Writing from the Unconscious

Yesterday I received an email that gave me much puzzlement and delight. The complimentary close was either a Freudian slip (fraughtian?) or charmingly original--or both.

The message ended: "Bed well," followed by the signature.

I think perhaps Be Well was what was consciously intended. I'm not sure.

But I do know that the best tidbits in my own writing slip in unbidden and surprise me. I'm always grateful when I later recognize them.

Well, in truth, they weren't unbidden.

What I mean is they were unstrived for, because in this matter direct striving doesn't do any good. They're simply gifts that arrive at the portal of the writer who stays at the job, keeping a rhythm of writing and resting, writing and doing the mindless physical tasks that let the material keep cooking....


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"Fun! ... The New Core Value"

Inc. Magazine for entrepreneurs (and surely that category includes artists) has dedicated a recent issue to making work fun. "Give your company a merriment makeover," the cover advises.

I rediscovered writing as fun last month when I took a two week vacation. In the second week, I began writing an essay that I wanted to write, whether there was a market for it or not. I mentioned this at the time. I had a gloriously fun time writing it. No sense of deadline or meeting market requirements. No sense that I had to finish it. It refreshed me for returning to work on my larger years-long projects.

That essay may or may not see the light of day. The New York Times magazine "Lives" editor liked it very much but said that the piece, which is very timely, came in too late for their schedule.

Even so, I'm delighted that I wrote it. It's one of the pieces I'll look back on with delight. I'll think at least get it into an anthology somewhere some day. It made me a good contact at the Times magazine. And it excited me again about my other writing.

The founder and CEO of a $76 million company (somewhat larger than my writing enterprise)described in Inc. a fun thing he did that was linked to an important purpose. He told an employee whose health was at serious risk that if he'd lose 70 pounds, then the whole management team would dress as superheroes for a day, without explaining their costumes to customers, staff, or anyone at all.

With that enticement the man lost the 70 pounds and Jonathan Bush, creator of Athenahealth, wore a top-to-toe Batman costume while giving a presentation to a huge business prospect. He said never a word about why he'd dressed that way. The company got the customer. "You can take fun pretty far," Bush says, "before it stops serving the mission."

What are some ways that a writer can have fun and refresh the creative juices? Examples:
*reading someone else's wonderful work
*taking a break
*writing with a friend
*taking part in a group effort, like the 20+ author "story" that emerged from a beach weekend I attendeded
*writing faster...or slower
*take on a challenge...like the NaNoRiMo project, where each writer turns out a draft of a novel in 30 days
*write a bit of whimsy that you're sure no one will ever want
*dig deeper, deeper into an already rich character
*write a sketch from the point-of-view of the next person who crosses your path
*throw a kink into the story you're working on (you may be surprised to discover that it's integral)

Got ideas? What has worked for you?

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Breaking into Fashion

Ruby Fowler, age 88, didn't like the clothes she was finding when she went shopping, reports AARP Bulletin (publication for us oldsters over 50.) So this retired New Zealand schoolteacher started her own clothing line, with $3000 in capital. She calls it 45+ Frocks for the Mature. Perhaps when she's older she'll start a new label for the aged.


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Don't Get in Her Way

People magazine reports that Sen. John McCain's 95-year-old mother is traveling the country in a van with his mother and daughter, campaigning for him to become president. In the course of the campaign effort, four years ago (when she was 91), she was driving to L.A. and realized she had only 300 miles to go and thought: well, I can make this today. Shortly afterward, she was pulled for driving 118 mph. If this woman would watch her speedometer, she could be a model of vitality for us all.


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Inspired Idea

There's a store in California's San Fernando Valley called Creative Courage. It's a combination art gallery/gift shop/art studio. Here's how resident artist Lupe describes it:

"You know those cool funky stores that you only find while you're on vacation, well I wanted to bring that close to home. Creative Courage is an artistic haven....If you don't find what you're looking for we will help you make it in our Art Studio."

The backroom studio is equipped for customers making mosaics, collage, decoupage, etc.--a fully rigged-out puttering lab.

Great idea Lupe had. I wish it were closer to my home.



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Mystic-Lit

Do go and visit this new blog called Mystic-Lit. The heart of the idea is, of course, writing fiction that somehow involves the spiritual. But that is broadly defined. It's also simply about writing:
*a self-declared obsessive's issues with "in" versus "into"
*the curious matter of events and people in one's novel-in-progress starting to
turn up in one's life
*reversion clauses in book contracts
*the deer in legends as a symbol of call to adventure

The very idea of "mystic lit" calls to me. It's what I write. God speaks aloud in my first novel Revelation and a mystical experience of Hinduism guides a pivotal event in Sister India. My novel-in-progress and biography-in-progress are both about visionaries. I even take part in a monthly lunch meeting to discuss metaphysical subjects which we call Mystic Pizza.

Seven writers--one a day--are writing at Mystic-Lit. I'll be an occasional guest columnist. I hope you'll take part in or visit that conversation as well as this one.



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A Brainstorming Game

What's the lesson in creative courage to be found in this image? I'll bet there are many. Any ideas?



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Cut Loose

A lot of folks think of Bradford pear trees as stiff and brittle, rather formal; and there's some truth to that. Yet at this time of year the prim and rather delicate Bradford pear cuts loose like no other leaf in the forest, setting a lovely example.




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Accepting The Gifts on Offer

When I was younger, I wasted a lot of time trying to prove myself, not taking advantage of all the resources available to me. The kind of stuff I turned down...well, the details are too embarrassing to recount. I was a horse you could lead to champagne and she still wouldn't drink.

In retrospect, the gutsier thing would have been to focus on what I was trying to accomplish and use the resources available to do it.




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Paint with a Loose Arm

Ms. Nature doesn't hold back.












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Telecoaching

The splendidly encouraging Lisa Gates at Design Your Writing Life is beginning two new sessions of group telecoaching: one for writers and one for anyone else. The idea is to get your writing or other project/career/dream in motion.

Try a free introductory call in December to get a taste of the group telecoaching process:

Tuesday, December 4 at 5 p.m. PST
Friday, December 7 at 12 Noon PST

Complete information on the two groups is available here:

Group Telecoaching Info

Lisa is especially good at being practical and specific with her suggestions. The first week of the curriculum is on "getting real about time and space."




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Gutsy

This weekend my husband and I went home to my mother's for Thanksgiving. She had recently been diagnosed with shingles, which ranges from quite painful to excruciating.

She'd decided the best approach to having this (and it can last either a few weeks or as long as the rest of your life)was to take the medicine, delay her planned foreign travel, and otherwise ignore it. So she went on with her usual in-town engagements: parties, concerts, church, soup kitchen, duplicate bridge, house guests, groceries, hauling the trash to the curb, etc.

She's 85. One of my sisters-in-law says she has "mental discipline." I think she's gutsy.




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Cause of Recent Bad Mood Discovered

Well, it turns out that sipping sweet tea (caffeinated) from fast-food establishments from early morning until late night is not good for the mental health.

The amount of tea had sort of crept up on me. I did know that I was buying it by the gallon.

It took a doctor to tell me that caffeine is a depressant and undoes the good that serotonin-encouraging drugs do.

By the gallon!!!

And so on Tuesday I went off the stuff. I cut down to a modest cup of home-brew in the mornings...and no more. Practically cold turkey--in keeping with the holiday.

The transition hasn't been as bad as I'd expected: I wake up with a headache, take a couple of Tylenol and then in twenty minutes I'm okay. At some point, the headaches will likely stop.

In the meantime I've discovered faintly-flavored water. Pas si mal, as the French say. Not so bad.

And I'm relieved to discover the ridiculously simple cause of the blues that kept threatening to recur.



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Sexiest Deep Thinker

Here's a bit of wisdom from a quite unexpected source: People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue.

Actor Wentworth Miller (Prison Break) wins the title of Sexiest Deep Thinker with his answer to the question: how would you title the movie of your life?

He would call it Increments. That's the word his father said to him each morning as he left for school. What that meant was that every test, paper, and dab of homework is part of "the final grade."

I don't like to think that I'm working for a grade; in fact, I want to eradicate that thought. But I do know what he means in another sense: all the little bits are part of the outcome.

It's the same idea that the world's funniest writing writer Anne Lamott expressed in Bird by Bird: you can only take on the project of documenting a jillion birds by dealing with them one at the time, "bird by bird."





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Guilt-free Thanks

My Thanksgiving thought: Do something WONDERFULLY DIFFERENT this holiday.

So I ask myself what that will be for me....And after much pondering conclude: I will HARBOR NO GUILT this Thanksgiving for any of the gifts/advantages that have come to me.

In fact that's probably a prerequisite for experiencing gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.




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Comedy Therapy

Another good idea floated in for dealing with the frustrations and lows that seem awfully common in our line of work:

"I do comedy therapy. I spend a lot of time, an hour here or there,
watching something like the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies or Leave it
to Beaver or Andy Griffith. I do this for several days in a row. It can
work magic."





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Writing on the Side

I just shipped off a small essay I wrote last week when I was on vacation. I hit the Send button with such satisfaction. It was an absolute pleasure to write.

I don't always find writing an absolute pleasure.

What was distinctly different this time was that I was under NO PRESSURE from myself or anyone else. I was doing it as play, because I had something very particular to say, and to divert myself from the remainder of my now-famous bad mood.

The feeling of satisfaction reminded me of something I once heard from a devoted outdoorsman. At the end of a day of hiking, he loved to take off his backpack and go for a walk.

Now I know what he meant. It's doing the thing you love, unburdened and fresh once again. It's re-energizing.







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The Small-Dog Solution

Having a book in progress is like having a cat purring in your lap-- that thought came to me while writing the previous post, and it stayed in my mind.

Then this weekend, I discovered that sitting with an actual miniature dachsund named Moonshine in my lap was even better than having a metaphor in mind.

Several people have recently suggested time with an animal as an antidote for a sinking spell. I hadn't actually planned to try that one, since I do it every day already. My husband has a sheepdog (a Bouvier) and a mastiff-like dog who outweighs me (a Kangal) and I spend a fair amount of time reading and patting.

I now also see the delight in lapdogs (the sensible non-nervous type). Moonshine sat in my lap for hours at a friend's beach house this weekend. The experience was amazingly soothing. After a while I asked her "human companion" novelist/memoirist Lucy Daniels if she ever wrote with Moonshine in her lap. She does it a lot, I learned.

I can see writing while holding a little dog as a great way to avoid getting myself tied up in a knot, or swearing at the computer, or a number of other characteristic pitfalls. For some reason, sitting with that little warm dozing creature was entrancing. A deep trance is good for novels and pretty much everything else.

Thank you, Moonshine!






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An Inspiring Example

Thursday night I attended a reading by novelist Angela Davis-Gardner in honor of the re-release of her two first novels, one of them published 25 years ago.

Angela is a tremendously talented writer. And she has gone through the usual struggles getting her work into print.

And now she has been hit by "literary lightning." Not only did she get a contract for her newest, Plum Wine, (now out in paperback) but she received, all in one swoop, republication deals with major publishers for her first two novels, and a contract for a fourth (due in January.)

Now the struggle is simply to write fiction on deadline, rather than the more typical efforts of writers.

Her work deserves this attention. These are wonderful books. (The other two titles are Felice and Forms of Shelter.)

And I love this story of finding the pot of gold. It can happen.






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Working on Vacation

In spite of my avowed two-week vacation, I slid back into writing yesterday. I was indulging myself, since I was feeling pretty low; it seemed to be the only thing I wanted to do.

Five hours later, much restored, I found that I had a draft of a little essay about the day I met Benazir Bhutto in a drugstore in a Raleigh shopping center. Working on that story, I had no sense that time had passed. I was feeling like my regular self again.

A person can't write ALL the time, though. I'd like to think it was possible to pause.

I once knew a very successful writer who didn't pause. Just before she finished one book, she started the next, then finished the first one, then went back to the second. That way she always had a story in progress, a cat purring in her lap.

I don't think that's entirely healthy. But I understand the impulse. And she did get a lot done.






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