Writing with Witnesses

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P1040083Yesterday the Writing Lab had its fifth annual end-of-year party and reading. I wanted to post something–even though today has been a little crazy at my house–just to say “What an amazing group of people.”

We are a small but dedicated band of writers, all of us in some way associated with Everett Community College. We meet once a week for an hour and half. And we write. We are not a critique group, though after we write for 40 minutes or so, we are welcome to read some work aloud, and sometimes there is a very gentle critique. Mostly what we do is witness one another. In fact, one member, Louise, calls it “Writing with Witnesses.”

For a long time, when I was teaching alongside everything else I try to do, the Writing Lab kept me alive. I have a very sturdy habit of writing in a journal every morning, but writing for an audience, even a very small, intimate audience of 3 or 4 other writers is a gift.

If you’re looking for a writing group, you may want to think, first, about what you want from your writing group. Maybe you’re ready for critique, but if you’re not, you will still benefit from having some witnesses to your process. (Lauren Sapala wrote about this topic on her blog this week, too.)

Good luck finding your witnesses.

And thank you to mine (on the blog, too!).

 

Quotable

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penThis morning, in a contemplative mood, I have been rereading old journals–the big Lee Valley, bound journals go all the way back to 2001! I keep finding quotations and poems and amazing passages about my ideal life (I have been fantasizing about leaving the college for at least 10 years–that in itself is a revelation). I’m putting the notebooks in chronological order and replacing them on the shelf. I’m trying not to feel foolish…and slow.

“Listening to your heart is not simple. Finding out who you are is not simple. It takes a lot of hard work and courage to get to know who you are and what you want.” -Sue Bender

The shooting at SPU, where I taught briefly, is part of this despondency. I remind myself that I loved my students and got a lot back from them, that I learned as much from them as they ever learned from me. The key is not to recriminate, but to learn and grow, to keep doing the hard work and showing the courage to know myself and what I want.

Be a big cup!

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“Don’t be a thimble when you can be a big cup. Expand your capacity to be happy and fulfilled, to create and enjoy your creations by expanding your heart and generous spirit. Lighten up. Hang loose. Take it easy. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Know that you are a holy vessel, a child of the universe, and all your desires are only a natural urge to exercise your divinity.” –Sonia Choquette (Your Heart’s Desire, 197)

I have been thinking for several days about sharing this quote. Probably my previous blog post, “Keeping it real…small” inspired this ramble, and in order to get work done it does help to keep it small, to write “in the cracks” (as Steven Pressfield puts it in his blogpost today…nice synchronicity there).

When I’m reluctant to write, when I’m feeling stuck, when I’ve had feedback that makes me want to quit, it really, really helps to think small.

Okay, Bethany, what if you just write for 15 minutes? Okay, Bethany, if you can’t write for 15 minutes, can you write for 5 minutes?

Just 5 minutes! How can I say no to that?

I use the same strategy when I’m negotiating with my daughters to get just a little work done. Five minutes with the guitar, how hard can that be! Five minutes on the science homework…  They can’t say no to five minutes, and neither can I.

And, here’s the key to how the whole thing works: Five minutes ALWAYS turns into more. And that’s where the “big cup” begins. 

One of my students, a 17-year old who had the world by the tail, recently told me, “I am very ambitious.” She wanted to be a novelist and she wanted me to tell her how to do that. Wow. The chutzpah!

But, yes. First, you have to imagine it, and you might as well imagine it big. Be ambitious for your dreams. To get yourself rolling, today, you might begin with a thimble.

 

 

 

Keeping It Real…Small

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Yesterday I typed for a couple of hours and discovered that I have waaaayyyy more words than I thought. Around 25,000 in fact and maybe slightly more. My original, math-challenged goal was to write 30,000 words in May (math-challenged because I thought I would do this by writing 500 words per day). It’s astonishing (to me) to see that I almost made it.

Today my brain was all over the place. I wrote my 5 pages — handwritten, scrawled — of 500 words and thought, sadly, that I probably shouldn’t bother typing these up. That bad. Some days, it’s like that.

Yesterday, however, I read this quote from Maya Angelou, and it gives me heart:

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.” And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.” –Maya Angelou

When I let my goals get huge and grand, I get discouraged. Keeping my goals small, oddly enough, allows them to expand. If you keep writing, the muse will show up. Just write. If you don’t have lots of time, write a little. Write a very, very little if that’s all you can do. But pick up your pen and see what happens.

Do what you love to do. Even if you have to keep it small (for now).