| Getting Started: Writing
as a Spiritual Practice Your Do-it-yourself Writing Workshop by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg First of a three-part series For 30 years, I've been writing poetry, yet every time I sit down, open my journal, and begin to begin, I always have the thought come to me that I don't know how to write what I'm going to write. This is the charm, and the mystery, of writing for me: that each time I enter into it, anything can happen; that creating something out of words is continually a journey into amazement and surprise; and that just taking the first few steps wakes me up and makes me feel utterly alive. This three-part series is to share with you some ideas, notions, suggestions and approaches to bringing to the page what your body, heart and mind have to say to you when you engage in writing as a spiritual and artistic practice. This first part on getting started includes warm-up exercises designed to help you clear the space, and leap over barriers, to begin your practice. Next month, I'll be back with a discussion of how writing can bring greater spiritual, physical and emotional well-being to your life along with many more writing exercises to take you deeper into this practice. And the final installment, in two months, will focus on ways to honor what you create and sustain your writing practice. Ready, Set, Go! Welcome to your personalized writing workshop, a wonderful on-the-hoof retreat you can take with you to coffee shops, bookstores with those big, comfy chairs, libraries, or even a corner of your own home. Here's where you get to sit down, put pen to paper, and see what your body and soul have to say to you. Ready? The first thing you need is something to write with and something to write on. Getting this could be as elaborate as searching dozens of book stores until you find that perfect journal (sometimes more difficult to locate than the perfect mate) or just picking up a pile of junk mail and a pencil from your kitchen counter, and using the blank sides of the paper. It might also mean picking up that journal or notebook or pad you already have, purchased just for this purpose in the first place a few months or years ago. Whatever you do, get your paper and pen relatively quickly (if it takes you more than a day or so to find what you need, you might ask yourself why), and keep in mind that what you write in and with isn't really all that important. Leather-bound, hand-engraved journals with gilded pages are lovely, but an old memo pad is just fine too. Fancy pens are cool, but that pen in your pocket from the bank is also suitable. The next thing you need is a place to write -- and this can be in your home or out in the big, wide world. Wherever you go, find a place that works for you. Some people need absolute silence and solitude. For me, sitting in coffee shops, wearing headphones blasting my favorite singer-songwriters, and being surrounded by white noise is especially enticing. You know your rhythms already, and you know where you need to be. Wherever you choose to work, try to make it a habit to work in one place if at all possible. The places we inhabit hold a little of our energy, and sitting back at that certain table in the corner triggers our mind to remember "this is the writing spot" and then re-orient to writing more quickly. A few other things to think about: If you work at home, and you live with others who can sometimes create distractions (I'm thinking of the small herd of children at my house), try to find a desk, table or chair not in the middle of the major intersection of the household (i.e. like the kitchen table near dinner time!). Another great thing -- whether you write at home or elsewhere -- is headphones attached to some source of music, whether you're listening to Barber's Adagio for Strings, the original cast recording of "West Side Story," or Bruce Springsteen. Having music surround you via a pair of headphones helps to encase you in your own private retreat session. And if you don't want to listen to anything as you write, you can wear the headphones anyway just to keep others at bay. If anyone asks you what you're listening to, say, "My privacy." Once you have the place and the gear, you just need the time. For some people, early morning is ideal. For others, more like me, late night has always been a wonderful time to play with words. But really, any time can work if you have enough of it, and you're not distracted or pressured too much. A self-named night owl for most of my life, I can now write in the morning. Keep your eye on the prize, and be flexible. How much time depends on how much time you have, but it's good to have enough each session, like at least 20 minutes of undistracted, writing time, and not so much -- like a four-hour stretch -- that you feel intimidated just thinking of your writing retreat time. Usually 30-90 minutes is ideal, and with something luscious to drink (hot green tea, a skinny latte with hazelnut syrup and whipped cream, a tall iced tea, etc.), and occasionally, just the right snack (I'm thinking chocolate here, but you do what works for you). One last time thing: how often? As often as you can. As often as you need to. As often as it works for you. But if you're just getting started in creating and holding writing retreat time for yourself, it's not a bad idea to make the retreat date do-able even in the craziest of weeks. So even having a once or twice a week writing retreat date with yourself is a wonderful way to open up your words and the worlds contained within. Trying to go from not having any time to write to writing every day for two hours might be so overwhelming that it simply never materializes. OK, so let's say you're now sitting in a favorite chair in your bedroom, with your beautiful purple velvet-covered journal and green gel pen in hand, a steaming cup of something with the word "mocha" in it nearby, and a crisp apple near your elbow. Or perhaps you're at a local coffee shop, sipping plum green tea, and you have a freshly baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookie on your little table, right next to the candle and looking at the yellow legal pad in front of you. Maybe you're even on an airplane (window seat, preferably) with only bottled water and a bag of pretzels small enough to only be suitable for someone the size of a doll, and all you have to write on is your son's math notebook. You're still ready. Ground rules OK, you're sitting down, you've got sufficient gear, and you're good to go. Good to go where? Time to contact ground control, that is, ground rules: Don't leave home (metaphorically speaking) without them or you can easily get run over by a pack of nasty judges in your head who are sure whatever you have to say is just meaningless, selfish, stupid and just plain odd. Or you can get swallowed up in the sea of your fears and pain so completely that the writing actually makes you more depressed, fearful and like you're drowning in despair. To make your ground rules really work for you, make your own. Your ground rules might include any or none of the following, and/or whatever else you want: ¥ Treat all that you write as a delicious experiment. ¥ Don't insult anything you write; if it's not that good, tell yourself it's a good first draft, or that you're priming the pump for what's to come. ¥ Do at least one or two or three exercises in each session. ¥ Don't spend more than five minutes trying to choose what to write about; just pick something, even if it doesn't seem that thrilling to you, and start. ¥ Don't break your writing dates with yourself. ¥ Don't show what you write to X, who always rips your ideas apart, or Y, who always tells you she can do better. ¥ Don't compare yourself to others; remember that writing isn't a competitive sport -- it's an artistic and emotional and spiritual practice. ¥ Don't worry about spelling, grammar or making sense. You get the idea -- just put together rules that help to ground you and your writing practice, to protect it from others (including the voices in your head) who would intrude and mess everything up. Once you have your ground rules -- which you can add to and subtract from at any time -- you're ready to officially kick off your session. Please treat each session, even if it's only 20 minutes, as you would any kind of practice: warm up, do something, cool down. In other words, get yourself in the space to create, create something, and then relax and honor your process before transitioning back to the non-writing-retreat world. Warm-ups It's good to do a simple, short exercise to orient your fingers, and all of you that's connected to them (which is all of you) to writing. Just doing freewriting (writing whatever is going through your head) can be helpful, but if you're anxious or sad or concerned about anything, such writing can make you more anxious, sad or concerned. Instead, try any of these, writing as fast as you can, without any editing or judgment, for 5-7 minutes: ¥ Write what you did not see today (a great little exercise, courtesy of Deena Metzger, author of Writing for Your Life). ¥ Make a list of the fence post moments in your life. Fence post moments? Think of those stone fence posts in western Kansas that hold up wire linking post to post...or think of any fence posts. Fence post moments are the moments in our life when something important happened -- perhaps you realized you were meant to be an airline pilot, or you met your mate, or you looked at the sky and knew love, or your decided to have a child. Make a list of these moments hold up the fence posts of your life. ¥ Write a list poem -- one that simply lists details, images, moments -- on any of these topics: what I believe in, why I'm here, what I love, moments of beauty or wonder, the greatest gifts, why I love trees or clouds or birds or cookies or...etc. ¥ Write the story of a gift you received that seriously moved you, or a gift you gave. ¥ A great exercise if you have too many inner judges rattling around the cage: Write about all the judges in your head as individual characters (name them, dress them, see them), and then send all the judges on a roadtrip to nowhere, but at least, nowhere very far away. Watch them board the bus, or if you're lucky, the mini-van (and if you're really lucky, the Volkwagen Bug), and bid them well. Watch the vehicle leave the parking lot and head out onto the open road until you can't see it anymore. Make sure they stay away for your whole writing session (or whole life). ¥ If the judges in your head are really obnoxious, let them have their say: Write a page or so (only do this for 5-7 minutes) of every negative thing your judges have to say to you. Once you're done, rip up this page into the tiniest bits possible, and either toss it in the trash or bury it. Tell the judges, "You've had your say, and now you're done for a while." ¥ If you're feeling low or low-down, write yourself a love letter from the one (real or imagined) who loved you best. This one may be human, animal, spirit, alien being, etc. Be lavish with your praise for yourself. Say all you can about yourself from the perspective of one who sees you as the beloved. ¥ Write "Breathe out..." and then list whatever you want to release, and "Breath in...," whatever you want to draw toward you. ¥ Another sentence stem that usually gets things rolling is to use, "I don't want..., I don't want..., I don't want...." And when you get sick of the "don't-wants," start writing, "I want..., I want..., I want...." ¥ Describe a great meal in your life. Go into as many sensual details as you can about the texture, color, smell, taste, setting, company (if you're not alone), and so on. ¥ Emily Dickinson once wrote, "This is my letter to the world who never wrote to me." Write your own letter to the world. Tell the world whatever you want it to know at this moment. There! You got started, wrote something, and created your own writing retreat. Relax, drink some tea, and consider looking at the following wonderful books for more ideas: Deena Metzger's Writing for Your Life, John Lee's Writing from the Body, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Pat Schneider's Writing Alone and With Others. Reading about writing is a lovely treat, but remember that the writing itself is how you'll learn the most about creating a spiritual practice out of words. As writer Annie Dilliard says, it's the page that will teach you what you have to say. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D. has 30 years experience behind the pen as a poet and writer. She's a certified poetry therapist, and she directs the Transformative Language Arts program at Goddard College (www.goddard.edu). Her books include Lot's Wife (poetry), and the award-winning Write Where You Are: How to Use Writing to Make Sense of Your Life. She also facilitates writing workshops for people of many backgrounds, including upcoming workshops for people recovering from and living with cancer and chronic illness at Menorah Medical Center, and half-day retreats on writing as a spiritual practice, and much more. Please see her website at www.writewhereyouare.org for details, or contact her at carynken@mindspring.com or (785) 843-0253. Copyright © 2004 Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg |
||
|
March 2004 |
|
