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.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Art First, but Walking Dog is a Good Back-up Plan
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.
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.
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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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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