Confession:  I haven’t been writing.

My whole point in writing this blog is to encourage and support other writers and creatives in getting down to it and then sticking with it.  Yet, here I am, not getting down to it or sticking with it.

By “it,” I mean my novel, Otherwise.  I’m 133 pages and over 70,000 words in but I haven’t opened it in a while.  My fingers haven’t been dancing across the keyboard madly taking down Margaret’s story in what feels like ages.

My seat has certainly been on the seat.  I’ve been writing my “Morning Pages”, journaling, working a poem for an ekphrasis challenge, writing pr for various projects, composing letters, emails and facebook postings, reading about writing, reading novels, stories, poems, nonfiction books, magazine articles, blogs and …

Oh, wait a minute, … I have been writing.  I’ve even been working on my novel.

I’m reminded of an interview with Sue Monk Kidd.  When asked about the writing process, she says, “… I often left my desk to sit on the dock overlooking the tidal creek behind our house and engage in stream of reverie about the story.  I considered this earnest work.”*

She is not alone in this.  Nearly every writer I admire talks about the importance of time away from the writing desk.  It may not look like it is part of the writing process, but it is.

Anne Lamott in Bird By Bird (pp 179 & 182) encourages writers to, at times, get one page of anything written and then to read or go to the beach or ” … just really participate in ordinary life.”  She says,  “Any of these will begin the process of filling me back up with observations, flavors, ideas, visions, memories.”  She adds later, “Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck.  You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away.'”

I’ve been really participating in ordinary life of late.  I’ve been actually having a summer (something I haven’t done well in several years).  I’ve been “sitting on the dock overlooking the tidal creek” and Margaret’s story has been on my mind, but I haven’t been writing it down.

I’ve been filling up.  I’ve been giving my unconscious time and space to mull and wander and wonder.  I’ve been planting images there.  I’ve been learning new things.  I’ve been reminded of things I’ve forgotten or been too busy to think about. I’ve been reading, walking, playing and opening more fully to the world around me.  I’ve been present more often than not.

I’ve been writing.  Doing my “earnest work.”  It’s just not on the page yet.

Yet.

*from “A Conversation With Sue Monk Kidd” in “A Penguin Readers Guide” in the Penguin Books edition of The Secret Life of Bees.

First, let me repeat my writer’s mantra:  seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.  Next, let me ask a few questions …

When your seat is on the seat and you look around, what do you see?  When your seat is on the seat and you don’t look around, what is in your periphery?  When your seat is on the seat and you’re ready to write, what is the nature of the imagery surrounding you?

It is said that the unconscious mind takes in whatever the eye passes over, even lightly.  If that’s true, why not make the most of it?  Why not surround yourself with images conducive to creative output and supportive of your writing life?

Ask yourself, as you place your seat upon the seat: What books are within reach?  What writing masters sit upon your shelf?   What paintings/posters/sketches hang upon your walls?  What messages, notes, or quotes are on display?  Whose framed faces look out at you?   What aromas, colors, and sounds infuse your senses? What symbolic icons create a sense of sacred space (whatever that may mean to you)?

Do you thrive when surrounded by deliciously haphazard piles of papers and books?  Are you most at ease with clean, clear surfaces all about you?  Does music aide you as you work?  Does silence serve you best?

I offer these questions as gentle nudgings, dear writer.

As for me?  My daughter’s dazzling smile and grandson’s smirking face greet me when I sit.  Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, and Becky Rule are just a few of my chosen companions.  Sue Monk Kidd’s insights inspire me.  Don Murray’s laminated Latin phrase, “nulla dies sine linea,” (never a day without a line) is propped against an empty binding labeled, “Write Your Own Book.”  A sketch of a tree stump that drinks in poetry and spouts stories from its heart-shaped mouth, drawn while I was on retreat with Peter London, is tacked to the side of a filing cabinet nearby. A Sally Allen painting hangs above a simple shelf with artifacts and talismans steeped in meaning. A collage of buried treasures leans against the seafoam colored wall.  And, a simple tea light in a little dish waits to be lit when I’m ready.

Here I’ve surrounded myself in imagery that feeds my process (and encourages long visits from my muse).  Here I sit.  Here I write.

How about you?  Is it time, perhaps, to take a look around?  Is it time to create a space with conscious intent?  Is it time to make some changes to the one you already have?

Is it time to sit?  Is it time to write?

 

I opened an email a couple of weeks ago and yelped.  Yes.  I literally yelped.  I was alone.  No one was at home to share in my excitement.  But that was all right.

I yelped again just because yelping felt so darned good.  By sending out happy molecules into the atmosphere, I figure I was spreading joy.  Sharing the good is always a good thing.  Right?

That’s why I’m writing this blog post. This is not about bragging, this blogging.  It’s about sharing.  It’s about saying, “Hey, I’ve just had one of those moments we all get to have from time to time and I’m dancing in gratitude.  Come dance with me.”  It’s about being in community. It’s about my belief that if the arts are alive and well anywhere, they’re alive and well everywhere. It’s about knowing that my moment doesn’t stand as an either/or against your moment.  We all get to have them.  We all get to yelp.  We all get to dance.  Sometimes all at the same time!

As for my email, it began: “We are writing to tell you that your story, ‘Knowing When,’ has been selected …”

Yelp! …  Pause. … Yelp!

After spending hours and hours alone at my desk, there’s going to be publication and then there’s going to be …  a party!  Let’s hear it for the letter P: pleasure, publication and party. What solitary writer wouldn’t yelp?

Publication doesn’t define me as a writer, of course.  It’s not the end-all and be-all of the writing process.  The writing process is the end-all and the be-all of the writing process.  Process is the essence of the writing life. Finding your way into print – that’s a lovely plus.

I look forward to the fall publication of the book, Summer Stories, a collection inspired by the paintings of Leslie Anderson.  I am grateful for the opportunity offered by the collaboration between Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and Shanti Arts Publishing.  I am grateful to Ron Currie, Jr. for selecting my story.  And I am grateful that I get to live the writing life.

Fall will come soon enough and I intend to be in every moment of that experience — publishing and partying and all.  In the meantime, as the echoes of my yelp fade, I’m back at my desk.  My novel’s main character, Margaret Meader, is telling her story and I’m taking it all down. Maybe one day there’ll be a release party for the publication of Otherwise, a novel by Mary Lou Hamilton Bagley.  But first, I have to put my seat to the seat and get it all down.

That’s what I do. I write.