Empty page

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, the page remains empty before you. Either empty, or, more likely, filled with innumerable starts and scratchings out. When faced with such an empty page, or any other failure to progress, you probably have a few things you do, habitually, any of which may vary in their usefulness, but which you return to repeatedly whenever you are confronted by these challenges. 

 

I too have a range of strategies that I default to in difficult times. (No prizes for guessing that opining philosophically in a blog post is one of them). These vary in their utility, so I won’t pretend that I have the authoritative list of ways to refocus, recommit and restart. But I can offer this advice, which I have found to be effective, both for myself and for others who I have witnessed in the same struggle: 

 

Do something different. 

 

Or even, do something differently. Identify in yourself the response you default to, and switch it up. Introduce some element of novelty to your situation, whether by taking a different action, seeking a different creative stimulus, or even just by physically moving in an unfamiliar way. It fires up the unhabituated parts of your brain, and allows you – even briefly – to think in new ways, using your whole brain. This is where the inspiration occurs. 

 

You will likely return to your default patterns soon enough, but your return to your usual productive habits will be fuelled by the momentary insights that your thought-sojourn gave you. With a more integrated way of thinking, the page will fill quickly, and well. 

A long time gone

He talked to her of the great waste of years between then and now. A long time gone. And it was pointless, he said, to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell, Inman said, for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left only with your scars to mark the void. All you can choose is to go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you. 

~ Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

Write.

Words are powerful.

Use them wisely, and well.

Tell the stories that matter.

Speak the truth that lies in your heart.

Find the words that you need to hear.

Receive them, and share them.

Be fearless.

Be kind.

Write.

Understanding ~ Ignorance

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his [or her] understanding.    ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Until you understand a writer's understanding, presume yourself ignorant of his [or her] ignorance.    ~ not Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Truth

'Truth seems to want expression. Unacknowledged truth saps your energy and keeps you and your characters wired and delusional. But when you open the closet door and let what was inside out, you can get a rush of liberation and even joy.' 

~ Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird 

The greater truth

"A lot of what frightens people about writing is this precise idea that once we put something on the page we are rendered vulnerable. There is truth to that, but the greater truth, for me, is that once I put something on the page I am also rendered a little less vulnerable. I have created for myself a piece of turf on which I am willing to stand." 

From The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron

Regardez bien

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.*

Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

Le Petit Prince by lab604 @ Flickr

* This is my secret. It's very simple: you can only see clearly with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye. 

the strange pull

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull 

of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

~ Rumi

Caveat

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. ~ Richard Bach

This life of yours

Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness.  That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

(cited by Summer Pierre in The artist in the office)

Write every day

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world. 

~ Robert McKee

I wrote a lot by Mullenkedheim @ Flickr 

(Denoue)mental!

Writers live twice.  They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and detail.

~ Natalie Goldberg, Writing down the bones.

Well, my darling denouementees, time for an apology regarding my lengthy absence.  It’s been pretty busy up on the high road to denouement over the last month, … er, couple of months.

My advice to you all: do not try to combine tertiary study with the writing life. Ever. 

So, what have I missed in that time?

Firstly, I was invited to co-present a “get started writing” workshop for members of the community at the Tea Tree Gully Library.  Life is a wonderful and mysterious thing, and as I stepped up to share the great joy and reward of writing, I was answered by a very personal and life-affirming magical moment. (More on that, later).

And then there was the supreme excitement of the announcement of the finalists in the words and writing category of the Sydney Writers’ Centre Best Australian Blog competition. (More on that, too). 

And if it was at all possible to top that, I did, when I flew out to the National Library of Australia for a week-long Writing Masterclass with none other than Australia’s biggest-selling (and much loved) author, Bryce Courtenay.  (Definitely more on that).

And then I came home, and ploughed through the end of the Semester on nothing but single-minded determination and a packet of jaffas.  And in the sleep-deprived haze that followed, I had my first personal feedback session with the Mutant Stepchildren.  What’s not to love about a writers’ group that calls itself the Mutant Stepchildren?  (More on that, and perhaps I’ll wax lyrical about the art of feedback, too). 

It has been such a tasty slice of life pie that I’ve been fully taken up with consuming it, and I’ve had nothing left over to blog with.   But I’ve been storing it up, my darlings, oh yes I have.  Like they say, writing is life lived twice…   And you will be reliving it with me shortly.

Double life

“Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice:  once in reality and once more in the mirror which waits always before and behind [her].” ~ Donald Murray



Reflections (A) by camil tulcan @ flickr