Make A Mistake Today!

This quote arrived at the bottom of an email this week:

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." Scott Adams

I love the idea because it's true and it has the potential to take away the destructive performance pressure so many of us put on ourselves.

Having read this item and pondered it, I then went looking for the identity of the to-me mysterious Scott Adams. Turns out he's famous: the creator of Dilbert.
He's also quite an aphorist. Brainy Quote has a long list of good sayings from him, ranging from wry to inspiring.

Here's another sample from the inspirational end of his spectrum: "Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive."




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The Closet Challenge

A few days ago, Mamie Potter of the Can I Do It? blog posted a photo of her closet and an invitation on this blog for others to do the same.

She was simply considering cleaning hers out. In response, Billie Hinton posted a shot of hers on her blog, Camera Obscura saying, "I don't know why but I love the idea of exposing my junky inner self to the world."

Not having anything to hide is a very freeing thing. I never thought of my closet as being hidden, but "in the closet" is certainly the classic phrase used for keeping a large secret.

So I think Mamie's really onto something with this idea. And here is the unveiling of my own junky inner self. It is so much neater than my mental world--or the inside of my car.



If any of the rest of you decide to take part in this closet experiment, do let us all know.



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Getting to the Real Reason

Yesterday, I was griping about being in a nasty mood about a list of annoyances.

This morning, my husband Bob, who is a psychologist, suggested that maybe my irritation list wasn't the main thing that's bothering me. Maybe instead it's that a family member is showing undeniable and troubling symptoms.

The truth swept over me--slo-mo. He was right. That was it, I could feel the certainty of it in my jaw muscles, which I've been (destructively) clenching in my sleep.

Now, why can't I always figure out for myself what's bothering me? Is it aversion to facing the real reason? Lack of courage/boldness?

I had even questioned earlier how I could feel so sad and mean over stuff that's pretty familiar and doesn't usually get to me at all.

I'd like to have a procedure for: getting to the real reason for whatever is going on in my own head. Because just identifying it is a tremendous relief. And because I don't like deceiving myself.

Again, I welcome your ideas.

Upcoming: in response to the dare/meme from Mamie Potter at Can I Do It?, tomorrow I post my closet picture, thus letting it all hang out.



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What to Do for a Bad Mood

First let me say that there's nothing life-and-death troubling me just now. But at the moment I do have computer problems, dental problems, agent problems, and book problems. I'm sure I could think of something else to put on that list if I put my irritated mind to it.

Last night my husband asked me what he could to cheer me (he's a large bright spot, that's for sure.) I told him he could bring me home a gooey dessert. He brought a slice of cheesecake with a layer of chocolate crumbles on the top. Good man. Good cheesecake.

Gooey chocolate dessert: That's one thing to do for a bad mood, as long as the cure doesn't get out of hand. (I also meditated for half a hour which helped too.)

What do you do for a minor but brain-numbing multi-day bad mood? (Better come up with something or I'm likely to get out of hand.)



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Write from Our Roots

Next week I'll be teaching a workshop in the North Carolina mountains titled "Write From Our Roots", for the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

A piece I read yesterday in The New York Times Book Review reminded me that roots can be understood in a variety of ways. In an essay on the excellent Jhumpa Lahiri's new book Unaccustomed Earth, Liesl Schillinger noted that the writer "shows that the place to which you feel the strongest attachment isn't necessarily the country you're tied to by blood or birth: it's the place that allows you to become yourself. This place, she quietly indicates, may not lie on any map."

I ask myself what that "place" is for me and I suspect that it's my love for and memory of my hometown of Wilmington, NC. Paradoxically, it's the place that I tried hardest to be like everyone else.

The biography I'm researching is about an artist who lived there before me and who was at least as peculiar as I was naturally inclined to be.

There's one writer/therapist (Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want) who says that we choose as mates people who have the traits that challenged us as kids. The idea is: this time I'm going to get it right.

Maybe something similar is going on with my selection of subject. But the fact is: I mostly don't regret my efforts back then to fit in. That's a reasonable choice, and can be a bold choice; just as it's possible to be both a feminist and a housewife. (I never know where I'm going to wind up when I start writing one of these posts, same with novels.)

Anyway, as I prepare to teach this short course next week, I'm examining my own roots once again, including those that don't lie on a map.





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All Comparisons Are Odious

I don't know who first said that, but I do think we all suffer from comparisons.

I just visited Debbie Whaley's wonderful blog, Four Angels' Momma . It was such a pleasure and an uplift to be there. After a few minutes, a familiar destructive thought crept in: why am I not writing a warm blog like this, that feels, not sappy, but more like hot chocolate and excellent slippers and a reading chair, even when it's about the beach.

Then I remembered: this is a clear example of why I'm writing this blog as I am. To encourage us each to do our own thing. Me, especially.

I need to write about the sneaking destructive thoughts and how to catch and make friends with them. (This process is for me crucial to the process of writing--grabbing the fleeting creatures and interviewing them.)

So again I say to myself and anyone else interested: the world loses when any of us abandons her/his own dharma and goes to imitating.



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"The Anxiety of Nothingness"

What could possibly ever be scary about writing, painting, the blank page, etc? Rollo May, author of The Courage to Create, says it's fear of going into the chaotic unknown.

“This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness." (quote from La Bloga, a litblog about Chicana/Chicano writers.

My feeling is that it's not necessarily because of the fear of confronting nothing; it's also because of the snakes and spiders one might find.

The novel I'm working on--particularly intensely yesterday--will likely be considered by some to be a rather nasty book. It has some scenes that might be called hard-core.

Why have I written this? I don't altogether know. But I can say that it's a combo of calling and desire and some weird feeling of inevitability, karma or dharma. (I also think it's a damn good book, hope it will appeal to fans of the superb literary and erotic writer Susanna Moore, among others.)

Some years ago, I made a promise to myself to write what emerged from my depths, however strange. I'm doing it, and watching the process with curiousity, defiance, uneasiness, pride, puzzlement, and gusto.



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Writing Trance

Too caught up in my novel to switch gears for blogging today. Hope your project is also deeply engrossing.



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The Power of Each Pair of Hands

At a cleanup at North Carolina's Jordan Lake (near my house) a few weeks ago, about 50 volunteers picked up trash over a period of 4.5 hours. (Previous post title: So Glad I Did)

The results: 110 old tires and roughly 250 large bags of trash.

The bold move: getting out there when you might think lots of people are going and two more hands won't make all that much difference.

The pictures are from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which organized the effort and grilled hotdogs afterwards.





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Ode

Just ran across a magazine "for intelligent optimists" that is both predictably upbeat and appealingly unpredictable. Ode Magazine started in Rotterdam in 1995 and has been publishing out of San Francisco since 2004.

The current April issue includes a piece by William Stimson, a proponent of "radical simplicity," titled "How to Move a Tree: Why Attempting the Impossible Is Always the Right Thing to Do."

And, in the surprising category, is a story: "Tax the Beautiful: Ugly People Should Be Compensated for their Obvious Disadvantage in Society, argues Gonzalo Otaloro." (by Marco Fisher)

Taxing the beautiful is the most outrageous idea I've heard since a few days ago when a Republican candidate for statewide office in NC was reported as favoring merger of the U.S. and Canada.

I can't say that I support either of those, but I love the wide-ranging thinking they show.



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Do One Nice Thing

Doing a nice thing for someone can also be encouraging and empowering, as well as health-improving, for the do-er. (See The Healing Power of Doing Good, by Allan Luks with me, Peggy Payne.)

My local paper Sunday ran a piece by Jane Lampman from The Christian Science Monitor about a woman and her website who promote doing a nice thing every Monday. DoOneNiceThing.com offers specific suggestions and addresses if you'd like to send a nice thing: for example, a packet of pencils, notebook, etc. for a child in Afghanistan. This one idea has resulted in the delivery of 70 tons of school supplies.

The originator of the site, Debbie Tenzer, an LA marketing pro, also found that it perked up her sometimes discouraging Mondays.

I do realize that today is Tuesday, but we could secretly pretend it's Monday and do something nice anyway. As Martha might say, It's a bold thing.



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Cross-Training

If you've been practicing and teaching your art for a while, it's helpful to occasionally become a beginner at something else. This experience refreshes the practitioner's imagination and renews the teacher's empathy.

Years ago, I heard novelist Lee Smith say to a writing workshop group: if you're new at this, I have some sense of how you feel; I just started taking a tap dance class.

Yesterday, I was a construction assistant to my brother Franc Payne, who is renovating a house in Atlantic, NC, on one of the huge sounds behind the Outer Banks.

I'd never done this kind of work before. (The only thing I ever built before was, tellingly, a lectern when I was about nine, and it was wobbly.)

I found I was pretty fair at carrying lumber in and hauling old bricks out, a bit tentative on subtracting fractions fast in my head, and quite wary of the nail gun and the electric saw.

In addition to having had a wonderful day-long visit with my brother, I return to my desk today well-exercised and with a wider view of the world...and probably more patience with the fact that in the arts we're always beginners.



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A Cure from the Creative Unconscious

Yesterday I very reluctantly took a small action toward where I need to be and made a paradoxical leap forward.

Translating that into more concrete terms: A week or so ago, I posted here that I was going to have to relax, at least in my sleep, because I've been damaging my teeth because of jaw tension at night.

My first goal was to convince myself that tension is bad. "To do this I first have to recode my tense muscles as unhealthy. Right now, I view a state of tension as sleek and alert and leopard-like. That's got to change, all the way down in the basement of my mind. I think that once that's done, the rest may come along naturally."

So yesterday I attended a four-hour hypnosis workshop led by my psychologist-hypnotherapist husband Bob (Dick), with the stated aim of learning to see my unconscious tension as bad. (I'd never even felt this clenching, since it only happened in my sleep.)

Here's what happened: I fogged out in trance as Bob led an induction for the group of about a dozen, each of whom had described some desired change. When I "woke up" maybe twenty minutes later, I was in pain from my forehead down to my collarbone. All the bones in my face hurt. At first, I was disappointed, thinking: well, I've only made my trouble worse.

Then I realized: I'd just created the motivation I needed, had just changed my whole view of this tension. There was no question that it was bad; it felt like a killer sinus headache all over my face. That continued until I went to sleep last night.

I am now entirely sure that this kind of tension is bad. It is not strength in any form. It has been grinding me down. And I'm pretty sure that, with this new awareness, my basement mind is convinced and that I'm on the way to being through with it, if not already there.

Putting one's whole mind to work on a problem, of art or anything else, can create some pretty amazing results.



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And He Thinks Writing Is Scary?

We all know how to muster courage in a scary situation. That knowledge is transferable.

I knew a fellow once who was a Marine fighter pilot, but the prospect of finishing his novel made him nervous. He finally marshalled his airplane driver gumption, wrapped up the book and sold it to a major house.

A lot of the time the things that stump us are really the easier ones. I find that if I shift myself into the easeful state of mind of earlier successful ventures then I can ride on that courage to take on the sticky challenge at hand.

From the Charleston Post and Courier, here's another writer with a paradoxical courage story, James Lynah Palmer,author of a collection of stories, "Going Coastal."

"When friend and publisher Donna Huffman asked him to publish stories in the magazine in 2003, he was wary.

'I've always had a fear of writing,' he said. Huffmann suggested he use a pseudonym to write his stories. He took her up on the offer and Stumblin' Jimmy Watermelon was born. "Going Coastal" encompasses three years of these stories. Palmer continues to write stories for the Bluffton Breeze. This is his first book...

When not writing stories, Palmer has made a business of fashioning underwater sculptures, scuba diving to find underwater materials to turn into art. He's turned sunken logs and rocks into fish carvings and carved an angry fictitious "Hugo" character into a rock underwater near Mepkin Abbey. He also finds businesses and corporations to sponsor the projects."

Added note: for some of us, finding corporate sponsors can be a project requiring monumental courage. Often we don't give ourselves credit for large accomplishments simply because they're familiar and routine. Everybody has a few heroic acts in their pockets; it's simply a matter of recognizing them.


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Blunder On!

Here's some encouragement from a blogging minister that can be useful whatever your beliefs:

"...It scares me to think how easy it would be to let fear keep me from doing something God called me to do! And how many others are not doing things God gave them the talent to do because they focus too much on their weaknesses and shortcomings? What are you not doing because you fear ridicule, failure, or revealing your foibles? Maybe by risking being the village idiot occasionally you might help someone else learn a powerful lesson that could change their life."



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More Odd Things

See previous post for explanation. Once you start gathering items, it's hard to stop.


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Odd Things

Innovation is little more than old things put to new uses, or elements combined in new ways.

Recently my office partner Carrie Knowles picked up a piece of curved transparent plastic from the floor near my desk. It turned out to be the handle I'd cut off of the floor protector under my desk chair, no longer needed once the plastic square was in place.

I said: hand it to me, I'll throw it away.

She said: No, I can make something out of this.

Thus began my collection of "odd things." In recent weeks, for Carrie's art, I've been saving the weird bits of stuff that I'd always looked twice and hated to dump but didn't have a use for.

Lots of these items have been unidentifiable; no one would have guessed that that plastic curve was a cut-off handle from a floor protector. This latest batch is mostly items that are recognizable. I'm particularly proud of that big-eyed fishing lure, which I found in the woods near neighboring Jordan Lake. I would have also had trouble throwing away the wonderfully deep divider from a box of jelly beans.

Now these items are on their way to becoming art supplies. I already saw what Carrie did with a sack of corks I sent her way. She cut them lengthwise into thin layers and used them as stamps for printmaking. These cork-stamps produce very interesting patterns.

Thinking of junk as art resources has done at least as much for my way of seeing as it has done for Carrie's store of useful odd things.

Altered Intersection is a site you might like to visit, "...where thrift store scores, found objects, and natural materials come together."

Looking at this kind of art helps loosen up my brain.



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The Daily Courage to Write

Whosoever can drive a car can manage any of the risks that art and self-expression involve.

Just think about what's involved in driving, the constant risk, and cars in the opposing lane passing at high speeds only a few feet away. And yet we're unworried enough to talk on the phone, adjust the heat and the radio, and admire the scenery, while we're hurtling along.

I wouldn't think of handling a chain saw--a machine like that? with a sharp blade?--I'm not good at machinery, much too dangerous. But piloting my own speed craft--that I can do in the dark.

What all this signifies to me is that it's a matter of growing accustomed to the practice and the risk. What we do every day --writing, for example--ceases to feel so monumental. The resulting relaxation is good for the imagination, the productivity, and the pleasure in the process.



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Teeth Clenching

This morning my dentist told me I've developed some problems from clenching my teeth in my sleep and from bone loss from osteoporosis.

Now it's mid-afternoon and, in a true fit of self-absorption, I've thought of very little but my mouth since. This pondering has focused on: blaming myself for being tense and wondering what else I've done wrong to cause this. And on how much it will cost to get it fixed. And how bad it could get.

(The form for my worrying was writing a one-page summary of a book that would help me deal with this, that I wish I had today.)

I do know that my immediate focus on money is in large part to ward off awareness of aging and eventual death, and the question of whether I've played my cards right so far in this life. (Quite enough to make a person clench her teeth.)

Just now I talked with my clinical psychologist-hypnotist husband Bob on the phone; and he had some good ideas.

What my strategy comes down to (aside from dental work) is boldly relaxing, which seems to me an oxymoron. To do this I first have to recode my tense muscles as unhealthy. Right now, I view a state of tension as sleek and alert and leopard-like. That's got to change, all the way down in the basement of my mind. I think that once that's done, the rest may come along naturally.



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Adaptive or Innovative

Just ran across an idea on a three-year-old issue of a creativity ezine about styles of creativity. Citing work by Charles Prather and Lisa Gundry in Blueprints for Innovation, the article describes two innate approaches: adaptive innovation, which is working to fine-tune or patch up existing systems; and innovative, which is creating an entirely new system.

For a writer that comes down to: do you prefer doing your first drafts or revisions? I'd rather think that I'm innovative, but in fact I prefer revising.

And of course we all have to do some of both. Helpful to know one's preference, though. For me a first draft is best approached as getting something down as fast as possible, then settle into the warm bath of playing in the story, once I know its outlines.



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