Here’s what it’s about:

“Your life is an adventure. Every morning you wake up and anything at all might happen! You can set off on a journey, speak your mind, buy something, sell something, look at a painting, take a walk, be chased by a wild boar … the possibilities are endless.

As a writer, you know this is true. You imagine experiences with the soul of an adventurer. You create things – you cast a magic spell and a world is manifested. A person is developed. A story unfolds.

The adventure is thrilling – but it can take its toll. Rest, pleasure, enjoyment in the journey is as important as charging into the fray. You need an oasis.

“WriteSpa – an oasis for people who love to write” is that refuge. It’s a place where you can feel rejuvenated and encouraged. It’s a place that’s fun, fulfilling, and will inspire serenity and nourishment in your writer’s soul.”

I welcome your feedback on these creative writing practices. Some examples are “the soul of color” and “writing great dialog,” “how to interview the most important person in your life,” and “What the Dalai Lama said when he was asked what he’d do if he was told he had fifteen minutes left to live.”

Contact me if you’d like your ecopy. And, if you’d like, let me know if and which practices were helpful to you. I welcome your feedback, especially as I’m preparing the next three seasons.

WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

Just as in life itself, there are three key components to every story, no matter how short or long, or simple or complex: People. Space. Time. In other words, characters, situations, events. For a story to work well, all three of these have to connect with each other in a relevant way. If you include an event that has nothing to do with the story, it is obviously disposable. The same with dialog: Wherever you include dialog, it has to be relevant to the unfolding of the story. If it’s not relevant, cut it out.

So this is the third part of the Writing Great Dialog triad: you’ll need to pare down your dialog to its bone. You’re going to edit out every extraneous phrase, cough, word, even comma. If it’s not relevant to showing us what your characters want (motive) and how their relationship conflicts with that motive, it shouldn’t be in there. There’s no room in a good story for pointless chitchat. Your dialog needs to drive your story along, reveal the heart of your characters, show us something surprising or crucial.

If you’re not sure whether something is relevant, ask yourself why your characters are talking with each other, and provide an answer. Then see if the phrase is relevant.

Some tips:

Don’t forget that we rarely say a person’s name when we’re speaking to them. Make clear who’s speaking by using tags or with some sort of action – don’t cheat by saying, “Well, Alonso, so how are you today?” Also, when you use a question mark in the dialog, do you really need to add ‘he asked’? Let your dialog speak for itself.

It may seem picky, but punctuation matters in writing dialog. Use periods correctly, and remember that periods, commas, question and exclamation marks all go inside the final close-quotation mark. (In the U.S., anyway.)

Here are a couple of other punctuation tips: If someone is interrupted, use an em dash. You can use em dashes to interrupt yourself as well – like this, as a side thought – but then go back to the main point you’re trying to make. Don’t overdo it! Use ellipsis if the thought isn’t complete … or you’re implying vagueness … or some other drifty mood …

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Writing Practice: Three parts again!

1. Edit

Read each word, each phrase, and ask “Is this word vital?” If it isn’t, scratch it out.

Don’t try to rewrite a phrase; be brave about slicing it out and tossing it aside. Most speech is half as long (at least) as it’s usually written.

2. Read Your Dialog Out Loud

Find a closet or take a walk in the woods where no one can hear you except for wild animals. Then read your dialog out loud as loudly as you possibly can (not shouting though). Listen carefully, try to stay neutral and detached. How does it sound, heard that loudly? This is an excellent way to test your work. If you can bear to hear it resounding through a canyon, then it will probably stand up to other people reading it.

3. Listen to Someone Else Read It Out Loud

Finally, ask a friend to sit at your kitchen table and read your dialog out loud. (This time at a normal pitch.) You can give them a brief introduction to the two characters, particularly mood and age. Tell your friend, “Alonso is an old man who’s lost a valuable piece of jade; he’s pretty upset about it. Sally, his maid, stole it, but is pretending to be concerned and helpful.” That way your friend will know that his voice should sound petulant and cross with one character and silky with the other. You’ll be able to hear if your words match the tone the dialog is supposed convey.

Listen carefully – not so much for the words, but for the quality of the back and forth. If a word jumps out at you as being slightly awkward, it probably needs to be tossed or changed.

Dialog is a place in writing where the words should become almost invisible and only their implication is revealed.

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Daily Happinesses

• Belonging
• Fresh squeezed orange juice
• Kindness and generosity
• Beauty
• A sparkling clean house
• Good memories

Last week you listened, you eavesdropped – you were surprised by nuance, misunderstanding, flow, pitch, tone… Now it’s time to write purposeful dialog. By ‘purposeful’ I mean dialog that

• illuminates characters
• moves the story along
• and is fun (or harrowing) to read.

How?

Illuminates characters: The dialog you write has to be the only dialog your character would say in response to the situation or other person.

Here’s an example of five different characters being illuminated:

She says: “I love you.”

Depending on his character, he could respond (not just say something) in any of the following ways:

“No way. Really?”

“It’s too late.”

“I love you to and I’ve wanted to marry you or the longest time but I didn’t know how to ask you so will you marry me now? Today? My star, my delight! Oh, how happy I am!”

“Sure you do.”

He stared at the road ahead, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. (No dialog needed – we know exactly what he’s thinking: ‘He’s just not that into her.’)

You’re conveying what the characters are feeling; you’re not explaining it. Dialog has to be subtle and requires a light touch. One of the worst things you can do is expatiate on what someone is saying.

Always keep in mind that you’re writing a dialog – which means that the person who is listening is just as important as the person who is speaking. No one should say something because it’s their turn – they need to respond directly to what the other person said.

Moves the story along:

Throughout the dialog, stick like glue to the conflict at hand. If there’s no conflict occurring between characters, whether internal or internal, there should be no dialog. Remove it.

Dialog is often brief and matter-of-fact, and yet it propels the story forward – sometimes even faster than action or explanation.

How does your character convey information about the storyline? Instead of, “I’m going to have to drive downtown to fix my flat tire now,” say: “Damn tire.” Don’t be pedantic – instead imply, infer, argue, tease – show us what’s happening through how two or more characters react to each other.

Every event leading up to every line of dialog has to fit together and make sense, as well as being important to the story. Everything that happens afterwards has to be relevant to what was said.

Is fun (or harrowing) to read:

Good dialog does not sound like actual speech. It’s rare that including the ‘you know’ and ‘err’ will make your dialog more successful. The best dialog needs to sound natural.

Conversation is not linear, like a plot tends to be. Interruptions, misunderstandings, description, and action are all part of dialog, and create tension, emotion, and build relationships.

Don’t use dialog to explain something about the story: Always be writing from the heart and mind of the character. It helps to place the characters in an environment that readers can visualize. That crazy thunderstorm during King Lear’s descent into madness highlights the dialog wonderfully.

Describe the surroundings, and characters’ mannerisms, as they talk. This makes for a richer read.  Intersperse your dialog with description: tell us where they were walking, how they looked, the lines on a forehead, the yellow asters on the black table…

Avoid what are known as ‘tags’ – “he barked” or “she expostulated.” Just use “said” – your dialog should convey the bark or the expostulation.

Avoid phonetic spelling. With dialect, less is definitely more. (There are brilliant exceptions to this – as in everything.)

Remember that people breathe while they speak – the breaks and rhythm, the cadence, the personality, the music – are all important when you write dialog.

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Fun Writing Practice – How to Write Dialog

There are two parts to this writing practice.

This is the scenario: Joe is getting ready for a job interview. He showers, dresses in his best suit, debates over the right tie, prints out a clean copy of his resume, and packs it into his otherwise empty briefcase. He checks the mail: Uh oh. More past-due notices. No time to open them now. He’s going to be late if he doesn’t hurry. He starts walking, and takes a short cut through a busy farmer’s market. A small boy bumps into his leg, sobbing that he can’t find his mom. Joe is a warm-hearted man, and wants to help Bobby look for her, but he’s already late for his interview. And all those unpaid bills are pretty scary.

First part:

Close your eyes. Picture Joe. Hear Joe’s fast stride as he tries to push through the crowds. Picture the farmer’s market. Picture Bobby. Imagine Joe’s consternation at being faced with a forlorn young boy who’s lost. What on earth is he going to do?

Take your time with this – at least five or ten minutes. Breathe into the scene. Then open your eyes and write down what Bobby and Joe say to each other. Take up a couple of pages – move the story along through the dialog.

In this draft, don’t use any words outside of the dialog quotes. Don’t even say “Bobby said” or “Joe said.” We should be able to know who is speaking just from the sound of their voices. One is a young child; the other is a middle-aged man.

Write as fluidly as you can. Don’t edit, don’t correct grammar, don’t criticize how they talk. Try to let it happen on its own. See how they respond to each other, when given their freedom. If you really let them do this, you’ll see how they have two very distinct voices, how they really care about their own problems but are conflicted by the encounter, how they engage, change attitude, and how the conversation develops into a relationship.

Remember to stick to the conflict between the two characters. As we said earlier, if there is no conflict between the two characters during a piece of dialog, then the dialog has no place in your story. In this case the conflict is internal (Joe is late for a critical appointment but feels compelled to help Bobby).  

Second Part: Read what you’ve read. Now fill it in: add setting, speech tags, thoughts, and anything else that will flesh out the encounter you just described through dialog. You need to convey Joe’s distress and anxiety because of the job interview and Bobby’s distress over not being able to find his mom, but without dwelling on either of those things. Have them get to know each other – Joe could get him an ice cream, they might sit on a bench, they might seek out a police officer. Have them discover things about each other on a much deeper level than just money worries and being lost.

What’s interesting about writing dialog this way is that the flow of conversation is much more natural than it is if you set the scene first and then add the dialog afterward.

Hopefully, your dialog has evolved into you writing a creative and satisfying conclusion to this story as well, one that does not just have Bobby being reunited with his mother and Joe going home with a clean conscience but no prospect for future work.

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Daily Happinesses:

• dreams filled with vivid, rich colors
• the desert in the evening
• boarding the yacht for dinner
• faithfulness
• dried leaves falling slowly in a still afternoon
• getting organized
• heroes

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We talk most of the time – except for when we’re not. The gift of language is part of our existence. We communicate with words far more often and easily than we do through writing or even through an expression like a glare or a smile. And yet much of the time, in conversation as in life, things are not what they seem. Words don’t necessarily mean what you think they do, or what they mean when you’re writing narrative prose. That’s because in dialog the words themselves are colored by the people who are using them.

First, a definition: Dialog is characterized by conversation between two or more people. (Think of the word ‘two’ in various languages: deo, due, dos, deux). A monolog, on the other hand, means ‘one’ – it’s one person’s internal thought process (“To be or not to be, that is the question…”). In films, a monolog is often the “voice over.”

Great dialog has to sound realistic, but when you read it or hear it, you’ll see that it’s more subtle than “real” conversations are. Written dialog is not actually how people talk – it’s your interpretation of a conversation. It has to be purposeful to your characters’ motivation and to the story itself. If you listen carefully to other peoples’ conversations, you’ll realize that they usually don’t respond directly to a question. People usually have a mysterious inner life that may be reacting completely differently to the words that they are using. For example, a young person may be thinking, “What a crazy old coot! What does he know about skateboarding?” If you’re writing a scene where the kid is thinking that, you don’t have to tell us, but you would show it in his terse, rude response to being questioned by an elderly professor.

If your characters are eating or watching television while they’re talking, one of them may be more interested in food or watching television than in the dialog, and the other one might be frustrated by this. But they would not say “I am frustrated.” They might say, “Turn that down!” or “Want more cake?” (sarcastically). If they are gazing into each other’s eyes, their conversation would sound different; more intense.

Avoid writing dialog where a character describes exactly what they’re feeling. Very few people ever do that. Even the words “I love you” need to be used sparingly in a romance: conflict, action, description, or humor can convey the emotion more interestingly. That’s because most of us try to avoid being hurt or embarrassed, and it’s usually hard to drag out from someone else what they’re really feeling. When I watch “Friends” I’m always taken aback at how comfortable and safe those guys are with each other. “Are you okay?” “No, I feel awful – he doesn’t love me…” Does anyone really say that? In “Friends” it works mostly because it’s so unlikely that they’d confess to a ridiculous crush or a bad sleepover that it’s humorous. Most people use cynicism, lies, humor, and defensiveness to protect their feelings. What would your character use? Let them speak for themselves. You might be surprised at what comes out of their mouths. The tone might convey what they’re really feeling, while they actually say something completely different.

To write great dialog you need to know your character so well that what they say flows from their mouths absolutely naturally. There can be nothing jarring in a single word they utter. The personality of each character has to shine through in each voice, distinct from one another’s.

Pacing is important as well – your characters breathe and respond and feel. Let that come through in the words they use to share their thoughts and emotions.Your voice is like your face: it reveals more about your personality than you have any idea!

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Fun Writing Practice – Listen to people talking

Eavesdropping is crucial to writing great dialog. I’ve found that one of the best places to eavesdrop is on a train, where you can be looking out of the window and listening to a conversation going on in the seat behind you without the conversers knowing. Supposedly, J.D. Salinger went to a local coffee shop to listen to the cadence of teens talking to one another – they completely ignored him, which allowed him to really hear the flow of their voices, not just the words themselves.

To get a sense of this flow, you need to let the words drift through you a bit. Don’t focus on their meaning, but instead let what the person is ‘really’ saying come to you, through their tone, their pitch, their quaver. Did you read the novel “Dune” by Frank Hebert? The most fascinating concept in that book is the power of ‘voice’ to actually make someone do something against their will. Hebert’s premise was more interesting than hypnosis, because of the complexity involved in training one’s voice as a martial art.

Eavesdropping is one of the most underestimated writing tools. Do it all the time, wherever you are. Standing in line, checking grocery shelves, listening to the radio… let go of the idea that you’re trying to learn something or find out something from the words, and instead let the music of the voices and the hidden meaning behind the words come to you. Also, listen especially to the two-part music – the “Oh, yeah,” and “Really?” and “Mmm.”

Also, without looking at the person who’s talking, try to imagine what she’s wearing, where he’s from, what their religion or political beliefs might be. Especially try to imagine what their shoes look like, just from listening to their voices. (This is a fun game to play with kids too.)

Eavesdrop – or listen attentively to conversations around you – for a whole week. At parties, at a family dinner, in the classroom, at a restaurant, on the bus, on the subway. Eavesdrop till it becomes a writing habit.

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Daily Happinesses

• an unopened letter
• quiet time
• sweet peaches
• swimming in a mountain lake in autumn
• vintage sunglasses
• painting in oils
• discovering the cove

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WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

Scientists have discovered something new! Sitting is deadly. Spending most of your days with most of your weight resting on your delicate lower spine is dangerous, even if you regularly exercise.

Apparently, after just a few hours of sitting, the body starts sending hazardous warning signals to your brain (like telling genes that regulate the glucose in your body to shut down). Even for people who exercise, spending long stretches of time just sitting is still terribly risky. One article I read stated that a scientist had pointed out the lethal effects of sitting in research studies over fifty years ago. (His findings were allegedly suppressed by the powerful chair lobby.)

For most people, Writing is imagined to be the process of being hunched over a desk and applying pen to paper or fingerpads to keyboards. When I’m asked whether I ‘worked’ today, usually the question refers to how many hours I sat in a chair at my desk. (Personally, I’ve always written most productively in bed; I don’t even own a desk.)

Now we’re told that using a stool to lean on, so more weight is on your legs, or stretching out on a chaise lounge, is much healthier than sitting at a desk. In fact, it might even save your life.

If we bring these fascinating scientific findings into the classroom, we realize that allowing children to put their feet on their desks, to fidget as much as possible, to stretch out on the floor or to get up and walk around whenever they’re inclined, will improve concentration, increase productivity, and lead to much better overall physical health.

Here are two charming NYT articles for more information about how sitting can kill you: Is All That Sitting Killing Us and Stand Up While You Read This

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Fun Writing Practice – Break your habits

Write somewhere new. Even if the desk and chair routine is working for you, try a shady hammock for a change, or lying on your stomach. Or try writing while you’re standing – you might find yourself gesturing madly and even reading dialogue out loud.

Break another habit – not just the position you’re in when you write. For example, try using a pen to write. Or if you always write things in long hand, try typing a first draft. If you always have coffee when you write, try a glass of water or some lemonade. If you need people around you, and you always head out to the local coffee shop, try writing in a room alone. And if you think the idea of writing with lots of people around is outrageous and you would hate it – then try that experience.

Let me know how this works for you.

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Daily Happinesses

• Purple and green
• Being held all night long
• Gardening in the light rain
• Sitting around the table
• daffodils and candlelight

It always amazes how little we know about each other. When I lived in New York City, I remember looking up at the hundreds of windows in a random apartment building and imagining the real live stories going on within each apartment. Or watching my fellow subway travelers and wondering where they came from and where they were going. Who were they going to meet? Why did that young man wear a secret smile? How did that old woman feel when she had to push through the crowd to emerge onto the platform? Where were those dressed-up teenagers headed and what were they whispering about?

A reason fiction is so appealing is that all those mysteries are revealed. It’s an extraordinary gift to know what someone is thinking or what their motive is for their next action. Imagine sitting on a bus, and being able to ‘hear’ what the person next to you is contemplating. To know their story and their experience of living. Not just that, but to be included in their insight into their own thoughts. As the layers peel away, a person is revealed to us and our thirst for knowing more about them is quenched. That’s why I love fiction.

It’s much harder to do that in real life. When you first meet someone, it’s as though physical presence and the relationship between you creates layers and distance between you. People say the human connection is the most important thing in the world, and I agree – and at the same time it fascinates me how hard it is to make that connection. We’re all such insulated bubbles, caught up in our own heads and encased in private emotion. I am continually astounded when I learn something about someone I thought I knew well – a childhood experience they had, perhaps, or a feeling about something that matters to me as well, or a difficult thought.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I increasingly meet people through the strange world wide web that crisscrosses our planet – some of whom I now count as true friends, although we may never actually meet. Somehow our letters, our shared work of writing, our mutual interest in ‘the other,’ transcends the need for physical encounter and inspires a connection where what matters most is revealed long before we learn what color are our eyes or what we had for breakfast.

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Fun Writing Practice

Try writing an autobiographical piece about yourself. Write it in the third person, as a short story, with interior dialogue, description, mood – all the qualities of writing we’ve been working on over these past months.

What is most important about your life? Birth date, hair color, job? Or is it a formative experience? Or might it be something you believe in?

Close your eyes and really think about this: What do you want people to know about you?

Come up with an over-arching theme rather than a time line of your life. What inspired you to leave your home or to sing in that first coffee house? What is a secret longing you’ve never shared? Your theme might be a great obstacle, a true love, the onslaught of sickness, impending doom, joy, a sea change. As you write, locate what the theme of your biography is, and when you title your piece, try to net that theme in the title and, perhaps, a subtitle.

When a biography is written in a fictional style, where the reader is allowed a deep glimpse into the subject’s head and heart, it works much more powerfully. If you’re stuck on how to begin, mull on Paul Gaugin’s famous painting. In it, he asks the vital questions that we need to ask of our friends, as well as of ourselves:

WHERE DID WE COME FROM
WHO ARE WE
WHERE ARE WE GOING

P. Gaugin 1897 Tahiti

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Daily Happinesses

• candlelight and daffodils in a wintry twilight

• dancing in your sleep

• anticipation

• looking out a train window

• after the storm

WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

For many years, every morning I write down three phrases that I call my ‘daily happinesses.’ These are simple – usually appealing – images that help me peek into another, more objective, reality.

In a way, they are also writing prompts. Each one of these little phrases conjures a vignette, a mood, a story, a person. For example: “Planning for a garden of rare and wild roses.” “Penguins diving into the sea.” “The silence before applause.”

When I was in college back in the seventies, I vividly remember stumbling across this paragraph, written by Sylvia Plath in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams:

“How I envy the novelist! I imagine her… pruning a rosebush with a large pair of shears, adjusting her spectacles, shuffling about among teacups, humming, arranging ashtrays or babies, absorbing a slant of light, a fresh edge to the weather, and piercing, with a kind of modest, beautiful x-ray vision, the psychic interiors of her neighbors – her neighbors on trains, in the dentist’s waiting room, in the corner teashop. To her, this fortunate one, what is there that isn’t relevant! Old shoes can be used, doorknobs, air letters, flannel nightgowns, cathedrals, nail varnish, jet planes, rose arbors, and budgerigars; little mannerisms – the sucking at a tooth, the tugging at a hemline – any weird or warty or fine or despicable thing. Not to mention emotions, motivations – those rumbling, thunderous shapes. Her business is Time, the way it shoots forward, shunts back, blooms, decays, and double-exposes itself. Her business is people in Time. And she, it seems to me, has all time in the world. She can take a century if she likes, a generation, a whole summer. I can take about a minute.”

For me, reading this paragraph was a revelation. Writing furiously at the time, both novels and poetry, I knew in an instant what she meant. Every single detail in life – doorknobs, the tugging at a hemline – is relevant to a novelist.

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Fun Writing Practice

Writing prompts are more than just a way to get you started. They are small awarenesses that keep you alive to the subtle qualities of writing fiction. Just as on the stage of a play, every prop is relevant to the action, characters, and dialogue, so every detail in a novel is relevant. It matters.

It also inspires.

Come up with a few of your own. Simply observe the folded sheets, or the curled up cat, or the sleet at the window, or the quirky smile of a friend, and write it down. You might be amazed at the story that surrounds an everyday image regarded in a different light.

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Daily happinesses

• fresh pineapple in the middle of winter
• Friday night
• snow crystals blowing off trees in the sun
• beauty
• a noodle shop in Hong Kong

A long time ago someone (a man) read a book I wrote and was startled into saying, “Wow! You write like a man!”

He meant it as a compliment.

I thought a lot about this.

Did you know that Charles Dickens, in 1858, wrote to a friend thusly about George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life: “…whose first  stories I can never say enough of, I think them so truly admirable. But, if those two volumes, or a part of them, were not written by a woman – then should I begin to believe that I am a woman myself.”

What in George Eliot’s writing made it utterly obvious to Mr. Dickens that she was a woman, in spite of her pseudonym? What did the friend who read my book mean when he said that “I wrote like a man”?

I’ll suggest two things, and then you can add some more, since this discussion is ongoing and forever. Very broadly, then:

The first is a man’s brevity in thinking. A man thinks thoughts sharply, and linearly, and he usually writes like that. A character goes from A to B, and even if there is lengthy description or heartache involved, it is presented in a slightly detached, action-oriented way. Women writers, on the other hand, work a lot more with internal dialogue. We tend to prefer novels in which the characters’ inner world is constantly described. Hardly anything has to happen, as long as a lot happens on the inside.

That novel I wrote long ago (called The Director, and it was never published, by the way) was lauded by my male friends and ho-hummed by my women friends. I was experimenting with a different way of writing, one in which I hoped the action would speak louder than words. I used a phrase like this:

She stared. Then she stood abruptly and left the table.
Not: She stared. Was this all that was left? One moment they meant the world to each other, and the next he was cutting the ties between them forever. She rose to her feet, not knowing what to say. What could she say? Was there anything that could make a difference? Etc., etc.

See what I mean?

Secondly, is the difference in how a man and a woman relate to their characters and scenes. I’ll never forget a woman critic asking me, “Do you really like Jonny [my progagonist]?” I realized that I admired him, enjoyed writing and developing him, but I was not ‘in love’ with him. I wasn’t crazy about him, the way I fall madly in love with the heroes of my romantic novels.

But male authors, you can be sure, would never gushily admit to falling in love with their protagonists. They are more likely to admire, or perhaps wish they were like them. Sometimes I almost sense a friendly competitiveness between author and protagonist, an affectionate punch on the arm, one of those look-you-in-the-eye kind of appreciative moments.

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Writing Practice - Men and Women

This week’s writing practice is going to follow on these musings. For those of you who are poets, you can create these in poetic form.

You’re walking along a narrow road that widens on to a beach. Describe this beach from the point of view of a man. Then describe exactly the same beach from the point of view of a woman. Use lots of detail, but every detail has to create a feeling about the man or woman who regards it. Write no more than one or two paragraphs, and do not use dialogue or action! Don’t say, “I felt peaceful looking at the waves.” No, no. Say, “the waves barely seemed to move, lulled to peacefulness by the late afternoon stillness…” Only description for this exercise; and use all five senses.

The two points of view – male and female – have to be obvious, just from how the beach is described.

What’s the point? I think balance in all our lives is essential to finding inner peace. We need to balance our temperaments, the colors we favor, who we spend time with, and our internal male-female qualities. Apart from balance making each of us more kind and harmonious human beings, I think this ability to see from another person’s perspective makes us better writers.

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Daily Happinesses

• Going through old photographs
• Personalizing a new computer
• Planning a trip to the south seas
• Anticipating a fancy party
• Dried leaves falling slowly in a still afternoon
• A tiny kitten sleeping on your chest
• Thinking about mysteries

“The second kind occurs when there’s a deadline looming and the words won’t come, or chapter thirteen just doesn’t want to start. Douglas Adams called it “staring at the page until your forehead bleeds.””

Here’s where Jay really gets to the heart of the matter: “This isn’t writer’s block,” he says, “this is writing.”

I agree. Taking a walk, making love, cooking, brushing your hair – all these things are ‘writing.’ That’s what makes the writing process so mysterious.

I realized that all these years with two growing children, a full time job, a house to take care of, a husband to relationship with (is that a verb yet?), meant not that I didn’t have time to sit down and write a page (any one can make time to do whatever they want) but that I didn’t have time to ‘not write.’ That’s the hidden part of the process.

So what happened to me is that I got depressed. Looking back, I know it was a combination of things, but I think the major reason was the opposite of writer’s block. I was writing relentlessly, whenever I could, late at night, weekends, angrily, determinedly, frantically. But I wasn’t doing enough of the ‘unwriting’ part – looking out of the window, listening to dialogue, enjoying a cup of tea, reading inspiring books … all the daily practices that go into the writing process.

Since I returned from two years in Hawaii where I re-discovered peacefulness and pleasure in life, I’ve gone at the whole thing a different way. I decided to be more affectionate towards my writing, instead of beating my head against it and trying to get it to knuckle down and do what I tell it to.

I give thanks to Julia Cameron for her ‘morning pages’ – there’s an exercise to keep the juices flowing without any angst attached. Not everything one writes has to be extraordinary. Not only that, but every morning, during that early wedge of hypnopompia, I write a poem. Can you imagine? Sure, some are lemons – but not all. (I don’t take credit for them, since I’m half asleep when I write them.)

Then there are the three daily happinesses, which are another endeavor to get me to lighten up about the seriousness of the writing life and just let it flow.

The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection.
“What are you doing there?” he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.
“I am drinking,” replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air.
“Why are you drinking?” demanded the little prince.
“So that I may forget,” replied the tippler.
“Forget what?” inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.
“Forget that I am ashamed,” the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
“Ashamed of what?” insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
“Ashamed of drinking,” the tippler brought his speech to and end and shut himself up in silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
“The grown-ups are certainly very, very odd,” he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.