that experience.  You have to 'make believe' as most young children do naturally, whether what you are aiming at is memoir or the next great novel.

The creative process is not some mystical whoo-whoo encounter with a muse.  Many of us wish it were.  Many of us would like to take dictation from some higher elusive being than slog through memories, create or re-create characters, situations, events.  Many of us would like to wake up in the morning and just type out a fabulous dream that is a little gem ready for publication.  Some writers do seem so gifted.  Most of us, I'm afraid, have to work a little harder and do the digging the old fashioned way.  When we get to the place of exotic treasure and work it into something we are proud of it does feel like we dug all the way to China.