Digging and the Archaeology of Writing

It was one of those slick popular magazines, thrown down on a table in the dentist’s waiting room.  I was twelve,  as frightened of the dentist as any twelve-year-old, and looking for things to distract me - and there it was, a picture of a young woman, brush in hand, gently sweeping away, grain by grain, the dust and dirt of centuries from the remnants of an ancient stone wall. I don’t remember anything else about that dentist visit (ok, that’s a lie - I also remember swatting away the dentist’s hand when he first poked the needle inside my mouth, and then getting the lecture of my life from him) - but that picture, the words around it, the thought of remnants of ancient times being buried under our very feet - all that stuck with me.  I wanted more.

Typical of my young self (and, well, my old self now) I spent months researching, reading everything the sparse school library and the only-slightly-less-sparse city library could give me on archeology.  I dug through my parent’s set of The Book of Knowledge for everything even remotely archeological, read encyclopedia articles, ordered books on interlibrary loan, which sometimes arrived, sometimes never did.  And, as is the way with all things for twelve-year-olds, I eventually moved on to other fascinations.

Sort of.  The thoughts of those neatly-arranged grids at dig sites, the shovels, the brushes, the tables laden with shards and bones and - gasp - intact pottery of ancient times, stayed in my mind, leading me to pick  up any article on dig sites, to subscribe to reading lists, listservs, and blogs for years to learn more, read more, understand more. Until, finally, I put in an application to volunteer at a dig site - and was accepted.  For several years, I went to dig after dig, sifting through dirt, hauling buckets of dirt, sleeping with dirt in my hair. I discovered a number of things about myself in the process:   I’m tougher than I thought I was, I have more patience than I thought I did, and, most surprising, I really like to dig.

At most of the digs I’ve worked, (note well:  worked, not attended) the volunteers, grad students, junior archeologists and any other odd crew are divided into “pit teams” - each section of the area to be excavated is marked off in a grid, and each team (three people each) gets one section to excavate - one person in the pit, digging and brushing, one hauling the excavated dirt to the screens, and one person sifting the dirt through the screens to discover any artifacts so small they may have gotten lost in the dirt.  I hated screening (some loved it), and was fine with my turns hauling dirt to

and fro, but was near ecstatic about my turns digging in the pit. I’d argue that my turn was not over.  I’d grump when on any given day I didn’t get as many dig turns as someone else.  I’d pretend not to hear them when they were calling me to get the holy hell out of there.  I wanted to dig - I wanted, grain by grain, to remove the dirt and rock until I found that shard of arrowhead, or section of  pot, or, once, an entire intact firepit from more than 3,000 years ago.

It was the bit by bit of it, the inch by inch, the level by level anticipation of discovery.

That is the same with writing.  It is easy for any of us with moderate skill with words to throw out shovelfuls in an essay to meet a deadline, or to just dump a bucket on an issue or a simmering idea.  Like the archeologist who knows the layout of ancient villages and hence knows where to dig, we know the structure of essay, the arc of story, and we can toss it out, without screening, when need be.

Don’t let need be.

I’ve been away from this blog for more than a month.  I wish I could tell you that it’s because I’ve been churning out dozens of pages and couldn’t stop.  But I can’t tell you that, because what I’ve been doing is digging, scraping up dirt by the shovelful, hoping that some small grain of it is that

artifact, that essence of memory and history that sparks the thought, paints the picture that lights up a whole other way of being….magic on paper.  I am still screening, still sifting, still taking the dirt, the grains, the small ideas joyfully removed and going through the excruciating process of sifting.  I’m finding patience for discovery, because like the many archeologists I have now worked with at digs, I know the layout, I know when I’m approaching a “find,” and being in that almost-there state is near as exhilarating as words flowing on the page.

Two Absolute Necessities for That UnPlanned Time

Everyone has had one of those days - you get up with what you think is a full day, and, before you can get out of the house, your whole day gets emptied.  Work calls off everyone for an exterminator, your lunch date cancels, and your kids are going  to a sleep over right after school,  

The whole day is yours.  With Not A Damned Thing on your calendar.

For some, this is a temptation to engage in guilty pleasures - a mid-day glass of wine and a trashy novel, or binging on that embarrassing TV show you absolutely love. For others, The List looms, and by the end of the day, the supplies and makings of every project are stacked everywhere.  You may even work on some of them.  Others will get on the phone and/or social media, connecting and commenting.  Some, unfamiliar with the freedom, will wander from one possibility to the other, never quite sure which to pursue.

For a writer, it can depend on where you are - in your process, with a project, in your confidence. It may not take you a moment to pour a cup of tea (or gather up your cat, or light a smoke) and sit down to your writing table, delighted to dig into the next scene or paragraph.  It may mean some long walks or drives, or whatever you do to help your brain generate, as you try to decide what to work on, or how to change the direction of a piece you’re working on, or to consider just that next perfect line.   Or….

Maybe you stand, knowing the day is a gift, knowing you should be using it to move your work forward, but not knowing how to do that.   Any of these responses can leave the writer unmoored.  You’re a writer, free time should  find you ready to go, pen in hand, ideas flowing, not…. Mired.

I’m about to give you some advice for those unexpected free times.  I’m not claiming I am always able to do this myself, I’m just saying that when I  am able to, it works.  On days like this, do two things:   Let go, and Pay Attention.  Let go of the need to make yourself a writer in this time, let go of the sense that your worth depends on how you handle it, let go of expectations that you must produce to be valid.  Pay attention to … well, everything.  Openly, quietly, without expectation.  What you hope for is surprise.  It may or may not happen.  Don’t worry.  Just let the free day (or the free hour or afternoon) percolate as it will.  If you have the urge to sit down with your writing, do it, don’t resist, but also don’t resist if it seems like a long walk is the way to go.  Those familiar, unsurprising, uneventful days may have a moment or an hour that will come back to you a week or a month or even years later with just the inspiration that you need for that next line.

I’m not saying that, if you have a routine, you should abandon it.   I’m saying the free time is a gift, and while fourteen pages of your novel produced would make you feel great, so might the three-minute conversation with the guy you meet on the walking path, or the graffiti you find scrawled on a sidewalk.  

Waste, Transubstantiation, and the Writer

“Does their culture tell them to keep broken old refrigerators and garbage in their front yards?”

This question came from a co-worker, a man, I knew, though briefly, years ago.  We had both worked at a center for refugees, and had been talking about cultural differences in our clients, and I’d noted that many cultures were different even in our country, for instance, Native Americans.

This man was not evil, nor was he (generally) ignorant.  He was, in fact, over the brief time I came to know him, a man who I came to consider one of the most ethical humans I’d ever known.  He was a former priest, who had renounced his vows when a parishioner came to him and asked about the doctrine of transubstantiation - the turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. According to the Church, only the ordained can perform this ritual.  The parishioner questioned Gregg, my former colleague, at length about this, and, after some discussion, asked this question:  “But then, if my faith is strong enough, shouldn’t I be able to turn it into the body and blood as well?”

Gregg had no answer for him.  After considerable thought, and, after failed efforts to get an answer from higher-ups in the Church, Gregg felt that his only option was to renounce his vows until

he could settle this matter of faith.

That, my friends, is ethics.

He was (and, I presume, still is) a good man.

And his question was genuine - he believed that things deemed as ‘garbage’ should not be kept, should be disposed of, and genuinely did not understand what he saw when he crossed a local reservation.

I remember drawing a long breath, and thinking carefully before I responded.  This was not a person I wanted to alienate, this was a person genuinely trying to understand.  “Well, I can’t speak for all Native American cultures, because there are many, but the folks I’ve known believe that you do not dispose of something if it might still have utility, that it is dishonorable to waste.  I’ve seen people make smokers and dehydrators out of old refrigerators, so not only are they not wasting the refrigerator parts, but they are also working to be sure food isn’t wasted.  I also once knew a sculptor - yes, he was Native American - who cut apart the parts of an old refrigerator and bent and shaped them to make a sculpture of birds in flight.  It’s a belief in not wasting things, in honoring the potential utility of everything.”

Gregg initially looked startled, and then thoughtful, and, over the weeks and months that followed before both of us left employment at that center and went to work elsewhere, we had many more productive conversations about cultural differences in which we each frequently had to remind the other that there might be reasons to be more open if and when either of us felt judgmental.  I grew to like and respect him a lot for that, as well as for a wickedly sharp sense of humor.  I was sad, a few years later, when we lost touch.

Just a few years ago, I returned from spending four months in Northern Namibia, teaching at a school for the deaf and blind in a small town called Ongwediva, very near the border with Angola.  The time I spent there was inspirational, as you might imagine, for many reasons:  the dedication of

the local teachers, the courage of the blind and deaf students, the spirit of the local people in the face of scarce resources, poverty, and a harsh environment.  When I returned to the U.S., one of the hardest adjustments for me (and one I still struggle with, to this day) is adjusting to how much sheer waste there is here.  We throw out things, flush them down the drain, toss them in the garbage, without a thought.  That would never happen among the people I lived with there.  Everything is too scarce to dispose of without considering its potential use.  I still shudder when I see furniture, clothing, wood, etc overflowing from dumpsters.

We are wasteful, and that disregard for potential usefulness, potential beauty, infects our lives and our culture to a degree we never even think about.  This in part springs from and in part creates a caste snobbery that demeans those who are more careful about their use of things, who save things, who keep an out-of-fashion piece of furniture because of its remaining utility and care not that it is no longer considered “tasteful.”  I knew a woman once who did not understand my devotion to shopping thrift stores and buying used items. She (literally) shuddered at the notion of wearing clothes someone else had owned, or using dishes someone else had abandoned. “You deserve new things,” she said, “and so do I,” not even thinking about the implied assumption that those who shop at such places out of necessity deserve their lot.  

What does this have to do with writers?  That wastefulness in attitude, in thought, in practice also infects our language. We are wasteful with words and careless (in its exact meaning) about their impact and long term effects.  We use words and throw them away with little thought.  As writers, we pursue what is considered the ‘market of the moment,’ writing for transitory public tastes, without regard to long term impact, or the implied assumptions in what we may write.

My advice for you as writers:   be careful.   Use your words with care, choose your meanings with care, select your purpose with care.   Examine your assumptions, examine your motives, examine your purpose, and be careful.  Be full of care - full of care for your reader, for the profession of writing, for your own spirit.  Like a piece of furniture that has been used well, your thoughts are filled with history, the history of your life - be sure that history in honored in how it is reflected in your words.

The Japanese have a tradition of repairing broken items with gold, not only enhancing their

beauty but their strength, and such items are not only more beautiful than they were originally, but reflect a history of use, a history of care.  In Western culture, we often feel broken, and our cultural tendency is to abandon that broken part of our selves, to “move on.”  Think about your own brokenness when you write, and honor it, weld it together with words that are as strong as gold, and do not waste that part of your life.  Make your words the thrift store for your readers - a place where they can find the utility in their own brokenness, in the strength of your words.

Truth, Politics, and an astrological chart

A few years ago, a friend who was into astrology did a birth chart for me, then we met for coffee to talk about what she’d discovered.  It was fun, and I loved her for it, but honestly don’t remember much of what was predicted, except this:   just at the end, she pointed to one part of the chart and said that I would have a 14-year “fantastic” period during one phase of my life.  I nodded and said something along the lines of “that’s nice.”  She shook her head, put her hand on my arm, and said, “No, listen, I mean fantastic -- like win-the-lottery fantastic.”  At the time, I smiled and said “Well, then, could it start now, instead of five years from now?”

That day, the day the 14-year ‘fantastic’ period of my life is supposed to begin, is now 31 days away.  I was making some plans with friends for that day when the memory hit me - the beginning of my own personal “golden era” about to begin, if we believe the prediction.

I’d like to believe it, but it’s a tough call. The reasons why it’s a tough call are a little hard to explain, because I’d like to be an optimist, really I would, but feeling my optimism under seige lately.

I used to say that I taught for a living, and wrote for my life.

That has, for the majority of my adult life, been true. I love teaching, but writing is oxygen.  It is the air I breathe into my soul.  And it’s been tough, lately.  A number of things contribute to that - a series of injuries (I’m clumsy, apparently) took both energy and time.  I started a new job that requires both emotional energy and time, and….. Well, there’s the state of the world.

I had been working for months on the third book in a series I began some years ago, and had begun to get a handle on the main character, and the story arc, when….. November 8th.  I’ve been, with a few brief periods one way or the other, a lifelong moderate.  I read and research issues and candidates, ignore the ads placed by campaigns, and follow their promises and claims.  I keep politics out of my professional life, and avoid discussing it with others.

Or, I should say, I used to do things that way.

I believe in approaching my civic duties with rationality and research.  While neither of the available candidates passed the “smell test” coming out of my research, one was far and away worse than the other - mountains of verifiable lies, encouraging violence at his rallies, and advocating racist and xenophobic policies.  And he won.

I have tried to keep politics out of this blog - it’s about writing, not about social issues, not about candidates, not about left vs right or conservative vs liberal, or the GOP vs the DNC.  

But what happened was this - while I engaged in (and continue to) voicing my opinion about proposed policies from DC, I tried to keep it as I always had - a thing separate from my life, separate, specifically, from my writing.  But I couldn’t.

In working on the manuscript, I had characters who did not live in isolation, who live in a world that has a government, has people who disagree, has police who abuse power, has corruption that impacts the lives of ordinary people like my characters.  As I’d sit to write, the “ghost in the room” became the day’s headlines, the next onslaught against civil liberties and freedoms.  It all swam in my mind and ran over into the scenes and dialogues I was writing.  I tried to stop it, tried to ignore it, tried to crumple those scenes and reinvent the validity of the world my characters inhabited, as opposed to the one I inhabit.

It didn’t work.

Eventually, I put that story away for a while to give me time to consider how to go forward.  What I realized is this - I have always believed in fiction that speaks the truth about the way the world really is, and while my characters (and their story) has little to do with politics, it does have to do with a group of people who are different, who discover their shared differences and form a community, and whose existence as a community frightens those on the outside to the point where they are both ostracized and targeted. All of this makes it extremely relevant to the world around us, and I needed time to think about how I want that to proceed on the page.  So the drafts went in a box and went on a shelf while I consider, and I turned my thoughts to some shorter works and editing of other manuscripts to ready them for submission.

Each day, as I sit down to work on these tasks, or sit down to journal/brainstorm about the direction of the boxed manuscript, one thing becomes clearer to me:  keeping politics, social issues, etc out of my thoughts about writing is and has been one of the greater mistakes of my life.  

If writing is about pursuit of the truth (and I think it is) then can there be anything more relevant than the state of our country, of our government, of our leadership, when our country is so thoroughly divided?  How can characters live separate from that and live in truth?

So, I’m out.  The lifelong moderate has gone radical, and she’s writing about it.  That is not to

say that all my writing will be about politics, or that my characters will be revolutionaries - but if they live in world that is frightened of them because of their difference, there is a social environment that caused that fear, and that is a truth very relevant to our world right now.  I am still taking more time before I return to that manuscript.  I want to protect the truth of the fictional world they live in equally as much as I want it to reflect the realities of our world, so time to think and feel the truth is required.

But as for leaving my political position in the closet, I can no longer do that, neither as a human nor as a writer.  I am part of the resistance.  I believe in a country dedicated to freedom that we welcome refugees rather than fear them, that we help the sick and the elderly, rather than taking away their benefits to offer tax cuts to the rich, that we nurture freedom of the press, hold them accountable, and protect their right to full access to public officials and to air both video and audio of those encounters as well as to write about them.  I believe in a country where our leaders work for us, not for their own pursuit of power or partisanship.  

We don’t have that country right now, but we can.  There are things all of us can do to help protect our freedoms and ensure our rights.  If you spend twelve seconds on social media in any two -day period, you know what those things are.  I believe that the absolute best thing each of us can do is to protect the truth.  Playwrights and actors bring it to the stage, artists and dancers and musicians let it shine from your work, and writers write the truth.  Not all truth is political, not all those works need to be about politicians and the powerful to enrich the lives of those who enjoy the arts rather than create them.  But if we ignore that part of the truth, the political part, we are not being fully honest.  Whatever you do, do it with a heart and mind dedicated to it being truthful.  That is, for my part, how I am moving forward. I think, in spite of the violence, the police brutality and killings, the oppressive legislation, the lies and the assaults on freedom, it is this that will bring about my fourteen years of fantastic living.

On Music, Creativity, and the Dark Side

I have been absent from these pages for a while.  Every writer has those times when retreat is essential, when it is required not only for your individual creative process, but for your heart.  Pretty much always for your heart.  Writing, creativity, invention, bringing something new out of nothing - these can be exhausting, and in times such as ours, perhaps even more so.  

I have found myself, lately, thinking a great deal about music.  I have no musical talent whatsoever.  Though I can (badly) play an instrument or two, I have no singing voice, and no talent for composition, but I do have a remarkable capacity for appreciation and immersion.  I began to notice, to the point where it overrode my attention on story, how much a musical score

either adds to or detracts from a story in film and television.  I began to think on the relationships I’ve had with music as various pieces I wrote were in progress - sometimes a single song, played over and over as I worked.  (The two most frequent? - Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 21 and the Beatles “Paperback Writer.”)   Other times, a playlist that simply must play as I work.  Other times, working in complete silence and then desperately needing music when I’m done.

There has been a great deal of research about the positive influence of music on learning and creativity, while, at the same time, a great many works on the influence of depression (and all negative emotions) on the creative process.  Both seem to induce (or, at minimum, help to evoke) a torrent of creativity.  

Music and darkness - an improbably pair, but one that speaks to something that every writer, every artist, every person intent on creative arts, should attend to.  We have a tendency in our culture to focus on “the bright side,”  on “positive thinking,” on all things on the side of light.  Without darkness, though, light becomes static, meaningless. It is not a cliche to suggest that we need a balance.  The artist, just like the average human being, needs the dark balancing the light, needs to see it, embrace it, hear its music.  

I find that my “down times” in writing are not really down, at all.  They are a battle.   They are me, finding a way to demolish the social inhibitions that restrain me from looking at, seeing, entering into the dark in order to embrace it.  Some time back, I wrote about three decisions that a writer needs to make, the last (and most important in my mind) being to decide “What kind of writer do I want to be?”

If I want to be a writer - and I do - who writes the truth, then I have to acknowledge that truth is sometimes dark, sometimes painful, sometimes a part of the light. That sounds a bit trite, I know - we need both the darkness and the light.  But it is more complex than that. The darkness we avoid, that we swear to fight, is often actually IN the light.  It is a contradiction, a paradox, and an absolute necessity.

Darkness weaves through a sunny Sunday afternoon, through the spirit of the kindest person we know, through the best of intentions and the most charitable of actions.  It is not just a balance, not just an opposition, it is part and parcel of all of us, of every day we live, of everything we touch.  And to be truly capable of truth, we need to turn, look at it, truly see it, and then embrace it as a part of everything - an essential part.

Listen to music, hear it, and pay attention.

WRITING AS A CALLING

When I was in my graduate writing program, regular conferences were required with my main adviser.  Her office was comfortable and welcoming, and she was then (and remains) one of the primary influences in my writing life.  She could motivate me with a single word, oftentimes a word of challenge.  It was the ways she challenged me, compassionately but relentlessly, that made her such a strong and unique influence.  I loved her then, and I love her now.   

One early conference, as we were just getting to know each other, had to do with the content of the creative work I would do in satisfaction of the Master’s requirements.  I don’t remember exactly what I said to her in answer to her opening question, but I remember her face, leaning towards me, open, thoughtful, and then her first comment.  “You’re like the ancient mariner - the person with the story that must be told.”

It was the first of many discussions we had about the motivation for story, the urge to write, the undeniable need to tell a particular story.  Until I met her, until those conversations, I thought of writing as something I did well, something I’d received praise for from teachers, something that I wanted to do more of, but impractical - who make a living at writing?  What I needed to realize is that writing made my life.

I’ve been turning out stories and poetry since I learned to put a pen to the page.  I’ve written articles, essays, poems, stories, novels, how-to’s, critiques and reviews.  I’ve written for every job I’ve ever had (and likely ever will), and when a day goes by without writing, there is a wrongness to that day.

I needed to realize that writing is my calling.  That it doesn’t matter whether I make a living at it, or

succeed by anyone’s standards but my own - that writing is how I live.  I think on paper, I feel on paper, I understand on paper.  Words are my music.  They set the rhythm for my life, they set its boundaries, they encompass everything I understand and strive to understand.

If you’re not sure that’s you, if you think so but don’t quite yet understand it, I’m going to do something I rarely do on these pages:   recommend a book.   Find a copy of Gregg Levoy’s marvelous book Callings.  I got my first copy twenty years ago, when it first came out, and, since I have given away multiple copies to friends who were struggling with direction and satisfaction, whether they were writers or not.  I was also pleased to have a correspondence with Mr. Levoy for a few years when I, first, asked his permission to use a quote from his book in one of my writings, (which he granted happily), and then to discuss efforts to bring him to speak at my campus.  There are only three books in my life I’ve felt strongly enough to buy copies for friends and give them away, and buy more than one copy for myself, and this was one.  Read it - do each of the activities he recommends as you encounter them.  

Think about the place of writing in your life, reflect on it as you read.  If writing is your calling, you will soon be very sure, and know what place it holds for you, and where to begin.  In subsequent posts, I will put some adaptations of the activities Levoy recommends, adapted specifically for writers, but, if clarity is what you desire, if you need assurances, need a strong foundation for your writing, begin there - with his book, and the process it will take you through.

Writing in Times of Chaos, With Lessons from Dickens

Writing should be a problem right now.  But it’s not.  It should be a problem because winter weather is harassing my home town, a virus is circulating that seems never to go away, it seems like my country has descended into indiscriminate madness, and my supply of huckleberry jam has run out. Not to mention kids, work, favors asked, etc.   It should be a problem, but it isn’t.

We all know these times - the kids are too noisy, there are extra shifts at work, the wash machine breaks down, the cat pukes on the rug, and the phone will not stop ringing.  There are bills to pay and repairmen to deal with and relentless noise.  How in the name of all that’s holy can we be expected to sit down and focus on the page, to immerse in the story, to get even a single acceptable word written?

Lots of us are having that feeling right now.  We feel overwhelmed with daily news of contention and

protests and accusations and lies and deep, nation-wide division.  Then, y’know, the wash machine, too.

So why am I writing so nearly effortlessly?  Why are pages and pages of words just flowing from my pen right now?  Why do I stop in the middle of the million or so other things going on to grab pencil and paper and write a scrap of scene, a section of dialogue, a perfect description?   That is what is happening to me right now, and I have been a bit confused by it.  Like so many, I am overwhelmed and saddened by the state of our country (and the world) right now.  I have children and work and bills and broken drawer-stays and a leak in my storage shed.  I have phone calls and emails and letters to answer, and more of the same to make.  Nevertheless, daily, ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen pages are flowing from my pen. (Yes, I am writing the first draft of my current manuscript entirely by hand - I often do that.)

The feeling of being overwhelmed is akin to the feeling of loss - a loss of stability, of the familiar, of everything you’ve counted on.  It is like a barely-controlled internal panic, a deep anxiety that grips you when you don’t know what to do.

The story has been told, (possibly apocryphal), that Dickens, when he needed inspiration for his

writing, would begin walking around London, just taking random streets in random directions until he felt completely, irretrievably lost. And then he would walk some more.  It is said that he told those who asked that, in that feeling of lost-ness, that lack of sense of direction or anything familiar, he found it easier to open to whatever presented itself to him - that he could then look at the people of London around him and see in them their stories.

This may or may not be true, but, like many writers, I know poets and novelists who have odd routines to bring about inspiration, to bring about that openness to the world that lets you see stories that need to be told.  Nearly all of them I know of involve some sense of surrender to chaos.  Some sense of embracing the madness, of surrendering any hold you have on the familiar and just, simply…...opening.

It is, I think, why my writing comes so easily right now.  To borrow a line from a fictional character, we all have ways that we enter the world, and if writing is your way to do so, you need to surrender your perceptions of what is real, what is stable, what is dependable, and embrace the dark and the light around

you.

So, if your writing feels stymied by the state of the world right now, or by the state of your life, or both, sit down.  Put a pad of paper in front of you and a pen. Then let all the things that harass you IN - don’t resist them or block them out - let them in, let go of how you thought life was, and take it in.  Cry if you need to.  Rage if you need to.  But don’t resist it.  Hold the pen in your hand as if it were your lifeline, because it is.  And then feel the words as they rise up in you.  

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NOTE: This free-flowing period of writing (coupled with many of the things above) is why I have not posted weekly as I am used to doing. Returning to more regular posts now!