FIVE STRATEGIES FOR WRITING IN TOUGH TIMES

“May you live in interesting times.” Some people, in referencing this statement, call it a blessing, a wish for a dynamic life. Most, however, regard it as a curse. Certainly, times lately have been interesting. Whether you are political or apolitical, it’s hard to avoid the mood of the world when the stuff of your work is the emotions of human beings, and you have been surrounded by a culture faced with unprecedented challenges - incredible inflation, a pandemic of a virus that refuses to go away, the war in Ukraine, the continued rise of radicalism right and left, the erosion of trust in our government, a Supreme Court that does the opposite of what Justices indicated in their hearings and that, for the first time in history, removes a right from the american people. Emotions run high all around us. There are people who are afraid, people who are angry and feel emboldened to take out their anger on others, people who are jubilant, people who feel betrayed, people who feel targeted, but very few people who feel unaffected by some (if not all) of this. 

 It is a turbulent time. Some would say that turbulent times are the friend of the writer, of any artist. It was once said that “all responsible art is social criticism,” and there is certainly much to criticize these days, regardless of what “side” you are on. By some measures, perhaps, the ideal situation to energize the writer. But for the writer who is already trying to set aside problems and stresses from work, family issues, relationship issues, and the daily distractions of “things that need done” this environment could easily function as yet another unwelcome stress between yourself and your page. 

 So, what to do. In decades of teaching scores of students of creative writing, and nonfiction writing over the years, I’ve found five things each of us needs to deal with to get past such times. I’m not talking, here, about “writer’s block” - there is plenty of help out there for that, including some previous posts on this blog. I’m talking about dealing with the external realities that get between you and the page, both in hard, realistic terms, and in your head. What I have to tell you is that there are two things to do, dealing with the inner and outer distractions, and these two things break out into five strategies. The two things: a) be brave, and b) keep seeking. 

Taking them in reverse order of importance, let’s start with: 

 FIVE: BE BRAVE #3: Tell all the voices (inner and outer) to shut the hell up. Every writer has heard

of the “inner critic,” and certainly we’ve all dealt with the real-world critic in one form or another. In times like these, when there is so much negativity, controversy, disagreement, and contention in the world, it can feel like we’re surrounded by negativity, and God forbid we say or write anything that brings criticism down on us. Get over it. If you’re saying what you believe, somebody is going to disagree - just say it, and move on. If your inner critic warns you that maybe you shouldn’t write that, maybe you’re wrong…..well, that voice is right. It’s entirely possible you’re wrong. It’s entirely possible that you wrote it badly. Every writer writes bad stuff just as often (maybe more often) than they write good stuff. If you want to keep striving for your best, you have GOT TO be willing to be bad along the way, and get over it. 

 FOUR: KEEP SEEKING # 2 - Find your Writing Space - The right space - both the inner and outer - is incredibly important to the writer. Being in the right environment, and the right mindset, can make or break a writing day. The best way to discover the best outer space - the place where you actually write - is through experimentation, but, once you know where that is, make it your own, claim it, and set guards if you need to - writing space is sacred space. And it could be anything, and it might just change over time. I know people
who’ve written whole books in a corner booth at a McDonalds because that was where they could relax and focus on what they were writing. The inner space is just as important - how you are “in your head” when you sit down to write. This, also, is best discovered through experimentation. Ursula LeGuin once said that she likes to do dishes while she gets in her writer’s head, Dickens liked to walk the streets of London until he was (literally) lost. Some meditate, some do exercise or dance or paint or go for a drive (this last would be me). Whatever puts you in that state of mind where your mind is open and you feel words bubbling up - do that - EVERY TIME. 

 THREE: BE BRAVE #2: Claim your Writing Time Make your writing time not only a habit, but a priority. Set an alarm, keep a log, whatever it is that helps YOU to take YOUR WORK seriously. There are a million distractions from writing, and sometimes it feels easy to use them. I can’t write, I have to do the laundry, clean the cat box, run to the store, put the kids to bed, bake bread, call my mom, settle a friend's argument, file those photos from Christmas, figure out my taxes, etc, etc., etc….. We get VERY creative about ways to avoid writing - be aware of that, and turn it into creative ways to GET TO your writing time instead. 

 TWO: KEEP SEEKING #1: Know your goal This essentially means….COMMIT. Take some time, sit down, and figure out what in the name of all that’s holy you WANT from your writing. Is it just for you, for personal expression? (Fine - dig in, and don’t be discouraged if it never gets published, just take joy in the act of expression). Do you want wide publication and respect for your work? (Fine, then get serious - research the market and WORK to what the market is asking for - don’t expect the market to bend to you - work TOWARDS it - and that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative in doing so - look for the PART of the market that fits how your creativity is expressed and FOCUS there). Do you want to feel that your writing is your art - your work in the arts? (Fine - then get serious- art means both digging deep personally and understanding how it will speak to others, what it will offer them. It’s WORK.) 

 ONE: Be Brave #1: Go After The Thing That Scares The Shit Out of You You know what that is - whether it’s claiming your political voice or pursuing the writing form that scares you (script writing? poetry? science fiction? historical fiction?) .. only you know what is the thing, the part of this crazy work that makes your heart beat wildly fast and makes you want to scream and run - and THAT is the work you should do - no matter what your goal identified above in #2 is - looking right into your own personal abyss is the way to get there. Taking on the part of your purpose that terrorizes you brings ENERGY to your writing, makes you care that you’re getting it right - and if you care, so will your readers. If you don’t, neither will they. So, that is why THIS is the number one strategy - DO IT, FACE IT DOWN, LOOK AT IT STRAIGHT ON AND SAY “Bring It ON,” and you will produce the kind of writing that you’ve always hoped you could do.

On Meeting The Sacred

 

Sometimes, in the process of “being a writer,” we can get lost. This can happen in many ways, some of them beneficial, some not. I think a lot of us ‘got lost during the pandemic, and for some, that was beneficial, for some it was agony, and for a few of us, it seems, a little of both. Many stories, most of them likely apocryphal, have been told about famous/historical writers - things they are said to have said, things they are said to have done, things reputed to have been their practice, whether evidence exists for that or not. (Writing teachers, it seems, love to tell stories. Go figure). It is said that Dickens used to like to go out in London and intentionally get lost in its maze of streets, finding inspiration in being detached from the security of home. Shakespeare is said to have written King Lear in quarantine, but no one can prove that, but it is known that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in quarantine, and, though he wasn’t a writer, Isaac Newton did write his paper on the discovery of gravity while also in quarantine. 

   I wrote a few poems. As it turns out, that was a good thing for me, at least at first - several of the poems I sent out to publications were picked up and published. So often was I getting accepted that it became a bit of an intoxicant for me, and I began putting more and more time into getting things marketed to publications, paying attention to deadlines, researching what kind of poems each publication seemed to prefer that, when I would sit down to write a poem, what sometimes was tapping at my mental window was that market, and not so much the poem, the thought, the THING that makes a poem worthy.

 

So, recently, I stopped. I realized that the poem I’d been wanting to write, that had been through (as sometimes happens) a few false starts, needed me much more than the market did, but I felt unsure how to get back to it, how to really get back to it. So I stopped submitting - I put away all the records of submissions, all the notes on markets, all the ways I track what is and is not submitted, and was sure to get them out of my sight when I was sitting at my desk.

And, the first few times I sat down after this …. well - I just sat there - maybe some scribbling, maybe some trying writing prompts and reading others’ work (strategies which have helped me in the past) to get going and then……more just sitting there. I got through days with projects around the house (always plenty of those) and in the garden, and let myself just feel relief  at not having to sweat the submissions and the market and just be here, at home, in my life. 

Finally, I began writing poems again, poems that I can look at and know that they are the kind I would have produced back when my graduate advisors Nicky and Mark would prod me about doing what Nicky called  “the real work.”  They could and did expect me to be able to demonstrate mastery of all the basics and beyond. They tested me and pushed me about the craft - checking my understanding of rhythm and meter and scansion and line breaks and rhyme patterns, but much more time was spent on Nicky’s “real work” - the art of poetry (yes, yes, it’s another art vs craft post - that’s because IT IS IMPORTANT) - the inner work of the poet, of ANY artist that compels them to push deeply into what they hope to create.

I’d lost that focus in my intoxication with the market. A couple of things helped me out - the first was Wendell Berry’s “How To Be a Poet” - I now read it daily, and every few days, pull a phrase or two from it and post it just in front of my writing - this week, it’s “Depend upon Affection. Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” (I love that “affection” is the first thing he thinks we should depend on in writing a poem, followed by reading, skill, knowledge, inspiration). The other thing that helped me was a line of advice from a Hopi elder, White Eagle: “Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.”

This one knocked me (to borrow a phrase from my wonderful sister Kathleen) right on my plentiful Irish arse. What could be more essential, more critical to doing our best with whatever art we’ve chosen, than being sure to ‘meet the sacred’ – and it was absolutely clear to me that, as earnest and supportive as the staff of many literary journals are, there is little sacred about the act of marketing.

I am quite sure I will send more things to market, but I am also quite sure that I will, now that I am seeing my work published pretty regularly, work equally hard to keep myself focused on what matters - the heart of the work I’m attempting. It’s good to know how to market your work, it’s good to know how to meet all of the expectations of craft. It’s more important - most important- that whatever in you that is sacred be reflected in your work. Be sure to attend to that.

TODAY I WAS THINKING OF STILLNESS

Some years back, I posted the blog entry below, on the nature of the very crowded, very fluid life I've lived, and those I've been blessed to have live it with me.

I've been gone from this blog for some time - like many, the pandemic had me changing my way of doing things, and, a few months in, my daughter, her husband, and their three children moved into my small house with me. The plan had been to stay for a couple of weeks while they found a new place, but here it is, two years later, and they are still here.  Life happened (and, well, y'know, a pandemic....).   

Today I was thinking about the notion of stillness vs. chaos and how it impacts me as a writer, and I thought I should come here and write about that, and, after so long, when I opened my blog, it was this post that came up.  I'll have a little more to say after I post it for a re-read:

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Stillness and the Open Door:  Living Alone Vs. Living With Others for a Writer

A few days ago,  a picture of my late husband came up in my “memories” on Facebook.  I re-posted it, as I had been thinking about him a lot in recent days.  I was surprised then, when two people who had known us and lived in our house back then posted lovely memories of him and of living with our family, and I also received private messages from two others about memories the picture had evoked for them of those times at our house.  I’ve often talked about our “crowded house” from the days before he became ill.   Over the years of our marriage, many people - some colleagues from work, some friends from volunteer or interest activities, some family members - came to live in our big communal home when they were without other places to stay for one reason or another.  Some just needing a place to stay for the few months between college and grad school, some between jobs or between moving, some in hopes of joining our family, some fallen on hard times, some just because they needed, for a time, to share expenses, and some taking shelter from stalkers or abusive partners.  Some stayed mere days and I don’t remember most of them;  many stayed for weeks or months, or, in some cases, even years.  

Each and every time, they brought different energy, different contributions, different problems into our home, but all of them live in my memory.  I think now of Tim, Lester, Gina, Sarah, Gilbert, Paul, Mary, John, Donna, Christopher, Denise, Ed, Wilson (and family), Ruth, J.T., Eric, Scott, and my oft-in, oft-out sister Jean Marie - I think of all of them with affection, and remember the laughter around the dining room table, the shouting up two flights of stairs, the veritable mountains of cloth on the laundry room floor, and the constant music and motion of such a household.

Since my husband’s passing, I have also lived with others from time to time - some family members moving back with partners and/or children, some friends on hard times, some just because.  In those years, I’ve lived with Berg, Shawn, Jinny, Madison, Rose, Amy, Denni, Kayla, Emily, Hannah, Daymon and Iris. Not to mention, while in Africa, Paige and Digna.  

I have also lived alone.  The first four years after my husband’s death, and from time to time in between, and all of the last year, I have been alone in my home.  This brings an entirely different energy, and, any time I live with a roommate or have others living with me, I feel more appreciation of those alone times, and struggle with the adjustment.   I have been fortunate that (almost) all of the room-mates, house-mates, co-habitants that I’ve lived with over the years have been congenial, fun,

respectful of boundaries, and have left me with pleasant memories.  But even the most pleasant of co-habitants cannot give back the comfortable solitude, the daily stillness that living alone brings.  The sense of deep inner quiet that the outer world cannot reach.

I do miss that.  Every time.  

I grew up in a similar household - six sisters, two Cuban foster-sisters, and a string of foundlings my mother would take in from time to time - a loud, raucous, chaotic Irish Catholic household.  In those days, I would simply leave - go out for long walks, find a park bench or perch on top of a hill just outside of town, and simply sit - alone, quiet, undisturbed.  It was in those times that words began to come to me, and I began to write. Then, even back at my desk in the noisy house, I could disappear into the stillness between myself and the page.   Living alone is conducive to a strong relationship with your page, to the kind of concentration and focus that helps to structure a story and weave a plot together, that allows you to know a character and sink into their thoughts.  

Living alone has seemed to me, from time to time, to be the ideal situation for a writer.  And for me.  And yet, I keep gladly opening the door to others to live with me.  I have, over the years, received many messages from people grateful for the times that open door was the thing they needed.  Every time someone (or several someones) stepped through, I struggled with the loss of that stillness, sometimes for days or weeks, sometimes for the whole time they were there.  But in my mind, I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.

Do I, in the early mornings, wish for days of the solitude, the stillness, the inner and outer quiet?  Certainly.  But mostly what I feel, as a person and as a writer, is a sense of gratitude for all of those with whom I’ve shared time and space, meals and laughter.  Gratitude for the company, the compassion, the lessons learned in cooking, building, logic, and life;  gratitude for the experience of difference, the lessons in the wide variety of humor, the discoveries of passions I might otherwise not have known.  Gratitude for all the things I learned and observed:  a young man’s pain over a troubled childhood; the struggles of a budding artist; the joys of a love found under our roof; the poems read out loud to each other; time spent with two friends knee-deep in laundry, sorting it out and laughing; the spontaneous dances in the living room; the boys and men, girls and women, children and couples who shared with us, laughed with us, cooked with us, and grew with us.  A closed door would never have generated those memories.  I cannot imagine that door as anything but open.  

There is an old joke which has recently resurfaced as a social media meme:  “I’m a writer.  Fair warning:  anything you say or do I may use in my stories.”  While few of my characters feel directly based on this multitude of people I’ve known and lived with, every living breathing character who lives and loves and struggles on my pages -all of them- in some way or other,  walked through my open door, whether they are literally based on people who have lived with me, or just grew from the broadened knowledge of human-ness that came from so much life under my roof.

I will always find solitude, will always find my way back to the long days filled with comfortable deep stillness of mind, body, and home, and within that stillness, there will always be my open door.

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2022 Update: Having an entire loud, active, creative, busy, messy young family living with me has

been both joyful and occasionally frustrating. I miss all the space and open floors I had to myself, the quiet in my garden, the long still days, BUT, when they go, I will miss the joyful daily laughter of my twelve-year-old granddaughter, the quiet focus of my daughter as she does her work, the snarky humor and fellowship of my son-in-law. And I can no longer say that such situations are a detriment to writing - in the 23+ months they've lived here, I've published more than thirty pieces, won two contests, and found more serenity at my writing desk than I've known in years.

Opening my door to others, it seems, opens something in me, as well, and I am grateful for every moment, hour, day, week, month and year of such company I've lived in my life.