The Naturalist by Nichole Yanota. This gorgeous piece reminds me of our freedom to create and collect anything that brings us joy and meaning. We can gain inspiration and ideas from anywhere, anyone, any time and anything to create our writing projects. There are no rules!
Are you a Writer?
For those who write, one of the most challenging obstacles in this life will be to begin calling yourself a writer. We all suffer from imposter syndrome from time to time, but there is a mysterious phenomenon around writers where somehow we’ve stepped into a subculture of self-deprecation, angst, and eternal flaming criticism.
Uh…no thanks!!
I’m here to turn writing culture on its ass. Let’s play. Let’s bring our wild inner children out to raise hell. Let’s tell stories that alchemize truth and imagination. Let’s feel our energies stirring with deliciousness and intense aliveness. Let’s free ourselves! Let’s access joy and curiosity and meaning. Let’s channel ancient spirits and journey to places that don’t belong to us. And then we’ll put it all on paper. AND we’ll call ourselves writers because we now know all the fun and freedom of expression involved in this occupation. HELL YES.
If you’re with me - if you’re done putting on the boring, painful shackles of normal writers’ identity - then consider popping in for one of our writing practices, every Tuesday at 9am. For those who cannot make weekday mornings, I’ll be working toward offering weekend workshops in the near future so stay tuned. Here is the Meetup link where you can keep an eye on upcoming events.
https://www.meetup.com/Wild-haired-Writing-Practice/
What is writing practice?
Our gatherings will begin with discussion of anything derailing the writing process. Let’s just clear any blocks out of the way by exploring what exactly is creating it (hint…you are). Don’t worry, I’ll help you identify what you can do to find your flow again.
Then I’ll bring in a writing prompt that you can choose to use or you can just sit and write on anything you wish. I personally enjoy Natalie Goldberg’s style of writing practice of “keeping the hand moving,” or in my case, “keeping the fingers typing,” with as few pauses as possible. This prevents the editor or inner critic from coming out and sabotaging your efforts, and it gets you into your flow by practicing producing without judgment. Just let ‘er rip.
Below is an example of an old writing practice I did as free-flowing pondering, no editing. The trick is to not stop and edit (although I tend to go back and fix spelling errors once I’m through). There is no plan, no destination. Sometimes I’ll use a writing prompt to get me back writing on a story but I use a similar free-flowing practice, just with the focus of a relevant character or scene that will help further my current project. I almost always write in this fashion, locking my inner critic and editor in the next room and hiding the key. If I create a run-on sentence or grammar error, oh well. I don’t fancy myself an editor. There are perfectly lovely people who cannot wait to fix all that. My job is to create with freedom and let what wants to be created arrive with as little resistance as possible.
Tending to the writer - an example
Abby stopped by yesterday and we talked for a brief while about writing. I shared with her the concept of separating writer from editor and she lit up, she liked that idea. It’s getting easier for me to enter the writing space. Like taking off an old dusty cap and ideas come flying out. My mind is changing, noticing, observing more deeply, more of the world is lighting up to my eyes. It’s a beautiful feeling. Like my soul is being freed. Like the air is a little easier to pass through and more vibrant and textured all at once. My mind stops at all the little speed bumps, the quality of my breakfast juice: temperature, silkiness, concentration, complexity, nose, the bit of foam on top, the beet infused color, the ginger spark, and carrot sweet, tame saltiness of celery, floral parsley after-taste, the mellow tone of apple sugar, and lemon acid brightening up the whole damn concoction. It is possible to taste each flavor and then two flavors together, and many flavors at once. How can that be? A trained tongue, a mind that is more capable than we even know. Senses don’t make sense to the logical mind. Shouldn’t the flavors be transformed in the mix? Shouldn’t they create a new flavor and be lost as individuals? I can’t taste an egg in a chocolate chip cookie. Sometimes the baking soda, but never the egg. I can taste the butter and the flour, and of course the chocolate. But even with the chocolate I don’t taste just the cocoa powder or cacao nibs, the bitter part is nearly undetectable. The sugar has revised the flavor, overwritten the bitter notes with balance and confection. My ears have been perking up a lot lately, too. But it’s not just my ears, it’s more of an animalistic listening awareness. I feel a little like a ground squirrel or prairie dog, perking up, still as a staff, and bringing in the world. Almost like feeling it around your skin, sensing in a more instinctual way, flipping on intuition, becoming absolutely present. In this moment, I feel I can hear everything at once. The sound combination altogether, but also the individual parts: cars passing (how near or far or fast they are, the sound the road makes under the tires, the shooing sound they generate, the engine softly stirring), birds (what song do they sing, how close, happy or noisy, what mood do they sing in, do they detect me), wind (does it blow from the sea or from the mountains or across from the west following the highway and city), people (their voices, what sex they are, again near or far, harmony or tension), machines (construction vehicles, scraping dirt, beeping sounds, engines stammering, the smells they create of burnt oil and grease). Everything at once, it all makes a sound around me, then my perception hears the communal sound of everything together but also skips around to hear each thing on its own. But this seems to happen in the same moment, I don’t stop hearing the whole sound when I hear a single sound. I hear everything and each thing all at once. Like the light, we see a landscape and just because we focus on the tree in it doesn’t mean we stop seeing the hillsides and brush and people walking, and paths snaking through. Just because we hone in on one shade of green, it doesn’t dissolve all other shades of green. They are still being viewed, processed, absorbed by our eyes and our minds. Creepy shit, really. How the hell did we get to be this good without even trying? So good we usually don’t notice. We certainly don’t stop to write a page about it and appreciate how utterly magnificent it is to be capable of such mastery. People always want to know the meaning of life and I include myself in that bunch. But for the first time I believe I’ve found it. My purpose is to be, to exist and notice it, be present, take in as much as I can before it’s over. To love moments that would previously be unlovable, to see things I used to miss, to slow time to eternities by simply filling each moment with all it has been offering me, things I didn’t pay mind to before. Each moment is bursting with energy, overflowing with memory, thought, sensory candy, the energy of other beings (table or tree, person or metal object). I’m making it my job to be with those other beings and so to be with myself. To use my attention and ability to focus and draw in and experience life on a minute scale, stretching the seconds and taking in so much it feels my life could not be fuller or too short. There is not fear in this way of living. I’ve abolished the fear of missing out, which does not lie in the future. It is every moment taken for granted, ignored, dedicated to worthless tasks and mindlessness (social media, internet browsing, being busy). At least work is a place where our culture must still use mental power. I don’t know how that is changing with younger generations, but I feel in my work I must focus and look at the bigger picture with the smaller task all at once. Not losing sight of the purpose and the little branches that build the final tree. I feel so much peace in the writer’s mind. The observer, I used to call myself in my teenage years, always noticing how I preferred to watch instead of taking part (or so I thought at the time that it was not taking part, even though I was probably more engaged than anyone “acting” out the scene). I felt excluded and frozen and incapable of confidence, the confidence to create a scene, I’d rather sit back and watch, observe, take it in. I was preparing, studying, knowing some day I would decide which parts of myself fit in the world and who I wanted to be. What I wanted to show other people and what I should keep as a secret world. I always longed to have someone know my secret world, a man perhaps, that was always my vision, to have someone who knew me inside and out and who would be totally intrigued by all of my wonders, so unique and unprecedented, so plainly and extraordinarily me, irreplaceable, a person so special to them that it would bond us into death. Certainly this life would be a given, we would be bound by all that is me. How egotistical! Could I have been more self-centered? I never once thought that maybe I should do that for someone else, it was always a one-way street. Me. Validating me. But I expected it so hard that when it didn’t happen with Austin, I was crushed. He drew charcoal on paper images of me with big black smudges under my eyes and sadness smeared over my face, and expression of defeat, helplessness, heartbreak. I realized I was heartbroken because he didn’t love me the way I yearned for a man to. I thought when I cried, he would burn with curiosity, with intrigue, a mystical young woman was torn, what could it be about? I wanted him to ask questions, to be enveloped in how my mind worked, to enter a deeper and more meaningful love with support and care that would lift me beyond what I could be alone. I assumed people wanted this. That they wanted a deeper relationship, someone to read their soul from across the room, to know their thoughts before they had to speak them, to anticipate their every move. This is what I wanted. I don’t have any idea if I still do. I did, with Damon, but my needs are changing. I like figuring myself out and feeling confident on my own two feet that I can care for my own heart and soul. Sometimes I wonder if it’s only women who want such a deep connection, deep understanding, deep compassion and knowing. Maybe we’re taught to not trust ourselves, that we need someone to hold us up like a support beam, that we are too weak on our own. Shaky, like the lid to my teapot, dripping the last drops of honey-sweetened black and red tea. Chattering the lid goes on its rounded edges. It feels amazing to be writing, to feel again, to see again, to hear again, to use my body and senses and mind again. I was shut down, off, for too long. I am alive now and it is the best gift I could ever give myself. Gratitude and richness accompany me in each sacred moment. No moment is like another moment, and each moment could be its own story, its own novel, its own series. There’s so much happening in a day, how can we ever accept the cliché that life is too short? I suppose we could revise the statement, “life is too short when you’re not awake.” When you’re brain dead, when you’re over-stimulated by technology and city life and to-do lists. When your kids need every last second, every breath you breathe is aimed at assisting their breath, their life, their needs. This is the reason I didn’t want kids. They are thieves, but I assume the life of a parent would show otherwise. They have their own moments to worship. They have tiny moments of magic that enter their lives through those 10-fingered, 10-toed rugrats. They get to experience a deeper love than the love they have for anyone else on the planet, including their mother or father or spouse or sibling.