I Miss You, Office

Virginia Woolf told us that writers need a room of their own, but she didn't tell us what to do if we lost the perfect room. For five years because of my husband's job I lived in Ames, Iowa, in an older two-story house with perfect space for a writer: a room with two large windows and even a door to a second-floor deck that extended my work space in the summer. I loved this writing space. Large oak, basswood, and maple trees filtered the sun's glare in the summer and invited the warm rays in the winter.

And talk about room. There was space for my desk AND bookcases AND filing cabinets AND a large storage closet.

It was a writer's paradise. It was my first official room-of-my-own writing space. It was the place where I decided to throw out my shingle as a full-time freelance writer and editor, after keeping a day job in higher education for many years.

The office even became a metaphor for the idea that life might pleasantly surprise me even though I may not want go where it wants to take me.

Now I'm in another house, in another town, again courtesy of my husband's job. I am not so friendly with my office, here. It is dark and cold, especially in the winter, and the windows are small and high. I don't yet know what this office has to teach me, don't yet know to fully trigger the muse. I'm trying hard to listen.

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When Writing Fails, Try Rocking

Don't call me Ishmael. Call me Nana Sue. Call me Happy Nana who has just spent eight lovely days with her new grandson who came to visit from half-way across the country. Call me a cliche of a grandmother who wonders how to describe in a new, fresh way this full feeling of love. How does a writer avoid cliches at a time like this?

Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she just enjoys without trying to describe. Maybe she takes off her writer's hat and puts it on the chair next to the baby blue fleece blanket and the tattered Dr. Seuss books, worn out from reading to her two sons a couple decades-and-a-half earlier. Maybe she just rocks a baby in a soft chair and pats his diapered bottom softly while he sleeps. Maybe she closes her eyes and savors the heft of a sleeping baby on her chest. Maybe some things are just beyond language.

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For Creative Energy, Get Moving

I’m guessing I’m not the only one right now who struggles this time of year with shorter days, lack of sunlight, and the impending cold. Every year I have to remind myself that to keep my creative spirit alive in November, I have to face the bogeyman. I’m talking about literally facing the monster by getting out into the cold, rain, and slush.

I’m talking about getting outside and moving around – vigorously, as in a half-hour jog or fast hike. And not just once in awhile. I’m talking six days a week. Getting outdoors, year round but especially in the winter, is my best protection against creative doldrums and the self-doubt that can accompany them.

For me, it’s not if I’ll exercise today; it’s when. Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD, argue in Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond that as we hit middle age, our bodies will start to decay. Basically, our bodies start to go into hibernation unless we signal to them to keep growing. The signal? Vigorous exercise, six days a week. Exercising tells our bodies to keep repairing and renewing. It also releases chemicals that bathe our brains in positive feelings.

“Being sedentary is the most important signal for decay,” say Crowley and Lodge. Thus, “Decay is optional.” And since aging is largely about decaying, we can slow our aging process by being physically active. That’s why, as they say, “Exercise is magic.”

And as I have discovered, going outdoors for exercise is part of the magic – even in the cold, rain, slush, and snow. Getting out into the elements causes nature’s beauty to trump the cold, taming the face of the winter monster and minimizing self-doubt about creativity in the process. Plus there’s all that Vitamin D to soak up during the daylight.

“Exercise is the opposite of crazy. It is the thing you use to drive craziness away,” write Crowley and Lodge. I agree. And for extra protection from the creativity crazies, bundle up and get outside while you move your beautiful body.

Need extra motivation to get moving outdoors? Try listening to music on an Ipod. And check out my essay, "Running through Life," about the joys of jogging to music.

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Ode to Friendship

Five years have past; five summers with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.—Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

--from “Tintern Abbey,” by William Wordsworth

Yes, we were playing hooky on Monday when Wordsworth came to mind. My husband and I had made the two-hour drive to Pike’s Peak State Park in northeast Iowa. We knew the fall colors would be past their peak. It wasn’t really the color that we craved, anyway; it was the rolling terrain. Geologist Jean Prior wrote that “if you had to divide Iowa into two different regions, one would be the extreme northeast corner and the other would be the rest of the state.”

Pike’s Peak State Park is named for the same Lieutenant Zebulon Pike as the 14,110-foot peak in Colorado. Iowa’s Pike’s Peak, just 500 feet above the Mississippi River floodplain, happens to be the tallest bluff overlooking the entire length of the Mississippi. We drove into the park around 3:00 p.m. It was 70 degrees and sunny, with plenty of time to hike before an early sunset.

Unlike Wordsworth's poem, more than five years had passed since our prior trip to Pike’s Peak. But we too heard the inland waters rolling -- at Bridal Veil Falls, where a creek flows over a dolomite shelf and drops to the Mississippi -- and we saw the steep cliffs that connected the landscape with “the quiet of the sky.”

Except it wasn’t entirely quiet as we walked. In between the swishing of the dry leaves, I heard echoes of a friendship. About twenty-six years ago we’d hiked here with our young son and our friends Deb and Craig and their son.

I heard the chipmunk chatter of our two little boys – both three, one blonde, one dark-haired – while we hiked the bluffs and gazed at the panoramic view of the Mississippi. And I heard laughter, because that’s what inevitably happens when we’re with Deb and Craig.

And so it was Monday that while we listened to the murmur of the water fall, I had the pleasure of the present and the past – and not only the past, but also the sense of “life and food for future years,” as Wordsworth puts it later in “Tintern”:

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.

As if I’d stepped into a time machine, other memories of times with Deb and Craig rose up and carried me to other natural places – camping at Yellow River Forest and Backbone State Park, not far north of here; canoeing the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, a long way from here – and camping at Pine Lake State Park in central Iowa, three hours away.

After leaving Pike’s Peak we drove north into McGregor and wound up at Old Man River, a new brewery in town. We ordered beers and toasted to our long-time friendship with Craig, our master storyteller, and Deb, our generous friend with the tinkling laughter. All friendships ebb and flow, and ours is no exception; still, time has brought a depth to this good friendship that is not easily duplicated.

Here’s to nature, and to Deb and Craig, and to memories that have provided sustenance for yesterday, today, and tomorrow

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Got 15 Minutes? Make Something.

I took an online course from creativity guru Eric Maisel last year. The focus of the course was coaching other writers, but I was so in need of a motivational kick in the pants as a writer/artist that I elected to coach myself while I took the course. For me, the most useful exercise during the twelve-week course was developing the practice of devoting fifteen minutes to a creative project, several times a day -- in and around the other responsibilities I had at the time.

What I learned during this exercise is that even when you're half-mad at your partner because his job means a move you don't want to make, and even when you have work to do to pay the bills that isn't all that engaging at the time, it turns out that if you can devote at least two or three fifteen-minute sessions a day to your own creative projects, you will find the energy you need to move forward.

During this time of relative chaos I was able to make amazing progress on a book proposal about the freelancing life (okay, it got shelved but I plan to reignite the project this winter) and I was able to sketch the sweet view out of our upstairs bathroom window in Ames, Iowa -- a view that I had savored for the five years we lived there. I was so pleased to be able to capture the essence of that view that I forgot to be sad about moving that day.

Fifteen minutes can do wonders. Try it: make something.

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Mobile Office Report from Eastern Iowa

Since moving to small town in Eastern Iowa a year ago, my husband and I have adopted a mobile-office Friday routine that wraps up our work week and gets a jump on the weekend. Dubuque has become one of our favorite destinations. Not only Iowa’s oldest city, Dubuque is possibly also one of its most beautiful – and arguably one of its most genuinely creative.

Several weeks ago on a sunny early-fall day we loaded our laptops and bikes into our van and trekked the 45 miles to Dubuque, population 57,000. Coming into the city from the south on Highway 61, the majestic cliffs on the left and the river valley announce the geological shift from the gently-rolling terrain of eastern Iowa to the more dramatic, deeply carved river valleys, known as the Driftless Area of northeastern Iowa and northwest Illinois. Factories along the river give the city a rough edge, but there’s also a wabi sabi charm as you move beyond the smoke stacks to the gold-dome of the Dubuque Country Courthouse and the many old-fashioned church spires of this historically Catholic area.

We set up our mobile offices at Jitterz, a downtown coffee shop where three 20-something male customers sang in gusty falsettos to “We Built this City,” coming over on the speaker system. I began sketching out a plot for a novel whose idea had come to me the week before. When I worked myself into the corner of an illogical plot thread, I took a walk-n-stretch break and meandered to the news rack at Jitterz, where a free copy of Dubuque365 beckoned. This weekly report on the area’s artistic and cultural events has caught my eyes before with its snappy feature articles and colorful ads.

Just a quick perusal of 365 confirmed that the creative class is alive and well in Dubuque, as evidenced by an ad for an art exhibit being offered by Voices from the Warehouse District, as well as mention of such organizations and events as the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society, the Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque Fest (an art festival held every May), Riverfest (a fall festival), Brick Oven Studio (art center and gallery), and 5 Flags Civic Center.

After a couple hours of work, we walked out to our van and pulled out the bikes. Destination: Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens on the northwest side of town – about 30 minutes by bike and very uphill. Once there I sat in front of a prairie stand and sketched some Black-eyed Susans, while Chuck headed for the Japanese gardens.

While I sketched, I thought about this city of which I am growing so fond. The creativity here is organic – wild – with studios growing in the cracks of old warehouses and tucked in crumbling brownstones. I’d guess that more residents of Dubuque are engaged in more creative enterprises than residents of most cities this size. The two artists I’ve met from this area – poet/printer Peter Fraterdeus and painter Wendy Rolfe – certainly embody the spirit of which I speak. I’m guessing that the grass-roots creative vibe evidenced by so many in Dubuque is part of the reason that this Mississippi river town was voted the “Most Livable Small City” by the United States Conference of Mayors.

I thought too about the wonderful freedom I enjoy as a freelancer writer and editor to take my office on the road like this – and to enjoy the company of my mate on Fridays. He’s not a writer, but his job also allows him a certain degree of flexibility. Our income isn’t as high as some, but with a life this that allows us to combine with and play so seamlessly, who cares?

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Has Mother Nature Caused the Crash?

Could it be that Mother Earth has somehow willed the economic crash? Maybe this ground zero financial disaster is nature’s offering – a golden, just-before-the-tipping-point opportunity for us to align our consumption toward preserving nature more and despoiling her less. We all know that Nature needs fewer plasma screens and more vegetables grown without chemicals, but now maybe we’re going to have to really listen. Maybe she’s asking us to simplify a la the Voluntary Simplicity movement even if it’s not quite voluntary, and embrace the Slow Movement even though we love the Fast Track. Maybe Creation wants us to reconnect with our creative selves (write a song, draw a picture, dust off the guitar) more often and rely on adrenaline rushes and shiny new toys less often for that sense of being alive.

Okay, maybe it’s naïve to suggest that the earth is metaphysically causing us to base our existence on creativity over material consumption. Still, trusting in the earth’s wisdom to right itself shines a little hope on the situation.

I heard Sandra Steingraber speak last week at the University of Iowa. Steingraber holds a Ph.D. in biology and a master’s in English and is the author of a book of poetry (Post-Diagnosis) and two acclaimed books on the environment (Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood). She told the audience that when she was a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1980s, she made a bet with a graduate student in economics on which system would crash first – the economic system or the environment. Each chose his/her own area of study, the economist because of the deregulation going on, and Steingraber because of the lack of teeth in environmental regulations.

They were both wrong, she told us: it turns out the systems are crashing at the same time.

Steingraber went on to explore some of the elements common to both systems. Both are large and complex, with far-reaching causes and effects. (An example in the ecosystem is the proliferation of large plasma TVs that require as much electricity as an average fridge. More electricity means more coal being burned, which causes more ocean acidification, which causes the collapse of coral systems.) Another element common to both systems is that with less diversity comes more danger. (Mergers in financing mean more catastrophic losses; agricultural monocultures mean potentially larger outbreaks of pests.) Both systems have an underlying addiction to oil. Both tend to be dominated by positive feedback loops. (Economic panic and fear create more panic and fear. Melting permafrost releases methane, which causes more melting permafrost.) Finally, in both systems, regulatory apparatuses have been dismantled – or never existed in the first place.

One difference between the two crashes, Steingraber asserted, was that business writers have “made the economy visible” in a way that environmental writers still have not made as environmental issues visible. “We don’t have a steady stream of data like the Wall Street ticker,” she lamented. She wondered who would become the ecological equivalents of Paulson and Bernanke. Who will rally the world into an integrated set of policies that will help decrease pollution and the use of fossil fuels that are clearly warming the planet? (She was too humble to name herself but did mention Bill McKibben and Paul Ehrlich – names familiar to environmentalists but still unknown in many households.)

I don’t have the credentials to rally the world about the environment, but I do hope that the silver lining in the economic uncertainty is that as a society we’ll shift away from currency to creativity as our raison d’etre.

And in the spirit of making the environment visible on this day in Eastern Iowa, I offer these observations of Mother Nature: Okra plants are still blooming even though the leaves are beginning to yellow. There may be a few more of these lovely little vegetables to pick and eat. Purple ashes are not native to Iowa but they’re everywhere in the towns and cities and they’re at their peak in the southern tier of Iowa, all luminescent yellow, peach, orange, and plum. Some of the early-turning maples are beginning to fire yellow, orange, and red. Geese can be seen flying overhead and on the ground, combing harvested soybean fields that look like the naps of tightly woven, grey and brown sweaters.

And big blue stem grasses are waving purple arms in prairie patches across the state, unbothered by the Dow Industrial Average.

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What Makes a Good Writing Group?

Sitting with my writing group in the Iowa City ped mall last month at an outdoor cafe under a locust tree, watching the sky turn pink at the gloaming, I was thinking that the craic was good, to use a line from Van Morrison's song, "Coney Island." ("Craic as in the Irish term for "fun or abandonment, often in the context of drinking or music.")

After we discussed the piece for the night,we branched off into a more general discussion of why we write (to make order out of chaos, for catharsis, for understanding), why we blog (to reach out and connect from our writers’ solitude; to write something more focused for an audience than journal entries; to build a platform for the eyes of agents and editors; and maybe above all, to build/assert/confirm our identities as writers), why My Space appeals to some and blogs to others (MySpace for extroverts, blogs for introverts?) and, finally, how to live (Hope: move to England to write and house-sit for B&B owners; Jennifer: manage her way through a separation and single-parenting; Marji: watch her nest partially empty; Kate: indulge in her love of herding-dog tournaments; me: make the freelancing life work at least another year, to retain flexibility for the arrival of our first grandchild).

The conversation ebbed, the sun receded, the sky turned indigo, and I kept thinking of another Van Morrison line from the same song: “Wouldn’t be great if life was like this all the time?”

What makes a good writing group? Maybe it’s about strong, opinionated people who occasionally get touchy with each other (we’re all sensitive writers, after all) but know how to make it right. Maybe it’s about time – we’re seven years and counting. Maybe it’s about the glass of wine we enjoy when we’re together, or the great café food or the dishes we bring when we meet in one of our homes. Maybe it’s about meeting in Iowa City and walking the same streets as Flannery O’Connor once did, or Kurt Vonnegut, or Jane Smiley. Maybe it’s about honesty in criticism, generosity in praise, celebration in publication.

Whatever the reason, the craic is good with my writing tribe.

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Sometimes It Works Like It Should

Getting published doesn't have to be so difficult

"New Lives" is a recently published essay of mine that has kind of a sweet little history to it. For one thing, writing it was cathartic as I came to terms with the empty-nest sadness I experienced after our sons left home for college. For another, it was relatively easy to find a publishing home for the essay. Just a couple of days after I submitted it, the editor emailed a warm note of acceptance and appreciation. Once in awhile, getting published seems almost effortless.

As a freelance writer I'm becoming more savvy about where to submit my article ideas and finished essays. In the beginning I was unrealistic, submitting my material to magazines without scrutinizing their pieces for styles, content, and intended audience. Like many beginning writers I thought that if I could just get one break in a well-regarded publication, I'd be on my way. But it doesn't work that way for most of us.

After some painful rejections I started submitting from the ground up -- from local and state newspapers, to regional publications, to specialized national publications, to more widely distributed publications. Now, before I submit anywhere, I do a careful analysis of the publication's content. Are the articles and essays personal or more journalistic? How much research seems to be required? How long are the pieces? What writing styles seem most prevalent?

I've also begun to acknowledge that some pieces belong in literary journals and magazines rather than commercial magazines. This can be a tough thing to admit to yourself as a freelancer. When you're trying to make your living this way, it's the commercial market that pays the bills; you can have a hundred essays published in that many literary journals and not make a cent on any of them. However, if you look at your published pieces as part of a portfolio that shows the range of your skills, the published-but-unpaid essays can play an important part in snagging future writing work, including book contracts.

After I finished "New Lives" several years ago, I promised it out loud that I would find a home for it. I knew this might be tough because the essay was long and didn't exactly fit the mission of most women's magazines, whose articles tend to me more factual or how-to oriented. When I read about Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, I knew that could be the perfect venue for my piece.

Luckily, the editor agreed. My mission is accomplished: the piece is out, my empty-nest sadness is gone, and I have another published piece in my portfolio.

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Why We Want to Create

Why do we want to make things, anyway?

“C.G. Jung once described creativity as an instinct. If I do something creative in a day, I can sleep well. I’m relaxed. But if the practical world of traveling and family and obligation prevents me from doing something creative – if I can’t make anything – I feel tired and sick and somewhat depressed.” –Thomas Moore in “Finding Life at Work” in Spirituality and Health, March/April ’08.

I came across this passage recently and it reminds me of what a friend who edits tests for a living once told me: “Writing fiction helps me stand things. If I write an hour in the morning before I come to work, it helps me cope with the rest of the day.”

In The Dynamics of Creation, British psychologist Anthony Storr says that artists create to arrive at a sense of order in a chaotic world, to keep depression at bay, to seek status and prestige, and other psychological reasons. But perhaps the best reason, he concludes, is that some of us are simply blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with a creative restlessness, or a “divine discontent” that makes us want to create something. This artistic discontent is useful to society because others need art, music, books, etc. for entertainment, comfort, and catharsis.

What a perfect equation: some needing to create, others needing the catharsis of the creation. If we’re resisting our own creative restlessness, maybe we should stop fighting within ourselves and do what we are programmed to do?

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Wildness in the City

Inviting Nature into Urban Areas

An Iowan named Roger Gipple, a retired farmer and environmentalist who lives in Des Moines, established “The Agrestal Fund” a few years ago. The fund is managed through the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and was created for purposes of instigating a conversation about wildness in Iowa. (“Agrestal” means “not domesticated or cultivated; growing wild in the field.”) Gipple’s seed money has sponsored essay contests about wildness and has co-sponsored interdisciplinary conferences on the wild at Iowa State and the University of Iowa.

I interviewed Gipple couple of years ago for an article I was working on; he told me that as our landscape continues the shift toward fewer large tracts of unspoiled nature and more urban areas, we will need to learn to value those small places of “wildness” in the city, like flowers growing between the cracks of sidewalks and raptors dwelling in urban trees.

Since that conversation I’ve become even more sensitized to intentional invitations from cities toward nature and even the stylized, artificial echoes of nature. For instance, I love the new Millenium Park in downtown Chicago – especially the concrete and steel stream meanderings through the park along a prairie stand of native plants. You could see this creation as almost a parody of the miles of tallgrass prairie that used to blanket the Midwest. I choose to see it as an homage to what once existed – and maybe a blueprint or archetype for nature, should she ever have the chance to prevail again. There’s a similar stream near the new Des Moines Public Library; it too touches my heart.

And then there are those larger, wilder areas within or close to cities, like the lovely Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and my most recent find: the pristine Crystal Springs Reservoir near San Mateo that my husband and I discovered while in California last November. Our trip to Yosemite during that trip west was fabulous and grand, but it’s those natural areas close to our urban areas that serve us on a more daily basis. They certainly feed my soul, anyway, as a writer. I try to get into some kind of natural space, however wild or tamed, on a daily basis because that’s where the muse visits me most often.

In Iowa, there are many spaces on the fringes of towns and cities. A couple of my favorites are the Woodpecker and Squire Point trails near the Coralville Reservoir in Iowa City and the River East trail on the eastern edge of Ames.

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Why We Feel Better When We Create

Science tells us why creating feels good
It turns out that science may help explain why creative types feel better when we draw, write, paint, sing, or make a movie. Robert Gitchell, a retired orthopaedic surgeon, writes in a recent University of Iowa publication that when people engage in creative activities, “they change the production of interleukins, the cytokines that play an important role in the function of the immune system, enhancing beneficial cytokines and reducing those related to stress.” In fact, manmade cytokine injections are actually used to boost the immune system, and a certain type of interleukin is used in treating certain cancers, says Gitchell.

In other words, taking time to create something makes good stuff go on inside your body. So what’s keeping us from writing that shaky first draft or making that ugly painting? Apparently it doesn’t even have to be good on the outside in order to feel good inside.

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Good Crop Rotation at Blank Park Zoo

Drawing animals helps you see them

They stood there doing double-takes like crazy, their heads rotating rapidly from side to side. I’m talking about the flamingos at Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. I was zoo scrawlin' there earlier this month with my niece Anna and good friend Kelly. (A scrawl is a sketch-crawl – like a pub crawl, only sketching instead. If you think you might be drawing-inclined, check out master scrawler Danny Gregory.)

I don’t try to make a living by drawing, so the act of doing it is completely untainted by the need to go commercial with it. It reboots my head, gets me back to beginner’s mind, and simply fills me with joy. Drawing helps me slow down enough to see things I wouldn’t otherwise – like the tinker-toy knees of a flamingo or the perfectly patterned spots on a giraffe. And somehow the act of drawing helps fertilize my writing, which is how I do make my living.

I heard Joni Mitchell say in a TV interview a few years ago that for her, alternating painting with song-writing was “good crop rotation.” That’s how I feel about drawing and writing.

For drawing materials, I use Canson or Cachet black hard-cover sketch books with 100 pages of thick drawing paper; a Pilot Precise black rolling ball pen (fine point) for sketching directly (no pencil; no stops and starts; I draw contours first and just go with my mistakes); and a palette of Prismacolors on the lighter end of the spectrum, such as canary yellow, yellowed orange, light blue, and true green.

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Don't Be Suspicious of Yourself

Artist Stephen Dickerson says to do what comes easily

You see a painting like the one on the left by Houston artist Stephen Dickerson. It strikes you so forcefully that suddenly you want to create something right on the spot. That’s what happened to me two years ago at the Des Moines Art Festival after I saw Dickerson's colorful cityscape paintings.

I burst out of the display area and sat down and sketched the Des Moines Public Library and the Principal building. When I look at my sketch I clearly remember talking to Dickerson, hearing his wonderful Southern drawl, and being totally envious that he was making it as an artist.

I called Dickerson after the festival in my ongoing quest to soak up the wisdom of artists and writers who make their living at their work. He wins the prize for quitting-day-job stories: after graduating from the University of Alabama with a BFA, he began working as a display designer for a large retail corporation. Eventually he worked his way “up” into management, working 70 hours a week and hating it.

After 18 years of working for The Man, he scraped together his collection of paintings (“I had time to do about one a year”) and entered an art show in Birmingham. That was 12 years ago and he’s been working full-time as an artist ever since. He lost $5,000 the first year, showed a profit the second year of $15,000, and for the past 9 years, has achieved his goal of making more money than he made while working for “that stinking corporation.” He has even been able to put his wife through pharmacy school.

Dickerson says he changes his style every year rather than get locked into formula-painting just to please customers. “I lose customers every year and get new ones,” he said, “but somehow it works out. I decided that if I’m going to do such a risky thing, I’d better please myself.”

I think about his next statement nearly every day as a freelance writer/editor (the emphasis is mine): “I feel like the luckiest person in the word. People buy these things I make; I do what I want to do; it all works out. The key is to find what comes easiest to you and not be suspicious of it.”

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Art First, but Walking Dog is a Good Back-up Plan

Artists (and I’m using the term broadly here to refer to visual artists, writers, musicians, film artists, and other creatives) have a unique ability and opportunity to be present-minded through their art. I love the way spending a couple of hours writing, or drawing, or making music (or even editing – call me crazy) takes my monkey mind out of the past and the future and plunks it into the now, now, now! The act of creating can bring me into some damned good head space that Eckhart Tolle calls consciousness and that I sometimes call mystical because I feel I have entered the presence of something much larger than me.

But…there’s a dark side to creativity. An artist’s ego can so easily spoil that time-transcending creative state and go to the negative thoughts like “I’m never going to be good enough at this,” or “Who am I to think that I can call myself a writer?” and “I really need to make my living this way, but there’s no way; it’s just not done very often, especially by people like me” and “I’m stuck writing this commercial project for a living; I’ll never be able to get to the creative part of me again!”

Several years ago I hung out my shingle full-time as a writer, editor, and writing coach, and so I’m quite familiar with both the ecstasies and agonies of trying to live a creative life. To bring myself back into the present with my writing and drawing, the mantra I try to live by is “Art first.” That means that even though I might have a pressing deadline for a not-so-creative commercial writing project, I try to begin the day with on some kind of more creative project: writing a new essay, revising a book proposal, or even drawing something. It’s great if I can snag an hour or two for this freely creative time, but even fifteen minutes is sometimes just enough fuel for the rest of the day.

Working on my own creative projects doesn’t always connect me with the now, however. I can find all sorts of ways to distract myself from actually plunging into the work. And I can easily start thinking things like “I’ll get behind in bills if I work on projects that have no immediate paying prospects,” or “I’m just a hack writer; what makes me think I can shape this memoir into something publishable?”

When my ego threatens to destroy the times that I do have to create, it helps to remember that I agree with Eckhart Tolle that my primary purpose in life isn’t really to create, anyway – it’s to live in the now. The now is available to me whether I’m creating or not. It’s available to me when I’m swimming laps, or washing the dishes, to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s famous illustration.

Tolle’s argument in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose is that the present – the now – is all we have, and that a focus on the present is the key to awakening into the light of consciousness. Our primary purpose, he argues, is to live in and savor our present moments in order to connect with our deeper, wiser consciousness. Our secondary purpose is to go about our life’s work.

Tolle says that though all we have is the now, our tendency is to live more in the past and future than in the now. Our ego – a very small part of us that we let live large in us – distracts us from the now by continually trying to take us to the past and the future. The ego is fear-based and wants things like security, status, prestige, and safety...and yet when it gets what it wants, it shifts to wanting something else, resulting in an ongoing, underlying feeling of dissatisfaction, boredom, or restlessness.

Tolle says we can’t chase ego thoughts away – in fact, what we resist tends to persist – but we can diffuse the ego’s power by recognizing its voice and just being present with it. For instance, rather than try to stop worrying about money, we can say to ourselves, “My ego is afraid about money right now.” By being present with the ego but not in its grasp, we live in the now rather than in the past or future. This awareness, Tolle says, brings us into the present and connects with our deeper self that he calls “consciousness.” That deeper self can then inform our actions for solving our problems so that we are acting out of calm and strength rather than anxiety.

I love when my creative time as a writer and artist puts me in the now – that realm of “being vs. doing.” However, if I am having a rough period of negative ego when I am trying to create, sometimes I take a short break from it, to try to pull myself back into the present. Maybe I’ll take the dog for a walk around the block so we can both smell the hint of spring in the air. Maybe I’ll head to the rec center and swim or jog for a half hour. It helps to clear my head of those nonproductive, runaway ego thoughts before I return to the creative work in progress.

I appreciate my creative process for the times that it does anchor me in the now. I am even coming to appreciate my ego for reminding me when I need to return to the now. And I think the dog is appreciating the extra walking she’s getting.

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Writing Talent Comes Up Through You

Okay, so I’m a Natalie Goldberg fan, which is why I schlepped out in February snow in Iowa City to hear her read at Prairie Lights, the city’s lovely independent bookstore whose name is derivative of City Lights in San Francisco.

Good thing I couldn’t find a parking spot close to the store because that meant I was running late, which meant that just as I stepped into the crowded room where Goldberg was waiting to read, she was beckoning in vain for some polite audience member to take the one empty chair to her left. It was just like being in a classroom: no one wanted to sit in front of the teacher. She mocked a stern face because of her unaccepted gift, and so I finally walked up and sat down. That meant that for one hour I sat just six feet away from my avatar. Her Writing down the Bones had helped give me permission to call myself a writer about fifteen years ago, and her In Living Color helped launch me just two years ago into the realm of visual journaling.

I expected Goldberg to be on the soft-spoken side – I mean, she is a Zen Buddhist practitioner, after all – but she was vibrant and brassy, exaggerating her great east-coast accent even though she’s lived many years in Minnesota and New Mexico. She wore a black shirt and pants and had wrapped herself in a deep red pashima with colorful stripes – the perfect contrast to her jet black hair and eyebrows.

Goldberg read from her new book, Old Friend from Far Away, but she also did a lot of talking about writing and fielded questions from the audience. (Including a sweet question from a twelve-year-old budding writer: “What do you do when you get bored with what you’re writing?” “That’s your monkey mind,” Goldberg patiently explained. “Your business is to keep writing in spite of your mind jumping all over the place like that.”)

I was most inspired by Goldberg’s comment that writing talent “is like a water table under the earth. When you practice writing, it comes up through you.” With two book proposals in development, I also took note of her advice that when you’re submitting a book proposal or manuscript to an agent, you submit it not to please them, but in the hopes that they recognize the deep truth you’re trying to tell through your writing.

The audience was mostly filled with UI college students, probably including a few Writers’ Workshop students. Someone asked her how she felt about writers’ workshops. She said that she felt neutral about these MFA programs that have become so popular across the country. “What I’m teaching,” she said, “is ‘a priori’ writing. That is, I’m giving you a backbone so you can stand up to the criticism in writers’ workshops.”

Indeed, that’s exactly what I’ve gained from reading Natalie Goldberg’s books: backbone enough to begin to call myself a writer, to teach writing for a decade in a community college, and, now, to be a full-time freelance writer, editor, and writing coach. I didn’t come up through the writers’ workshop ranks; I went the less expensive, “practical” route of training to become a teacher with a master’s degree in composition and rhetoric. I still rely more heavily than I’d like on commercial writing and editing for a living (technical, marketing, and practical documents), but once in awhile I hit a literary bulls eye, and so once in awhile I get to feel like a Writer with a capital W for a few moments, at least.

I agree with Natalie Goldberg, that writing talent can “come up through you” with practice and with the help of supportive readers, teachers, editors, coaches, or other mentors. I am so grateful to her for planting that seed in my mind a decade and a half ago.

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Get it Out There -- I Dare Ya!

Last night I read aloud from my essay, “The Nature of Disturbance” to members of the Dubuque Area Writers’ Guild. What an amazing group of people who live in this historic and architecturally rich city in eastern Iowa along the Mississippi River! (Check out their totally cool web site: Dubuque Area Writers' Guild.)

Tim Fey, the editor of the Wapsipinicon Almanac who published my essay, had been invited to read and speak to the group. He asked me to join him, along with poet Peter Fraterdeus. Tim and Peter accompanied each other’s readings with music, Tim on the mandolin and Pete on the lute. A piano player from the crowd provided the perfect mood to my own part of the reading.

What a rush, to read my words aloud to an appreciative audience of about 25 people in a bar called Isabella’s, located in the lower level of an old Victorian mansion in downtown Dubuque. After the readings, one woman told me she resonated to my discussion of quitting a demanding teaching job so I could have “deep time” in nature and for creating. A man told me that he liked my conclusion that all religions and spiritual practices have the same underlying “invisible sea” that unifies them all.

I’d taken years to write, revise, and polish this essay, but it was the feedback from the audience that truly completed it. For many years I told myself that I wrote and drew simply because I liked the process, and that I didn’t need an audience. This meant I operated in a vacuum too often and fought inner demons about my worth too many times. Writing and art matter, and creators matter, and there’s nothing like getting your work out there to realize that.

I dare you to try it if you haven’t. Ask the local coffee shop to put up a few of your paintings. Submit your short story to a regional literary magazine. Stand on a street corner and read your poetry aloud. Attend an open mike night at your neighborhood bar.

I know – you’re shy. So am I. So was the 20-something woman who rushed, embarrassed, through her lovely poem about prairie grasses that night at Isabella’s during open-mike after the formal readings. Her soft voice simulated the way a breeze makes tall grasses rustle. I thank her for mustering up the courage to read because she brought the prairie to me that night and I’d been missing it.

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