Strolling, Not Striving

I have my new strategy for creative freedom--in fact for the kind of weightless freedom from pressure I felt in my first two weeks post-surgery. It's a standard bit of yoga advice: don't strive. Or as my mother used to say when I was a kid: "don't strain your goozle." That can be hard to remember when one is trying to get everything in the world done in a day. Which is usually the case for me.

The only problem with "don't strive" is that it's a negative. Better to focus on doing rather than not doing. So I toyed with the idea of Nike's "just do it" slogan. That says basically the same thing, but sounds a bit grim and dutiful.

I've settled finally on the word "stroll" to describe the no-pressure approach to getting things done.

From now on, I'm strolling through my days. No getting all twist-legged about how much work is ahead to do. One thing at a time, done peacefully. I think this is going to work. In fact, I'm sure it is. It's already working.

Water Gun

A woman I grew up with learned recently that she has brain cancer. Home again after surgery, she decided to think positively and not to let anybody get her down. So she got herself a water gun. Anybody who sits down beside her and says anything negative, she squirts. I think it must be very satisfying to do that and, Lord knows, an effective way to change the subject.

Mainly, I admire her spirit. She says she's going to enjoy the ride.

No Goals, No Standards

In the first two weeks of recovering from surgery, I had a rare (for me) experience. I found, to my shock, that in those days I was completely free of goals or standards. No quota of pages to turn out, or work to turn in, or number of crunches to do in a day. At the same time, I seemed to have no sense of private space or concern for dignity, which was convenient since, for part of that time, I was in a hospital. I'd thought that these aspects of my personality were immutable, irreducible.

I did have a large job to do, which was actively assist in my recovery. That included getting myself from bed to bathroom on my own, dragging the IV pole; taking three or four walks a day up and down the halls in my sweaty hospital gown; taking a shower on my own...and so forth. Just as taxing at that point as a day's work. But I had no sense of what my "productivity" was supposed to be, whether I was "running behind," or what would constitute a really good job of taking a shower. I had no self-consciousness; I just did the things that needed to be done, without hesitation or thought.

Week 3: old patterns of thinking kicked back in. I began to grouse: saying to myself that others have probably recovered much faster, that my friend Dan went back to university teaching only 3 weeks after his open-heart surgery, that I was somehow doing this healing thing wrong or at least not in the most effective way, and many, many other variations on that theme.

That's an aspect of my normal life I do not want to take up residence in again. In this one way, I want to go back.

I want the weightlessness of those first two weeks: simply doing, without the self-berating and the self-monitoring and the fear of falling short. That would be bold indeed, and delightful, and no doubt far more productive. I'm trying to figure out how in ordinary daily life it's done. Let me know if you have suggestions.

Nobody But You

If you have moments of doubting the value of what you're doing, consider this thought from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."

Proust's Bedroom and Mine

Just finished reading Alain de Botton's charmingly intelligent HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. It's a series of essays on what Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME would boil down to if, improbably, the seven hefty volumes were a self-help book. Chapter titles include such topics as "How to Suffer Successfully" and "How to Take Your Time."

At the end there's a good piece of advice about the wrong way to wring wisdom out of a piece of art. I can tell you it's a path I've tried to take. This hopeless approach is to go to the places where the artist worked, where the story ostensibly unfolded. Example: to try to better know Monet's paintings and experience by going to Giverny (a dream of mine.) Or to go to Combray where Proust's boyhood summers are set and expect to see deeper into the books. Instead, says this guide: "It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not to look at his world through our eyes."

Some years ago I made an attempt to visit in a Paris museum the reassembled furniture of Proust's cork-lined bedroom where he wrote. I was about 8 minutes too late. The museum had closed; the guard would not listen to my pleas, though it truly was our last day there. Maybe it was for the best, and now I will have a look at my own bedroom with the kind of rich attention that Proust gave everything. I've certainly had the time to do it, having been sacked out all day. Two days up and one day down seems to be the current state of my convalescence. I am indeed following the Proustian advice of taking my time.

Writing Group in Muscle Shirt

This afternoon I went back to the writing group/class I've participated in on Thursday afternoons for 22 years. I'd only missed two weeks on my "health leave" but felt as if I'd spent a winter in India (as I did for my 2nd novel) and returned with tales to tell.

I found that I wanted to make a splash, a statement, on this return to the group that's a major piece of my normal life.

So, what I did: I wore a shirt that was given to me as a joke a while back by one of the other writers in the group. It's a bare-midriff muscle shirt, black, tight as a cigar band, with the Eiffel Tower and the word Paris written in purple glitter over a pink-glitter sun. Keep in mind now that I'm 56. I'd never before found occasion to wear this garment. Today was the day.

People in the group did remember the shirt, so I didn't have to explain the "joke" (until later when we met other folks for tea.) My get-up did make the statement I wanted, which was, I only now stop to think, that: I'm not dead yet, not down for the count, still a "boomer babe", and what did I need ovaries for anyway. It's a fine T-shirt that can do all that. And it has been a fine and fun day.

Going Wider and Deeper

I just now reread my description of this blog: how I was going to use it in part as a way to spur myself to bolder action on my own current projects, asking others to do the same. By this I meant professional projects.

My, how I have strayed from that topic. And at the same time, not at all. Instead I've just broadened my own definition of current project.

Turns out my current project is recovering from a hysterectomy. (Much easier than writing a novel, in my experience.)

Turns out that creative courage at work is inseparable from the most deeply personal rumblings and shiftings. No great surprise--and yet I wasn't thinking that way only a few weeks when I began. What an innocent!

This blog is still about bold creativity. But not just at the desk or drafting table, not just at work. It's also about the deep workings of the process from its most personal sources, even literally gut level. I hope you also feel free to use this space as expansively as you will.

A Wee Setback

Boldly, only 13 days after surgery, I ventured out to a party, a Labor Day cookout. It seemed both an enormous undertaking and, at the same time, not such a big deal. Bob did the driving. I remained seated on the deck the whole two hours I was there (except for a visit to the buffet.) I enjoyed being a hero: no one had imagined I could make it out to a party so soon. Then I went home at 7:30 and pretty quickly went to bed. Today I've been good for nothing but lying down.

So it turns out I'm not ready for such outings yet. Too exhausting--especially since at the party I chowed down on the first whole plate of food in two weeks. I had to try it to know.

I'm reminded how rarely progress is ever smooth. How there are always interruptions, for many kinds of reasons. Wee setbacks and large ones are part of every process of making and remaking. I like the kind of stories that are inevitably titled "comeback kid."

Post-Surge

Day 12, and I'm still lying around. Surgery went fine. I'm still tired in mind and body. Sleeping and watching post-Katrina on TV. Feeling luxurious in my comfortable convalescence as I see again and again the wreckage of lives on the Gulf Coast. I'm sad especially for New Orleans. The novel I've recently finished, COBALT BLUE, is set there for the last third of the story. The spirit of New Orleans is immortal; I can't believe otherwise.

"Your Most Brilliant Innocence"

"Just when you're sure you've gone as far as you can go...you will find the secret to a sweet, fresh gamble that will awaken your most brilliant innocence." That's my delightful horoscope from a local weekly for this week of surgery.

For some time, I'd been wanting that kind of refreshment: a return to the excitement about writing I had for the first 30 or so years.

Then, only in the last few weeks, I've been thrilled to feel that way again when I started researching the mysterious artist Miss Chant for a biography. I still feel this new excitement, had a deliciously fruitful research trip last week, sat and took notes in the lady's very bedroom, read her packing list for a trip (which included "three bottles of wine, corked.")

But maybe this week offers new discoveries, certainly a sort of gamble. In any event, I look forward to this most brilliant innocence. Even the phrase inspires me.

Wild Talk

I just read about a woman who, in the narcotized dream-state after her surgery, felt the nurses were evil aliens trying to harm her. She rallied once for a moment and heard her husband in the process of apologizing to a nurse for all the terrible things she'd said.

I'm wondering what terrible things I'll say in the same situation Wednesday morning. I used to have a fear--from early life to just a few years ago--that on my deathbed I might say or not say something in my ravings that would hurt someone's feelings. Suppose someone were left out, for example, or didn't get enough of my final air-time. Or there was some misunderstanding I wouldn't be alive to get straight. I finally rid myself of this grandiose worry, when Bob, my husband, persuaded me that anything I said at that point would be expected to be a little wacky.

So now I'm merely curious what I might come up with, what my wacky dreams will be.

A Peculiar Crusade

I need your help with a campaign. My recent medical adventures have ignited a small new passion: to get some kind of anesthesia made available for a very painful exam that lots of women have to go through. My informal poll shows that half my pals have been there at least once.

Like being stabbed, an endometrial biopsy is fairly quick but hurts like hell. A friend who has gone through childbirth twice said this test was the worst pain she'd ever felt. And it's routinely done (at least in my town) with no painkiller of any sort.

Here's what I'm asking: suggest to any gynecologist you know that they offer some kind of numbing of mind or body for this procedure. (To men who've read this far: tell any chum of yours who's in this line of work.) A doc who starting doing this would be a sure superhero of mythic proportion. Women would probably fly from all parts of the continent just to have this test.

I've already talked to my doctor though as of Wednesday I won't have the parts for this kind of exam. And let me say, I'm not one who is angry with the medical profession. Quite the reverse. I'm permanently grateful to my doctors and others for the treatment I and several loved ones have had. But I'd feel like a passive sheep if, feeling strongly as I do just now, I didn't speak up about this unnecessary pain.

The Weird Forms that Fear Takes

Though I feel pretty cool now about having this bit of surgery next week, I did notice that I've done a couple of things that I do when I'm scared and don't know it.

Yesterday morning I spent about a half an hour obsessing about what earrings to put on. Finally, I solved the problem by changing tops. If I have trouble getting dressed quickly in the morning, then for sure some uneasiness is stirring.

My other signal is when I see myself calmly do some automatic action in a nonsensical way. Pour orange juice into the jar of peanut butter instead of the glass--I stopped just short of doing that this week. Once years ago, on the morning I was taking a checkout dive to get my scuba certification, I methodically tried to put a pair of pants on over my head.

With tactics like these I've pretty much managed to avoid feeling fear directly. Am I the only one? Do other people do this?

A Highly Personal Question of Boldness

On Monday my doctor set before me an unsettling decision. Some "atypical" cells had showed up in a biopsy. Not cancer, I'm happy to say. But cells that are "wanting to become cancer."

So I was to decide whether to have a hysterectomy and remove any risk forever, or have a lesser procedure, something on the order of sweeping out the cells with a whisk broom, and then be closely monitored for the rest of my life.

It took me 23 hours to decide. I was clear when I woke up Tuesday morning: Have the big operation. As soon as possible.

By that time I could also ask myself: in such a situation, is there a "bolder" course, a "more alive" choice? It would likely take more courage to have the threat of trouble hanging over my head forever; but I don't see what I would gain.

The decision I've come to seems literally the one that's "more alive." It's the one more likely to keep me alive longer. My choice now seems to me a no-brainer. Which it sure didn't two days ago.

At this moment, I'm somewhat interested in what happens next. I'm so healthy--haven't been in a hospital except as a visitor in almost 50 years. In the next few weeks, I will probably find out a few things about myself and life that I don't now know. And I plan to rent movies, read a lot, take excellent painkillers, and require a lot of attention.

"Most Alive Choice"

On a website called Planetsark.com run by the writer SARK who writes about living "juicy," I just now came upon the delightful idea of "most alive choice." I think if I put it into action it might sometimes pull me away from my sofa and Hershey's Kisses and my People, Allure and Vanity Fair magazines (not that there's anything wrong with any of that.)

The idea is to ask oneself at moments of indecision or transition: what is my "most alive choice?" Lots of times, I'm guessing, the most alive thing will be to act in a way that's not habitual. I'm going to try it out, see what happens. Will let you know.

Write a 6-word Story

Yesterday I ran across an article about notable American authors asked to produce a 6-word short story. They produced some little gems. Funny, too.

What it brought to mind was my nephew Tucker at age 4 telling his relatives that he had learned to write. What he wrote as a demonstration was this: Aunt Peggy is a bad girl. Six words. Not a story exactly, there's no conflict or action. Nonetheless a lot is implied. Certainly he demonstrated that he can write fiction.

This morning, I thought of a 6-word sort-of-story that, at about 14,I thumbtacked to my bulletin board over my desk in my teen-age bedroom. It was a Weyerhauser recruiting ad with the headline: Send Me a Man Who Reads. Again, though, the rest of the story is implied.

It's not an easy assignment: to set up a character and a problem and a resolution in 6 words. Give it a shot and send the results. It's a fun problem.

"Loose as Ashes"

At the dentist's office this week, I enjoyed a half hour of nitrous oxide which set my mind loose a bit more than usual.

This loosey-goosey-ness is a state I want to be able to produce and enhance, without aid of a mask and a tank and a dentist. It's at the heart of creativity. I think it's the reason that so many people who are good at one art form are also pretty decent in another. I have a book called "Doubly Gifted," a collection of the paintings of well-known writers. John Updike paints well and so do a lot of others.

My theory: once the mind is freed of the usual rigid connections--how a nose is supposed to look--then it's possible to see how a particular nose looks. And once frozen mental images and standard connections are dismantled, new combinations can occur.

It's a bit like doing the puzzle "Word Jumbles," the one where you unscramble letters to make a word. I visualize the letters greased so that they can slide in every direction, take new positions. Some days I can do all the word jumbles in the paper at a glance; other days the letters stay rigidly in their place. I've never checked to see how my writing correlates with my word jumble facility at a particular moment, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a connection.

Some famous baseball player--can't remember his name--said that the right way to be when you step up to bat is "loose as ashes."

How do you get that way? I find that exercise helps.

By the way, my brand-new, week-old research on my first-ever biography is sailing. This woman was a living mystery.

Cross-Training

A few years ago, I took up the practice of bad art and found it has helped me with my writing.

I started doing peculiar arts-and-craftsy things, as whim dictated, without bothering to learn how to do it "right" or laboring over it to make it good. The results are far from show-pieces. They're typically odd or half-baked, fall into the "interesting-idea-but-poor-execution" category. The homemade, old-hippie kind of thing.

Projects so far have included: painting swamp grass on the gas tank, painting the Buddhist Eyes of God across the width of the woodshed, beading a four-foot leaf as an outdoor flag, a couple of mosaic tables, etc. Currently I'm beading a three-foot long fish which I'm planning to hang over a hall window. If you looked at the number of beads involved in a three-foot fish, you might wonder if I have enough to do.

Indeed I do have enough to do, and slapping together my little projects helps me do my work better. The handwork seems to loosen my brain a bit. I can think without focusing on what I'm thinking about. Ideas float up. The range of possibilities seems wider. Also, beads and paint are physical; and that's a refreshing, delicious change from the mental play of writing.

Maybe one of these days, I'll be so bold as to post a photo of one of these projects. We live in a log house on a dirt road through deep woods, in a county dotted with other artists-in-hiding. So the adornments do sorta fit. In the meantime, I'd be interested in hearing about any cross-training ideas of yours, any activities that are fun and at the same time improve your game.

Pivot

This week I executed a quick turn-about, put aside a book I'd written only two chapters of and started another. For me, this is unusual; ordinarily I'm a compulsive finisher.

I was seized, though, by a thought that has been with me since I was about eight years old. I first heard this mental chime ring at an outdoor fair in my hometown of Wilmington, NC. I know I was young enough that day to be running through the crowd, laughing and yelling, chasing and being chased by my younger brothers and a friend.

That day I heard--or overheard--about a woman who had lived on the street where the fair was held, until her death two years before I was born. This woman was an artist who lived in a "cottage" and was almost unimaginably odd. And these were the 1950s in a small conservative Southern town. The image I conjured of her felt charged with magic. I've never forgotten her.

Recently I decided to do a little research on who she was. Wednesday afternoon, sitting in a library at UNC, I came across a bit of evidence that clinched my decision. It was a line in a xerox of a page of her diary: this woman (I don't know why I feel I shouldn't say her name just now)had the same peculiar experience as the main character in the novel I'd just begun. I'd already written that scene.

My course seemed clear then: write both books, and because of my flood of excitement, write the biography first. Though I was in a library, I made some sort of ecstatic crowing to celebrate the moment, though not at the level of uninhibited sound as that afternoon at the fair. (I don't think anyone even looked up.)

However quiet, it was a big deal, this turning. I don't think I've ever performed such a pivot, professionally anyway. Yet I feel certain of the rightness of this course, whether anyone but me ever wants to read this book. Have you ever made such a sudden about-face in your work? How did it turn out?

JUMP!

Two excellent bits of advice arrived in the comments to "The Diving Board." I was talking about my daily hesitation to begin writing, the habit of lingering on the end of the diving board.

The aptly named JimWing said: "JUMP! No matter how baffled or unsure you are, grab a concept, or even a wisp of a concept and start writing...."

Focus on the process rather than the outcome, said Billie. "Why am I on the diving board? Because I love to dive. So-- feel the board beneath my feet, the sun, the air, the smell of the water. The anticipation of cool, and my favorite part, the swim up from the depth toward light and air. With all that going on, whether the dive is a 10 or not becomes not so important."

My personal adaptions: I could give myself a reward for starting to write within x minutes of getting to my office. And then remember how I felt when I first started writing: the dreamy process of fiddling with words.

After reading Billie's description of the dive, I think I want my reward for starting to write to be going swimming.