More Thoughts on Being Kept

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caffe ladroAt last night’s workshop, Shawna and her students didn’t need to talk about resistance. They brought notebooks and pens! They also brought up some additional important points about keeping a journal, and they jogged my mind to come up with a couple others.

  • Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or penmanship. Just write.
  • Writing in a journal can be a lot like meditation. It’s about observing and not judging. I suggested that one might avoid whining in a journal entry, but even whining can be therapeutic. You put it on the page and then you can see it, and maybe you can do something about it. Write about what you can do, too.
  • You don’t have to write in a journal. You can draw, you can doodle. (A good book to help you combine the writing and doodling is Gabriele Rico’s Writing the Natural Way.)
  • One student said she keeps a journal already, but that it’s boring. I think that my best advice would be when trying to change up a practice is, again, to start small. Imagine you’re drawing your entry. Describe an object using shape words and color and texture. Add one sentence about how the object makes you feel.
  • When you have a lot of entries compiled, you might try opening your journal to an old page and using one thing on that page as a prompt for a new entry. An old dream, or something odd you ate that day months ago can trigger new thoughts.

I’m a Kept Woman

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This evening I am taking a class on “Mindful Living” from my friend Shawna Michels, and I get to talk for a few minutes about keeping a journal.

I think I can credit Heather Sellers with the denigration of that phrase “keeping a journal.” She said (somewhere) that she didn’t want a “kept journal,” that it reminded her too much of a “kept woman.” Personally, I like the idea of keeping a journal — it makes me think of keeping it close, keeping it with me, keeping it daily…even being kept by it.

I keep two journals. One is a big, bound book that I buy (several at a time) from Lee Valley. I write in it every morning, usually for 20 minutes or so.

Lee Valley’s Everyman’s Journal

I also like to pack around a smaller journal, one that will fit in whatever bag I’m carrying that day. And if you find yourself at all resistant to the idea of keeping your own journal, this is the one I want to especially recommend.

Because, in truth, there’s nothing magic about writing in the early morning. I know people who keep a notebook beside the bed so they can write when they first wake — so they can get their dreams down, I guess. These people would disapprove of my lazier — or at least less disciplined — habit of getting coffee first, maybe reading first, sometimes doing my “real” writing first. In my opinion, there’s no one right way to do this. Being in a liminal state is a good idea (like the threshold state between sleep and waking), but I find I can slip into that state pretty easily — I’ve had decades of practice, after all!

But how do you establish a journal writing habit, when you don’t have one, and perhaps can’t even imagine one? If you’re still with me, here are my five suggestions for getting a journal habit underway.

1. Buy a journal that you will enjoy writing in. While you’re at it, pick up a pen you’ll like, too. They don’t have to be expensive to be pleasurable. A spiral bound notebook with a tiger on the cover is just as good as the fancy leather ones. But make it special to you.

2. Write every day. Really. If you’re just getting a habit underway, you want to get it underway. Later you might cut back to 4 or 5 days per week, but just for now, try for a daily habit. Like brushing your teeth or combing your hair, it will soon feel intrinsic to your routine. Writing more than once a day is okay, too, by the way. It will help you establish a habit of beginning to write.

3. You do not have to write for a long time. In fact, if you’re feeling considerable resistance, you can fight it by reducing your expectations. Write for 15 minutes — or 5! (I predict that your 5 minutes will quickly turn into more. You can read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way for inspiration to write more…but here I just want to open up a little space.)

4. If you don’t know what to write, try writing down your questions about the process. You can even write a numbered list of them and challenge yourself to write as many as you can. (Lists are my go-to strategy when I’m feeling balky.) If you don’t know what to write, try describing what’s in front of you. Five minutes of description, how hard can that be?

5. I know that computers are here to stay; I will even admit to liking computers. But I have my limits. (The last time I taught my Creative Nonfiction class, a student wrote her first freewrite on her I-Phone!) Let’s agree, however, that technology, while useful, can also be a tad bit overwhelming; there’s just so much of it. Your writing can get lost in there. Please, please, please give writing in a cool notebook, with a pen, with your hand a try. If you don’t believe me, take an experimental approach and see what happens.

If you’re still wondering what to write, there are lots and lots and lots of books with writing prompts. One of my current favorites is The Pen and the Bell by Holly Hughes and Brenda Miller. Another (especially for fiction writers) is The 3 a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kitely. The old standard, however, is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. (There are lots of websites and blogs with prompts, too.)

You can keep a food journal with a five-minute a day habit.

Still dragging your feet? One more word about resistance. Okay, two more words.

One) There is a neat little book called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield that in brief (and humorous) chapters may help you conquer your resistance to writing (or anything).

Two) The poet Rilke said that the fiercest dragons guard the most precious treasures — in other words, if you are over-the-top resistant to the idea of keeping a journal, it may very well be because there is something magical awaiting you.

And now, I won’t need to print a handout for Shawna’s class. (See, technology really is useful!)

The Wisdom Available at a Poetry Reading

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I’ll be reading poetry tonight in Wallingford — just on the open mike, J. I. Kleinberg is the featured reader — and you may as well come along. (Follow this link to learn more: http://easyspeakseattle.com/welcome-2/previous-featured-artists/j-i-kleinberg/)

I assume there will be some tributes to northwest poet Carolyn Kizer, who died last week at the age of 89. Several years ago, after a reading, I stood in line until about 10:00 at night to get my copy of her collected works signed. When I reached her, I blurted out, “I have little kids–I shouldn’t be out this late–my husband is going to be so mad!”

She looked up at me and her eyes widened, then she said, “Good!”

From the New York Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/arts/artsspecial/carolyn-kizer-pulitzer-winning-poet-dies-at-89.html

Fallen

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I think it was my friend Carla who told me that the opposite of Lent, or Lenten, that 40 days preceding Easter, is

Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

Fallen. (I think this was fall of 2011, when I blogged for 40 days in a row.) My mother, after sleeping pretty much steadily for two days this week, was evaluated by paramedics on Thursday morning and transported to St. Anthony’s hospital in Gig Harbor.

Mom’s severe UTI (urinary tract infection), even after she was rehydrated and awake, and more or less alert, left her more confused than usual. Yesterday (Friday) I felt like Alice after the fall down the rabbit hole. It wasn’t that nothing made sense, it was just an…alternate sense. She wasn’t in the hospital, I was. When the nurse asked her name, she said “Bethany.” I was her sister, then I was my sister. I told her, I’m not the redhead, that’s Sharyl. And she said, Since when? She told a nurse that I’ve been combing my own hair for quite a while. I finally figured out that she thought I was my niece, Misti, who used to cut and perm Mom’s hair. When I tried to straighten her out, she said, Misti is a little girl! She can’t cut my hair!

Well, this went on…all day. I read aloud from our current Agatha Christie novel. I went to the cafeteria for my lunch and then I went to my car and napped for an hour. Later I coaxed her into watching some TV with me. (At the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, she turned to me and said, in perfect wonderment, “So he turned into a cat?” It must be pretty amazing to live in my mother’s head.)

Toward the end of the day she decided that she would move back into the farmhouse. She wanted me to call my nephew and tell him he would have to move out. At least we were in the present day (until she asked where my father was living!). I helped her with dinner, and then I left. I got turned around on highway 16 and ended up taking the ferry, even though Gig Harbor is pretty close to I-5. I began to think of how it isn’t just my mother — we ALL get turned around. I see a shadow from the corner of my eye and I disregard it, or I look more closely to see that of course it is just a shadow; my mother thinks there’s a man standing in the corner. I think about Mom’s sisters, visiting her on her birthday; Mom thinks of her sister Evelyn and then she tells me what Evelyn is telling her. I notice that the woman who brings mom’s dinner has gray hair and looks like a grandmother, and Mom asks me, Was that Mother? Did she cook this food? (And maybe that was why Mom ate better last night than I’ve seen her eat in a long time.)

I wish my Dad were still alive. I wish they were still living on the farm and I could visit and have them take care of me. But I know that isn’t reality, so I don’t say it out loud. Mom says it.

But maybe that’s a little bit what I do, after all. Because what is a writer but someone who gets to entertain every fantasy, every fancy that comes into her head? Or at least select fantasies and fancies. I get to share them with you, here, and I get to take out my manuscript and, well, not so much make stuff up, as be with the stuff that makes me up.