Plays Well with Others

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I promised a blogpost about writing in community, and even though I’ve now been thinking about this post for a few days, I’m still not quite sure how to shape it.

So I’ll just tell you what I’ve been thinking.

Because I facilitate a writing group (The Writing Lab), which used to be closely associated with my college, and is still loosely associated with it, I frequently talk to people who are curious about our group, but don’t “get it.” I don’t write in groups, one faculty member told me (with a sort of sneer).

I’ve also met people who would like to join us, but “can’t” write in a group. It’s a solitary process for them, I guess. Someone said to me that there’s a reason knitting isn’t a team sport (except people do get together in knitting circles, right?). They would be willing to show up at the end and share their work, I’ve been told. One of these people added, “I think you would enjoy it.” I wasn’t sure how to take that.

The group, as it’s evolved, isn’t about entertaining one another. It’s more like holding our feet to the fire. We are writers, not having-writ-eners (?). (There are critique groups, to which one brings work in draft, of course, and they can be very useful.) Nothing new about this, as there are Natalie Goldberg Writing Down the Bones type groups all over the place.

We don’t write from prompts (we used to, and then we kind of went off in our own direction.) Our group is maybe a little like AA or Weight Watchers. Except instead of quitting alcohol or losing weight, we’ve made a commitment to get together and write. Some of us have made a specific commitment to write on a certain project (I now work only on poetry when I’m at Lab and this is slowly helping me to find my way toward a new manuscript). And even though the other members are receptive and never-critical and pleased in fact with almost everything, having made a commitment to them makes it easier to follow through on that commitment.

You don’t have to travel to belong to a group. Julia Cameron suggests contacting a friend (by email or text, or a quick phone message) to say “I’m going to write now,” and, later, to say “I wrote ____ words” or “____pages.” And there are lots of internet groups for people more technologically savvy than I am. But I like having actual people physically sitting at a table with me.

More than anything else, though, more than sitting at the table even, is the belief that we share: the belief that writing is valuable, that it is worth doing.

“If you believe you can change — if you make it a habit — the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occurs — and becomes automatic — it’s not only real, it starts to seem inevitable, the thing, as [William] James wrote, that bears ‘us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.’

“The way we habitually think of our surroundings and ourselves create the world that each of us inhabit.”
–Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (273)

By the way, once Duhigg got to William James, he had completely won me over. You could read just the Afterward and Appendix and be inspired (though I think you would then be inspired to read the whole book).

And, please notice, I wouldn’t have written this post at all, had I not promised it to you, dear community of blog-readers. Having a community supporting any goal is a gift.

What do you hope to change?

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color outside the lines“This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.” Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (273)

Before you change your life, it helps to know what exactly it is that you want to change.

So, Bethany, what would you like to see more of in your writing life?

  • If I had a more organized send-out habit, that would be wonderful.
  • If I could be more organized, I think that would help me to finish more work, and so have it available to be sent out.
  • On those days when I’m not driving to see my mom or on some other errand, I’d like to actually write for several hours. Several? 3 or 4? 6?
  • If I could go to bed earlier, and fall sleep earlier, I could get up earlier in the morning, and write, even on days when I’m traveling. As mornings are my absolute, best time of day to do creative work, this would be ideal.

The other day, I suggested that you jot down what you want to accomplish. But now, what does one DO with that list? The key, I’m convinced, is to focus on one item, and break it into parts. Into the smallest parts possible. Or as some writers would emphasize that phrase: The. Smallest. Parts. Possible.

In order to send out my current mss., what small actions can I take?

Find the emails about PEARL’S ALCHEMY that I’ve sent most recently. Draft a new email. Find addresses for all the agents and editors I met with last summer. Get a copy of the PNWA 2014 program?

Decide what exactly I need to fix in the closing section of the book, in order to follow up an initial request, or a 50 page excerpt, with the whole book.

When I look at the small parts, just one each morning, it doesn’t sound that difficult.

In her book, Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper SARK includes a wheel of small, intentional actions. If I still had the book, I’d take a picture of her version — but here’s mine (messier, less colorful) for this project of 1) making a list; 2) choosing one item; 3) breaking it into small parts; 4) figuring out what small, action I can take next.

sark2If I’m remembering it right, SARK’s wheel says “5 seconds or 5 minutes.” When you’re trying to create a new habit, the smallest action can help. Alongside other small actions, repeated over time, it can start everything sliding downhill.

One action, I find, encourages another.

In my next blogpost, I want to add 2 cents more to this thread on habits — this time about finding or creating a supportive community.

Ted Kooser, The Wheeling Year

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Ted Kooser’s The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book has been a favorite on my reading list this year. He doesn’t claim “poetry” for these prose pieces, but they sound like poetry to me. I mean to give the book to a friend, to make a gift of it in all its luscious detail. Instead, I keep carrying it around and not giving it, rereading and writing out these meditative pieces in my own notebook.

Here is one from February:

Maybe we carry too much through the door from the past, propped open with a broom that has swept up so much sentiment it has bent to the shape of its sweeping — like a stiff old floor-length skirt still waltzing — then across the wide porch where those we love, living and dead, sit rocking and talking, all drinking longnecks and laughing together, none of them offering help.

Then over the grass, box after box, to the rented U-Haul that is our life, already stuffed with all we haven’t been able to part with, stale with dead dreams and packed so hastily we will never be able to get to the wisdom we lugged out early and loaded on first.

Twenty-nine dollars a day is the going rate, about what a person could live on if he had to, and the past is right there in the rearview mirror, following close, painted with slogans, its springs bent down from all we ever were. (8)

Laura Kasischke, “I am the coward who did not pick up the phone”

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Mary Cassatt, “Maternal Caress”

After an argument — over the phone, at dinner — with my youngest daughter (I am supposed to be on a getaway with my husband), I spent a sleepless night. This morning when writing in my journal didn’t resolve all my angst, I went on-line and looked up articles on how to fight fair with teenage daughters. Don’t try to oppose her growing up and finding her own identity. Don’t sweat the small stuff (hair, clothes). Be awake to the big stuff (drugs, alcohol, sex). Look for the win-win. Be responsible. Expect responsibility. Expect that your daughter will want to be with her friends rather than you; spend time with her anyway.

Then I looked for “I am” poems, and I found this. Somehow, it made me see some possibilities I hadn’t before. When I looked up the poet, Laura Kasischke, at the Poetry Foundation, I found this commentary:

“Kasischke’s poetry is noted for its intelligent, honest portrayal of domestic and familial life; its explosively accurate imagery and dense soundscapes; and its idiosyncratic use of narrative. According to Stephen Burt in the New York Times: ‘No poet has tried so hard to cut through suburban American illusion while respecting the lives, young and old, that it nurtures or saves. No poet has joined the chasm of ontological despair to the pathos of household frustration so well as Kasischke at her best.’”

The chasm of ontological despair IN household frustration!

Now that you’ve drafted (yesterday?) a list of I am lines, maybe this will give you an idea of where to go next.

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone

I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know.
So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into
the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking
back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of
some loved one’s screams.

How was I to know?

I am the warrior who killed a sparrow with a cannon. I am the
guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged
holding only an empty glove. Oh —

the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of.
Oh, the commotion in the attic of it — in the front yard, in the back yard,
in the driveway — all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the
one who closed the windows and said, This has nothing to with us.

In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.

(Mama, what’s happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

I am the one who sings, The bones and shells of us.
The organic broth of us.
The zen gong of us.

Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious.