Writing the Circle: Prompt #2

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Your 2nd prompt for WRITING THE CIRCLE

(If you missed the first prompt, click here. For the introduction to this short series of FREE prompts, go here.)

“Without the motivation of desire, without hunger, you would achieve nothing since you would want for nothing.” –Laura Day

Laura Day’s The Circle is all about making a wish and turning it into reality. Today, I want you to home in on what that wish can POSSIBLY be.

When I work one-on-one with students on this exercise, I see two ways in which they get stuck. First, we have learned so well how to squelch our desires, to not get “too big for our britches,” to be ashamed of our desires, that it’s hard to remember or even to recognize what we really want.

I do this all the time. I get what my husband wants and what my daughters want all mixed up with what I want. I suspect I have spent a lot of my life trying to keep my desires way way in the background, to keep myself small and invisible so that I didn’t draw attention to myself. (What happened to the Bethany that wanted to learn to scuba dive, walk the Great Wall of China, own a horse, climb a mountain?)

A second way we get stuck is—believe it or not—the flip side of gratitude, or of “gratitudes,” those lists of things we’re thankful for, or that we feel we should be grateful for.

In other words, we feel guilty if we aren’t grateful for what we have. But we can be grateful, and still want what we want. We can even be grateful for our desires! Sure, some of them may turn out to be false paths, but if you never allow yourself to explore them, how will you know?

We want to write a best-selling novel or have an award-winning book of poems, but once we finally admit what we want, we then spend the next several minutes (or weeks, or months) beating ourselves up for wanting what we know eludes so many other writers.

But in this exercise, there’s only approval. The longer your list, the better!

As my friend Louise says whenever anyone says, “I wish that I could…”:

“Permission granted.”

In the next prompt, I’ll be writing about action steps, but I’ve found that the first action step I always have to take is to give myself permission to want what I want. (Well, to figure out what it is that I want, and then to own it.) Only then can you come up with what steps are necessary. When I wanted to travel, for instance, my first actionable step was to get a passport.

So here’s your assignment:

In your Writing the Circle journal, list everything you’d like to create for your life. As I said above, at this stage, don’t censor yourself. Write down every possible desire that comes to mind. Wild, crazy, sane, everyday, general, specific. It can be messy! You aren’t choosing, not yet; you’re simply bringing into focus what you might want.

Of course you can list anything you want to create, but I want to encourage you (in this context) to think about what kind of writing / writing life you’re imagining.

Set your timer for 10 minutes (if you’re comfortable with more, by all means, go for 15 or 20).  If you’re floundering, try setting a numeric goal, 8 things or 10 or 20.  Let’s say you start with 20. Or–to borrow an exercise from How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci by Michael Gelb–you can go for 100. If you’re like me, you’ll find that the higher goal will tease things out that you haven’t thought of in years. The higher number will also help you get really really specific. Try breaking down your desires into more manageable chunks.

For instance, I might start with, “I want to write about my mother.” But what are 5 or 10 ways I can imagine that unfolding?

  • a poem about how she named the trees when she was a girl
  • a blog post about what my mother taught me about gardening and how that relates to writing
  • a book of her recipes that I can give to my nieces and nephews
  • a poem about mom and Nancy Drew
  • an essay about how she read nothing but mysteries
  • a mystery novel or novella about a woman who reads nothing but mysteries

So what do you dream of creating? Write it down, and, remember, NO JUDGMENT.

Step two for today’s work (you can spread this out over two days if you’d like) is to go back over your long list and CIRCLE only a few items that you really, really, really, really, really want. Yes, you can do the work of developing action steps for almost anything–but what are you willing and ready to begin working toward now?

Once again, I’d love to hear from you. Email me (bethany.alchemy@gmail.com), or leave a comment below.  I’ll have one more post later this week; if you would like to take part in the entire FREE series, all you have to do is subscribe to my blog.

Help Is Available

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I just turned in my grades for fall quarter 2018! Whew — that’s over! (Woo hoo!)

I don’t know what I was thinking when I signed up to teach two courses this fall. Oh, yes, I do know. I was feeling a very evil pinch of “empty-nestitis” (just made up that word), and I was also feeling that my darling mother was going to outlive me. So if my baby (19 years old) didn’t need me, and Mom didn’t need me to be constantly hovering, then I may as well go back to work. That’s what I was thinking.

When I first contacted the college, in August, I was thinking that I’d just teach 2 classes per quarter for a few years — get my health insurance paid again — earn a little income — etc. Then, as you know, the universe had a big ol’ laugh at me.

My mother died.

And even though I adored the majority of my students and drew a lot of energy from them, even though I’m grateful to them for being a much-needed distraction from everything else, I discovered that I really, really do not have time to trek up to north Everett every day to teach freshman composition.

To borrow a bit from Emily Dickinson’s lexicon, “My business is to write.”

As I graded this last set of papers — an assignment intended as a light-hearted research paper requiring students to 1) talk to a reference librarian, 2) interview a parent or other person from a previous generation, 3) quote and use in-text citations, and 4) create a Works Cited page a la MLA guidelines — I was amazed at how many students had decided to do the bare minimum.

I get that they perhaps hadn’t written this sort of paper before, or recently, but — hey — I was right here! I kept telling them how many hours I was at my desk every afternoon. I arranged to have specific hours available to meet with them. I gave them models to look at. I went over the models in great (excruciating) detail.

Why would a student decide to fake a bibliography or omit it altogether, or do 2 sources (when they were to have 5), or not use a single quotation in a paper that was all about learning how to use sources and quote from them? Why would they give up…

WHEN I OFFERED AGAIN AND AGAIN TO WORK WITH THEM INDIVIDUALLY AND GIVE THEM ALL THE HELP THEY NEEDED?

In truth? I think it is really, really human of us to go it alone, to get too busy or to believe we’re too busy to ask for help, to throw in the towel, to tell ourselves it’s impossible……to forge our way forward step by painful, bleeding step……when all the time there’s a bus pulled up at the corner, just waiting to offer a ride.

I do it, too.

This isn’t a post for pitching my services, just a reminder — help is available! Look around! Ask! (It’s a reminder for me, too, of course.)

And, should you want help from me, you know how to get it.

Meanwhile,  I hope you write.

Bethany

[photos from pixabay.com]

Why do I blog?

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Two of my girls dragged me to our discount theater last night to see A Simple Favor. It stars Anna Kendrick–they fell in love with her during her Pitch Perfect days–and my youngest daughter has seen A Simple Favor five times. They said I had to see it.

It was a strange movie, and strangely entertaining.

But among other, jazzier plot points, Kendrick’s character has a vlog that goes viral and hits its one-millionth follower.

This gave me pause. A million followers?

I have 40 followers.

I woke up this morning, thinking I should delete my blog and go do other things (which I largely do, anyway). And then I remembered a video I saw recently about cows, about (specifically) how hard it is to impress a cow. (If I could find it, I’d post a link here…but maybe someone deleted the video when they realized the cows wouldn’t care?)

In the interest of full disclosure, the cow video got me because I’ve been writing a poem about cows.

But, more to the point, I thought it was time to revisit “why I blog,” and why I will probably keep blogging. So–

  1. I started blogging as a kind of commonplace book, a place to post quotations and links that I wanted to be able to find again.
  2. I started blogging because writing has taught me so much, and I thought I would enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with my writer friends.
  3. A few people–a cousin and my friend Janet B., for two examples–wanted me to share poems (this, when I was writing a poem a day), and it seemed a blog would be a good way to do that.
  4. Once I started blogging I discovered that–for whatever reason–I don’t get all uptight and perfection-y about writing blogposts. I just type stuff and go over it a couple times for errors and post. It reminds me of showing up to teach at the college–ready or not, here it is.
  5. For a new reason, I recently made a commitment to blog about my journey through The Circle, and I’ve yet to carry out that commitment.

And, just for good measure, here’s a quote that I came across today that definitely applies:

You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite steadily, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.  -ANTON CHEKHOV (found on Advice to Writers)

Writing THE CIRCLE

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If you follow my blog, then you already know that I read a lot of books. I love sharing my books with friends and passing them along to the exact right person. But every so often, I come across a book that is so wonderful, I want to buy copies for all my friends.

One of those books is THE CIRCLE, by Laura Day.

Laura Day has written a number of successful books, including PRACTICAL INTUITION, WELCOME TO YOUR CRISIS, and HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH. But THE CIRCLE is my go-to favorite. I’ve read it several times, and I think I have an effective, “anti-woo woo” way to share it with you.

To my mind, THE CIRCLE isn’t necessarily “woo woo” (what do we mean by that? Spiritual? And what would be wrong with spiritual?), unless you want it to be. In the Prologue, Day reassures readers that The Circle is “not in conflict with any religious or spiritual beliefs,” and my experience has borne this out. You could understand it as an Irish Caim, a blessing circle. But it is not magic, and it is not about any realm of being other than the one we live in right now.

As Day explains, you have probably walked the circle before. My most powerful past experience of it came when my husband, Bruce, had a major health crisis. He was already in the hospital, and had undergone successful surgery. It was Mother’s Day and our daughters were 8, 8, and 2. My parents had been helping out, and planned to go home later that day, as Bruce was scheduled to be released. I had everything under control (hah!)—I had even worked out my teaching schedule so that I would miss only one day of classes! Long story short, my mother got up that Sunday morning and cancelled everything I had orchestrated for my Mother’s Day. She told me that I was to go to the hospital, by myself, and see Bruce.

Long story short, the supervising nurse met me as I got out of the elevator. My husband was hallucinating, he had ripped out his stitches and his catheter, and done some other damage to himself, and he was headed back into surgery.

If I wanted this introduction to be twice as long, I could tell you the astounding number of coincidences (besides my mother’s initial insight) that then ensued–including a woman I scarcely knew showing up at the hospital to take me to lunch because it was Mother’s Day and she thought it would be nice to do something for me. For the next ten days, I lived inside a circle where the right conversations, unexpected help, and loving encouragement flowed to me.

Here’s how Laura Day has helped me to understand this personal story.

Sometimes, often in a crisis, we get intensely focused on what we need. It’s kind of like the way radio waves are all around us, all the time, but we don’t always have a receiver tuned in to them. When my husband had his health crisis, I tuned in.

THE CIRCLE is about creativity; specifically, it is about living and creating consciously.  And it can help you to tune in to what you
really really really want to create in your life.

Day has divided the journey into nine parts, with three main headings: Initiation, Apprenticeship, and Mastery. My favorite subsections might be ritual and synchronicity, and these are the parts I always incorporate into my own classes, even my intro-to-composition classes that I used to teach at my college. (Now, of course, I’m sharing all of it!)

I hope I’ve intrigued you with this introduction. Over the next several weeks I’ll be writing my way through The Circle and I’d love it if you could join me.

Of course I recommend purchasing Laura’s book, but the posts will be enough to move you all the way through what I am calling WRITING THE CIRCLE.

In order to get started, all you have to do is subscribe to my blog. (See the link below.) If you want to know a little more, three of the posts will be available on the blog to everyone, and you can read the first one by clicking here.