Tag: journaling

writing life

Word By Word By Word

Sue

“The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.” ~ Maya Angelou

The above quote is from one of my favourite Maya Angelou poems “On The Pulse Of Morning”. I thought about it recently. It’s the sort of poem that once you read or hear it, the steadfast hope for humanity never really leaves the back of your mind. Like a song or a painting that continues to speak to you on a deeper level, even if you haven’t thought about it in years. Until you remember it out of the blue one day. Or, in my case, out of the pink.

I’ve become an early riser. I do think you can be an early riser, but not necessarily a morning person. I like to be left alone with first thoughts and very little conversation over a cup of freshly brewed coffee. This wasn’t always possible and now it usually is. In these bleaker mornings before the winter solstice, I get up to make coffee and bring it with me to my office, where I turn on only one lamp and sit in semi-darkness to write my morning journal pages. Or I open the folder of my novel to continue where I left off editing the day before. I feel the most creative before troubling world news or the day’s tasks have a chance to filter in, along with the first signs of light at the window next to my desk.

The other morning I looked up from what I was writing to see the entire room around me was bathed in a pink sunrise. I glanced out the window to discover an astonishingly beautiful sky, then rushed to the front door to stand outside, shivering in PJs to snap a quick photo before the perfect moment was gone. Then I went back to my desk, remembering Maya Angelou’s poem about the pulse of morning and new steps of change.

This year I wrote a second novel. All the way from the beginning to a more recent end. I can’t tell you what day I started or exactly how long it took me to complete over many months. I only know I wrote the last sentence before I wrote the first one. For once, the ending was clearer to me than the beginning. I didn’t feel the need to document the process this time, not in the same way I did the first one, as though I was looking for permission to pursue the dream again. To call myself a writer.

After so many years of not writing, I think rediscovery was the complicated journey I needed to take, treading lightly, carefully. I wrote that first novel and my initial blog posts here with a sense of wonder. A sense of this is who I was and this is who I am now. Every thought, every memory shared, was a hidden pathway back to the writer I held on pause for thirty years. Once I rediscovered words, I began to struggle with what next and what does any of this mean? Reconnecting with The Writer has reminded me that creativity, like most things in life, requires confidence. Along with the determination to block out excuses and doubts and obstacles I tend to put in place like a protective barrier whenever something begins to feel too impossible to accomplish.

One morning I wrote in my journal: Word by word by word. That is how a novel is created. That was how both my novels were created. The first one out of wonder that I still had it in me to string along sentences into a satisfying story with a beginning, middle, and end. The second was written with intention. Less wonder, more focus. I already knew I could take the meandering journey from beginning to end. Now I had to figure out the next steps. The way forward that sits in between finishing one journey and digging deeper to start another.

May the coming year bring new steps, new focus, new pathways between yesterday and tomorrow. Renewed hope and confidence.

“Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.“

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

On The Pulse Of Morning – Delivered January 20, 1993
at the Inauguration of President Clinton

writing life

September Twenty-First

Sue

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” ~ Margaret Atwood

There’s something about the week leading up to the autumn equinox that makes me more aware of my surroundings than at any other time of the year. Late September feels like the beginning to something I can never quite figure out. It must be related to the days of sharpening fresh pencils and wearing new sneakers that pinch toes because they haven’t been broken in yet. Daylight has begun to shorten and yet the hours somehow feel longer. The other day I asked myself, Do I move forward or stay in the same spot?

Recently I went on a short road trip getaway with my husband to the West Kootenays. We usually do that in August once work has slowed down a little for him. A few days to do nothing except float in mineral hot springs and take long, meandering walks along the lake. Pure bliss. This year we decided to go in September, thinking it would be less busy on the roads and it was. There were moments when it felt like we had mountainous highways all to ourselves and it gave me, the passenger, time to look at beautiful scenery, listen to classic rock, and think about where I am in my novel. That’s the only downside about taking a break from writing. The momentum gets lost.

I’ve spent most of my life thus far squeezing writing in when I can or when I feel motivated to do it. After closing my yarn shop a few years ago, I found myself with a lot more free time and no heavy business worries to focus on. It was the same weightless feeling of a busy school year ending and summer stretching out with endless possibilities. For the first time in a very long time I was able to focus on myself. At first I took some time to do nothing, really. Just putter about the house and organize messes I never got around to doing while working full-time. That’s the thing about mess, though, it always sneaks back in. At least it does for me. And I’m A-okay with that now because there’s so many other things I’d rather do than clean and sort and organize.

My mother told me something a long time ago when I was a young mom trying to balance work and kids’ activities and household chores etcetera etcetera. She said, “Nobody is remembered with perfect housekeeper written on their headstone, and if they are, well, isn’t that a damn shame?” I thought that was hilariously ironic then because my mom always worked outside the home and kept a fairly tidy house, and she still cleaned mine from top to bottom whenever she visited and I never knew if I should feel insulted about it or deeply grateful. I’ve only just realized she did that to give me a free moment to myself. Age and experience had taught her as it has me that mess will always come back no matter how hard we work to stay on top of it. It’s time for yourself that escapes far too easily.

These days I catch up on chores when I can and when I feel motivated to do so–the way I used to do with my writing. I’ve been meaning to clean my oven for three months. Almost every morning I tell myself I should do it over the summer before I use it more often in the fall and winter months. Then I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down at my desk to write. One summer day I decided instead to put on the air conditioning and roast a turkey dinner with all the trimmings for the entire family in honour of my son-in-law’s birthday. If I was going to clean the oven anytime soon, maybe I should really mess it up first. It still hasn’t been cleaned, but that unexpected turkey dinner was delicious and seemed well-received by everyone.

A day or so after we returned from our road trip, once everything had been unpacked and washed and put away again, I sat down to continue working on my novel and the only word I can think of to describe how I felt is numb. So I pulled out my writing journal to try to make sense out of it and saw the last time I wrote in it was back in July. I try not to look over past pages in my journal. In fact, I use a clip to close previous pages so the next time I open it I can focus on what comes next. Since July I’ve been working almost daily on my novel and haven’t felt the need to question where I am in it. It’s a pattern, or so my journal reminded me when I did look back. Sometimes I write because there is no other alternative. It’s what I must do before everything else. Other times what made sense to me last week suddenly feels like a load of rubbish. Yesterday I wrote in my journal: I have stepped away and now the inner critic has stepped in.

Usually it helps when I’m stuck to go back and read my first chapter to remind myself what originally excited me about the characters and the story. I tried it and that’s when the numbness set in. Along with the question of do I move forward or stay where I am? I decided not to change a thing until I know for certain it’s me the writer and not me the fixer who is in control. At this point it would make perfect sense for me to tackle that dirty oven. I did open it one morning and made a face at it before closing the door. Then I picked up my knitting and put a record on the turntable and lost myself in the mindlessness of knitting a plain hat in the round to let my thoughts wander as they did along mountain roads.

writing life

Nonsense

Sue

“Maybe later today I will carve poetry into the riven bark of the weeping willow in the garden of my childhood home. I might go to the shore, smash my hurt on the rocks and watch my tears become the ocean. Perhaps I will sleep in the forest and wake to a world of talking animals. I might gather with others around a fire telling stories of seeds and bones buried deep – or fill ancient caves with laughter and song. Or I might just be here, quietly at my desk, sipping tea, waiting for the sun to rise. This is the writing life.” ~ Beth Kempton, The Way of the Fearless Writer: Ancient Eastern Wisdom for a Flourishing Writing Life

“New year, new you.” How many times have we heard that repeated since the start of the month? Soon enough it will fade to the background like an insect’s droning buzz– ignored until it’s finally gone. I stopped writing Morning Pages for several weeks. What became a habit for an impressively long time suddenly became a nuisance. And I’m okay with that. I think at some point most creative thinkers want to take a step back to focus on something other than a reason to create. Or at least the time and space to create other things without reason.

I set aside my writing and reading to revisit sketching, doodling, and dabbling in truly sublime metallic watercolour paints. I reconnected with my old friend knitting whenever the mood to play with yarn happened to strike. Creatives hear all the time that they must push through a lack of motivation to keep honing their craft, that a lack of motivation equals laziness. I used to believe it, but this current version of me disagrees. Then again, there’s no pressure in my current life to create for a living. I’m not supporting myself or a family with my writing and thank goodness because I would be terrible at it. Completely unreliable. I have deep respect for anyone who does so on a daily basis.

Drawing and painting is not the sort of creative outlet I’m particularly good at and knowing that provides the freedom I had as a child to dive right in. I’ve always loved playing with pencil crayons and crinkly paper and pretty stickers. Long before I knew I was a writer, I felt the urge to make things out of scraps without any kind of purpose other than the pleasure of holding those creations in my small hands. We somehow lose that feeling along the bumpy way, don’t we? Why wouldn’t we when we’re fed catchphrases like “new year, new you”?

Somewhere between the start of the year and today when I reopened my Morning Pages notebook, I decided the old me is doing just fine, thank you very much. The first sentence I wrote was well, hello, you, as though welcoming myself back to a comfortable room. Then I proceeded to handwrite two pages of jumbled thoughts. Sometimes hiding within a jumble of nonsensical sentences is the sliver of a story. Sometimes it’s just pure nonsense. Thinking about nonsense eventually made me look up the dictionary definition of the word. Here’s some synonyms: absurdity, babble, baloney, bunk, claptrap, craziness, drivel, folly, foolishness, gibberish, madness, mischief, rubbish, silliness and trash. Of all those words mischief is the clear standout. Nonsense equals mischief. Mischief equals fun.

In the process of creating something out of nothing the room can feel overly crowded at times. The walls need a moment to shift–to allow fragments to escape and others to remain. These are the quiet days when I walk with my head down to clear the space of what’s unnecessary. Other days I walk with my chin up to take notice of what’s happening around me. How the air smells like a fresh new season and the shadow on a boulder resembles the profile of my grandmother’s cameo brooch. How weak sunlight on the ocean tells a completely different tale in winter. This is how I know I’m slowly coming back to The Writer. The distinct feeling of imagining outside of myself. I have only to open my eyes a little wider and listen a little closer for the story to unfold.

First and foremost I’m a bookworm and as such I highly recommend the book I quoted from at the start. This is my third time reading it and I think any kind of creative person, not just writers, will discover something profoundly beneficial to take forward into a new year. Chapter One, titled “Quietening”, begins with this Japanese Proverb, “When embarking on a great project, start where you are with something small.”

Quietening. That’s a standout word too.

  • Beach Walk in January