In Process: Thoughts on Writing and Life
10/31/2009
My Accidental Practice:
It is a rainy Monday night, and I am in the café at BookPeople, an independent bookstore in Austin, while my daughter, Shira, is rehearsing for a show. I have a copy of Hip Mama beside me and a copy of More magazine. I have something specific I’m working on, and I’m trying to find the right home for it. But I’m having trouble restarting my engine after a weeklong silent retreat with Natalie Goldberg in Taos. When I left home last week, I was churning out new work at a breathless pace. But after a week of sitting in silence, I want to stare at the ceiling. Submitting my work doesn’t interest me now.
When I applied for a second intensive with Natalie, I wrote that I wanted to return to Taos to practice, to rest in the structure that Natalie provided. But as soon I was accepted, I forgot my intention. A month before the intensive began, with my fiftieth birthday in clear sight and at least two careers thrown out the window, I became anxious to have something to show for myself. I set the goal to polish two chapters of my book and complete a new proposal by the end of the year. Instead of seeing the four retreats as opportunities to practice, I made each start date a deadline. I completed chapter one by the time of the June retreat and chapter two by August. Two weeks before the August retreat began, I sent seventy-five pages to my agent.
While I was waiting for my agent to reply, passing the time staring at my computer screen waiting to see her name appear in my e-mail inbox, I became restless. I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t want to go any further with the book until I received her response. With my hand itching to move across the pages of my notebook, I took myself to a local coffee shop one day and set my timer for twenty minutes. For twenty minutes I wrote without direction, just for the pleasure, just for the practice. It was so delightful, I did it again the following day and the day after that. After a few days I was hooked. That twenty minutes of writing became my accidental practice.
When I had my interview with Natalie in August, I confessed that I had never before done writing practice as, well . . . a practice. We were sitting in a small group in the log cabin of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, our hands resting in our laps, breathing deeply, continuing to be mindful even as we broke silence for our meeting. When I blurted out my little confession, Natalie looked at me incredulously.
“After all these years?” she said, wincing at me.
“Well, I used to just practice when I began,” I said.
“And then you became ambitious!” she said, pointing her finger in the air. Of course she was right. The ambition I thought I had thrown away when I left academe had stayed in my belly and grown back stronger than ever.
“Ambition girl doesn’t like it when I practice,” I said. “She’s threatened.”
“Ambition girl and practice girl need to make friends,” Natalie said, holding her palms up, side by side, to make her point. “They can support each other, if you let them.” I’d never thought of it that way. I always thought of my ambition and my desire to practice at odds. I left the meeting and set the intention of continuing my twenty-minute writing sessions as a daily practice for the foreseeable future.
Between August and the October retreat I practiced every day, and it was lovely. But then something funny happened. While practice girl was writing one day, ambition girl got the idea that she wanted to revive her freelance career, but with a new direction. She wanted to publish essays. She went home, hired a coach, and made up a schedule. In the weeks before returning to Taos, she wrote two new pieces and a new outline for her book. But every day for twenty minutes, she took a rest, and practice girl got her chance. Practice girl chose a cafe and took her notebook and pens and she wrote whatever she wanted. Ambition girl gave her permission. Look how well things were going with practice girl to rely on for a little rest. However, the writing was going a little too well. Ambition girl got excited about all the work she was getting done, and she had a hard time slowing down. She grew bigger, blowing up like Violet Beauregard after she greedily snatched the gum from Willy Wonka’s factory and transformed into a giant blueberry. Her breathing became shallow and she didn’t sleep so well.
With ambition girl expanding by the moment inside me, I arrived at the October retreat knowing I needed to catch my breath. My mind needed a rest. Fortunately, the retreat structure provided for that, with three rounds of sitting, walking, and writing each day, plus optional sitting before breakfast and reading group in the afternoon. I attended everything and, to insure I didn’t lose it between sessions, I continued my twenty minutes of practice on my own and practiced slow walking on the way to and from the zendo four times a day. Practice girl had her moment and managed to shut down ambition girl all together.
I became so still and silent, however, my deepest sludge began to rise. On day three, all hell broke loose in my mind. Old shame and feelings of worthlessness had a little party, with me as the guest of honor. I cried my way through sitting, walking, writing, and eating. After lunch I thought my tears had run dry. I thought I was done. I returned to the log cabin where we had our interviews to write.
I half expected to find my friend Sharyn in the cabin practicing music, and I decided beforehand that if she were playing, I would practice listening. Sure enough, I walked in and found her tuning her guitar. She looked up at me and nodded. I went to the couch opposite her and lay down. She began to play, and I began to cry again. She played every sad song she knew, and I sobbed until, this time, there really was nothing left. Sharyn never looked up from her playing. She kept her eyes cast down, giving me space to grieve, and she continued her music practice. When she was finished, she packed up her guitar and left.
That night I dreamed that Nat’s assistant, Beth Howard, came to me and told me I was going to die (Beth had come into the cabin and saw me crying and offered me a box of Kleenex). “There’s nothing else the doctors can do for you,” she said in the dream.
“But I feel fine,” I said. “I have no symptoms and my energy is good.”
“It will happen by morning,” she told me. I wrapped a blanket around me and the next thing I knew I was awake in my room at Mabel’s. I looked at my watch. It was 4:30 a.m. I tried to go back to sleep, but a new opening line for my book popped into my head. I knew what I had to do. I got up and found my notebook and went downstairs to the living room and I rewrote the opening scene, which I first wrote five years ago, but this time I wrote it in the second person. I had a new way to enter my story. Whatever died that night made room for it.
Whenever I teach writing practice, there comes a time when my students want more. They get ambitious. They want to take the next step. They want to build something—an essay, a short story, a memoir. And I understand that. Natalie says writers should practice for two solid years before trying to produce anything solid—in order to build spine, in order to feel confident in one’s own voice. While I don’t have the chutzpah to insist my students practice for a full two years, I encourage them to keep building the foundation we begin in class. I want them to keep practicing. I know it will hold them up when their ambition has burned them out. I guarantee it.
My time is up and I have to retrieve my daughter from her class. It has been good to sit at BookPeople and write, to set my timer and go. While I know better than to write with expectation of a finished product, sometimes I sit down to practice and I get a newsletter. Ambition girl likes that a lot.
Quotation:
Let things fall apart inside you, shake loose paper clips, staples, binders, let hope drop down near the raw red smell of liver. (Natalie Goldberg, Thunder and Lightning)
Writing topic: What needs to die?
Don’t forget the upcoming Winter Writing Practice Retreat
sponsored by the Writer’s League of Texas
December 5, 2009, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
This winter's retreat will help you set the tone for the season with a day of writing practice and meditation. May Sarton wrote that, "winter is the season when both animals and humans strip down to the marrow." While the media tells us to shop, party and overeat, the Earth gives us a different message, that it is time to withdraw, to go under. Topics and exercises at the retreat are designed to help you go deep inside yourself, to strip to the marrow, and get grounded for the weeks and months ahead.
For more information, contact the League and/or go to their website: www.writersleague.org/programs/classes.html#goldman.
My best to each of you.
Saundra
It is a rainy Monday night, and I am in the café at BookPeople, an independent bookstore in Austin, while my daughter, Shira, is rehearsing for a show. I have a copy of Hip Mama beside me and a copy of More magazine. I have something specific I’m working on, and I’m trying to find the right home for it. But I’m having trouble restarting my engine after a weeklong silent retreat with Natalie Goldberg in Taos. When I left home last week, I was churning out new work at a breathless pace. But after a week of sitting in silence, I want to stare at the ceiling. Submitting my work doesn’t interest me now.
When I applied for a second intensive with Natalie, I wrote that I wanted to return to Taos to practice, to rest in the structure that Natalie provided. But as soon I was accepted, I forgot my intention. A month before the intensive began, with my fiftieth birthday in clear sight and at least two careers thrown out the window, I became anxious to have something to show for myself. I set the goal to polish two chapters of my book and complete a new proposal by the end of the year. Instead of seeing the four retreats as opportunities to practice, I made each start date a deadline. I completed chapter one by the time of the June retreat and chapter two by August. Two weeks before the August retreat began, I sent seventy-five pages to my agent.
While I was waiting for my agent to reply, passing the time staring at my computer screen waiting to see her name appear in my e-mail inbox, I became restless. I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t want to go any further with the book until I received her response. With my hand itching to move across the pages of my notebook, I took myself to a local coffee shop one day and set my timer for twenty minutes. For twenty minutes I wrote without direction, just for the pleasure, just for the practice. It was so delightful, I did it again the following day and the day after that. After a few days I was hooked. That twenty minutes of writing became my accidental practice.
When I had my interview with Natalie in August, I confessed that I had never before done writing practice as, well . . . a practice. We were sitting in a small group in the log cabin of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, our hands resting in our laps, breathing deeply, continuing to be mindful even as we broke silence for our meeting. When I blurted out my little confession, Natalie looked at me incredulously.
“After all these years?” she said, wincing at me.
“Well, I used to just practice when I began,” I said.
“And then you became ambitious!” she said, pointing her finger in the air. Of course she was right. The ambition I thought I had thrown away when I left academe had stayed in my belly and grown back stronger than ever.
“Ambition girl doesn’t like it when I practice,” I said. “She’s threatened.”
“Ambition girl and practice girl need to make friends,” Natalie said, holding her palms up, side by side, to make her point. “They can support each other, if you let them.” I’d never thought of it that way. I always thought of my ambition and my desire to practice at odds. I left the meeting and set the intention of continuing my twenty-minute writing sessions as a daily practice for the foreseeable future.
Between August and the October retreat I practiced every day, and it was lovely. But then something funny happened. While practice girl was writing one day, ambition girl got the idea that she wanted to revive her freelance career, but with a new direction. She wanted to publish essays. She went home, hired a coach, and made up a schedule. In the weeks before returning to Taos, she wrote two new pieces and a new outline for her book. But every day for twenty minutes, she took a rest, and practice girl got her chance. Practice girl chose a cafe and took her notebook and pens and she wrote whatever she wanted. Ambition girl gave her permission. Look how well things were going with practice girl to rely on for a little rest. However, the writing was going a little too well. Ambition girl got excited about all the work she was getting done, and she had a hard time slowing down. She grew bigger, blowing up like Violet Beauregard after she greedily snatched the gum from Willy Wonka’s factory and transformed into a giant blueberry. Her breathing became shallow and she didn’t sleep so well.
With ambition girl expanding by the moment inside me, I arrived at the October retreat knowing I needed to catch my breath. My mind needed a rest. Fortunately, the retreat structure provided for that, with three rounds of sitting, walking, and writing each day, plus optional sitting before breakfast and reading group in the afternoon. I attended everything and, to insure I didn’t lose it between sessions, I continued my twenty minutes of practice on my own and practiced slow walking on the way to and from the zendo four times a day. Practice girl had her moment and managed to shut down ambition girl all together.
I became so still and silent, however, my deepest sludge began to rise. On day three, all hell broke loose in my mind. Old shame and feelings of worthlessness had a little party, with me as the guest of honor. I cried my way through sitting, walking, writing, and eating. After lunch I thought my tears had run dry. I thought I was done. I returned to the log cabin where we had our interviews to write.
I half expected to find my friend Sharyn in the cabin practicing music, and I decided beforehand that if she were playing, I would practice listening. Sure enough, I walked in and found her tuning her guitar. She looked up at me and nodded. I went to the couch opposite her and lay down. She began to play, and I began to cry again. She played every sad song she knew, and I sobbed until, this time, there really was nothing left. Sharyn never looked up from her playing. She kept her eyes cast down, giving me space to grieve, and she continued her music practice. When she was finished, she packed up her guitar and left.
That night I dreamed that Nat’s assistant, Beth Howard, came to me and told me I was going to die (Beth had come into the cabin and saw me crying and offered me a box of Kleenex). “There’s nothing else the doctors can do for you,” she said in the dream.
“But I feel fine,” I said. “I have no symptoms and my energy is good.”
“It will happen by morning,” she told me. I wrapped a blanket around me and the next thing I knew I was awake in my room at Mabel’s. I looked at my watch. It was 4:30 a.m. I tried to go back to sleep, but a new opening line for my book popped into my head. I knew what I had to do. I got up and found my notebook and went downstairs to the living room and I rewrote the opening scene, which I first wrote five years ago, but this time I wrote it in the second person. I had a new way to enter my story. Whatever died that night made room for it.
Whenever I teach writing practice, there comes a time when my students want more. They get ambitious. They want to take the next step. They want to build something—an essay, a short story, a memoir. And I understand that. Natalie says writers should practice for two solid years before trying to produce anything solid—in order to build spine, in order to feel confident in one’s own voice. While I don’t have the chutzpah to insist my students practice for a full two years, I encourage them to keep building the foundation we begin in class. I want them to keep practicing. I know it will hold them up when their ambition has burned them out. I guarantee it.
My time is up and I have to retrieve my daughter from her class. It has been good to sit at BookPeople and write, to set my timer and go. While I know better than to write with expectation of a finished product, sometimes I sit down to practice and I get a newsletter. Ambition girl likes that a lot.
Quotation:
Let things fall apart inside you, shake loose paper clips, staples, binders, let hope drop down near the raw red smell of liver. (Natalie Goldberg, Thunder and Lightning)
Writing topic: What needs to die?
Don’t forget the upcoming Winter Writing Practice Retreat
sponsored by the Writer’s League of Texas
December 5, 2009, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
This winter's retreat will help you set the tone for the season with a day of writing practice and meditation. May Sarton wrote that, "winter is the season when both animals and humans strip down to the marrow." While the media tells us to shop, party and overeat, the Earth gives us a different message, that it is time to withdraw, to go under. Topics and exercises at the retreat are designed to help you go deep inside yourself, to strip to the marrow, and get grounded for the weeks and months ahead.
For more information, contact the League and/or go to their website: www.writersleague.org/programs/classes.html#goldman.
My best to each of you.
Saundra