A Question For You ...

nulla dies sine linea

Never a Day Without a Line

Horace 65-8 BC

   What have you written, created, dreamed today?

Seat to the Seat Again & Again

  

 Are you writing/creating?  If so, keep at it.  If not, why not?

   I recently attended the inaugural Maine Crime Wave conference offered by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA).  If you are not a member of such an organization, I highly recommend you join.  If you live in Maine, I highly recommend this one.

   Imagine a full day of panel discussions and workshops in the company of other writers and creatives.  Imagine sitting in a workshop with an author whose books you've read and receiving insights into that writer's process.  Imagine a panel made up of those who write and those who publish offering advice, constructive feedback, and encouragement.  Imagine opportunities to chat with others who "speak the same language," to have a manuscript critiqued, to interact with a broader community.

   How could you not come back to your writing desk inspired and enthused?

   The theme I heard most often repeated by writers and publishers alike was:  write a good book. Put your seat to the seat and keep putting it there until it's done. Publishers are looking for well written characters in well written stories. Don't think about publication until you have written something to publish! It's that simple. Take one step at a time and the first step is: write a good book.

   I can't say enough about the value of occasional conferences, retreats, and workshops.  They constitute an important part of my writing life.  I'm not a crime writer, but I gained a great deal from this very full day of immersion in the writer's craft in the company of other writers. (And, I may just pull out that short mystery story I wrote years ago and give it a rewrite!)

   Reinforced message of the day:  seat to the seat.  Again and again and again.

A Little Ekphrasis Challenge To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

  
   Ekphrasis.  

   What is it and why should you care?
  
   Simply put, ekphrasis is a written response (poem, short story, short short story, haiku, novel, etc.) to a work of art (painting, sculpture, photograph, fiberwork, etc.).  It may be written from the perspective of the viewer, a figure in the painting, any object/item in a painting, a landscape, the artist, the sculpture itself, etc.  It's a sort of sky's-the-limit kind of exercise.

   For example, I participated in a show called, "Ekphrasis: Face & Figure," and wrote a poem from the point of view of a young woman in a painting.  I sat with the painting, spent time really seeing it.  I jotted words and phrases as they came to me.  Then, over the course of a month, the poem emerged in her words.  It began, "If it's true, what they say about men and girls who wear glasses ..." 

   I also wrote a short story in response to a painting by Maine artist Leslie Anderson.  (Shanti Arts Publishing and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance invited Maine writers to submit stories and mine was one of the ten selected to be included in the resulting book, Summer Stories.)
   
  More than 20 of Leslie's paintings were presented.  One entitled, Last Night At the Lake, featured lawn chairs on a dock facing a setting sun across the water.  This immediately sent me into a story.  The painting chose me!

   Interestingly, in both cases (poem & short story), other writers chose the same painting as I did.  The resulting poems and stories were, of course, very different from one another.  This fascinated me and inspired this post.

  Below, I am offering photographs of some of my works.  I invite you to "respond" with a written piece of your own. (It may just be a line.)  It may arrive full blown.  It may require lots of time and space.  Whatever your process, I suspect it will prove interesting.

   I'd appreciate you letting me know your first impressions: words, phrases, images, thoughts,   ...   But, that's not necessary.

   Please consider sharing the "end" result at some time.  [If you don't have a google (gmail) or other account listed at the bottom of this post, email me or send a message through Facebook.]  

   You are welcome, of course, to keep it to yourself and simply enjoy the ride.

   Below you will find a series of faces and a figure:

             (all photos copyrighted materials  copyrightmaryloubagley2007-14 )

   Let one or more choose you.  Then,  ... write!

   

  

Invitation to Review

   As you look out upon this new year, dear ones, I extend an invitation.

   I invite you to take a moment and revisit these Time To Write postings from 2013. (There are 9 of them and most are short.) I've offered them in friendship as encouragement, inspiration and support.  Though we may be solitary creatives, we are a community -- interconnected beings.  We keep each other going.

   Give yourself this gift of time: reflect and be reminded of who you are.

   What words of encouragement do you have to offer in exchange?

   [Commenting here is easy, but you must sign in first as instructed below.  You can also respond by email or facebook.]

  

   Blessings on this next trip around the sun!
                                                                                                Mary Lou

Why Write?

   Our need for communion ...  our wish to be heard ...  our song to the other ...  ? 

   What is it that has us scribbling or tapping or chiseling away?

   We are relational beings, yes?  What happens when the sky suddenly bursts into startling patterns of color and light at sunset? What happens when we catch an unexpected glimpse of a full white moon rising above the treeline?  After we gasp in awe, don't we want to share it with someone else?  Don't we want to point and say, "Look!" and feel the visceral response of a companion and then the inner flood of warmth at having been the one to point?

   Yes, we are relational beings. We point.  We paint. We write, ... hoping to touch and be touched in return.  Exchange.  We thrive on it, flourish because of it, enrich each others' lives by being in relation to ...  . 

   There has to be another being on the other side of that ellipsis.  Yes?

   And so, dear friends, I remind you once again.  Stop with this keeping it to yourself.  Stop saying you have no time to write while the words pile up inside you. Find your favorite pen. Find your fingers on the keyboard. Find an empty space on the canyon wall. Put what you have to share out there so the other can find it, ... read it, ... be touched by it. 
  
   What you have to say matters.  We other relational beings out here need your words, your thoughts, your paintings, your poems, your pieces of truth ... 

   Seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

   Not some day. 

   Now.

  


  

Invisible Writing

  

   Confession:  I haven't been writing.

   My whole point in writing this blog is to encourage and support other writers and creatives in getting down to it and then sticking with it.  Yet, here I am, not getting down to it or sticking with it.

   By "it," I mean my novel, Otherwise.  I'm 133 pages and over 70,000 words in but I haven't opened it in a while.  My fingers haven't been dancing across the keyboard madly taking down Margaret's story in what feels like ages.

   My seat has certainly been on the seat.  I've been writing my "Morning Pages", journaling, working a poem for an ekphrasis challenge, writing pr for various projects, composing letters, emails and facebook postings, reading about writing, reading novels, stories, poems, nonfiction books, magazine articles, blogs and ...

   Oh, wait a minute, ... I have been writing.  I've even been working on my novel.

   I'm reminded of an interview with Sue Monk Kidd.  When asked about the writing process, she says, "... I often left my desk to sit on the dock overlooking the tidal creek behind our house and engage in stream of reverie about the story.  I considered this earnest work."*

   She is not alone in this.  Nearly every writer I admire talks about the importance of time away from the writing desk.  It may not look like it is part of the writing process, but it is.

   Anne Lamott in Bird By Bird (pp 179 & 182) encourages writers to, at times, get one page of anything written and then to read or go to the beach or " ... just really participate in ordinary life."  She says,  "Any of these will begin the process of filling me back up with observations, flavors, ideas, visions, memories."  She adds later, "Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down its neck.  You'll sit there going, 'Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?' But it is trying to tell you nicely, 'Shut up and go away.'"

   I've been really participating in ordinary life of late.  I've been actually having a summer (something I haven't done well in several years).  I've been "sitting on the dock overlooking the tidal creek" and Margaret's story has been on my mind, but I haven't been writing it down. 

   I've been filling up.  I've been giving my unconscious time and space to mull and wander and wonder.  I've been planting images there.  I've been learning new things.  I've been reminded of things I've forgotten or been too busy to think about. I've been reading, walking, playing and opening more fully to the world around me.  I've been present more often than not.

   I've been writing.  Doing my "earnest work."  It's just not on the page yet. 

   Yet.
  

* from "A Conversation With Sue Monk Kidd" in "A Penguin Readers Guide" in the Penguin Books edition of The Secret Life of Bees.  

Look Around You

imagery matters

   First, let me repeat my writer's mantra:  seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.  Next, let me ask a few questions ...

   When your seat is on the seat and you look around, what do you see?  When your seat is on the seat and you don't look around, what is in your periphery?  When your seat is on the seat and you're ready to write, what is the nature of the imagery surrounding you?

   It is said that the unconscious mind takes in whatever the eye passes over, even lightly.  If that's true, why not make the most of it?  Why not surround yourself with images conducive to creative output and supportive of your writing life?

 

   Ask yourself, as you place your seat upon the seat: What books are within reach?  What writing masters sit upon your shelf?   What paintings/posters/sketches hang upon your walls?  What messages, notes, or quotes are on display?  Whose framed faces look out at you?   What aromas, colors, and sounds infuse your senses? What symbolic icons create a sense of sacred space (whatever that may mean to you)?

   Do you thrive when surrounded by deliciously haphazard piles of papers and books?  Are you most at ease with clean, clear surfaces all about you?  Does music aide you as you work?  Does silence serve you best?

   I offer these questions as gentle nudgings, dear writer. 

   As for me?  My daughter's dazzling smile and grandson's smirking face greet me when I sit.  Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron, and Becky Rule are just a few of my chosen companions.  Sue Monk Kidd's insights inspire me.  Don Murray's laminated Latin phrase, "nulla dies sine linea," (never a day without a line) is propped against an empty binding labeled, "Write Your Own Book."  A sketch of a tree stump that drinks in poetry and spouts stories from its heart-shaped mouth, drawn while I was on retreat with Peter London, is tacked to the side of a filing cabinet nearby. A Sally Allen painting hangs above a simple shelf with artifacts and talismans steeped in meaning. A collage of buried treasures leans against the seafoam colored wall.  And, a simple tea light in a little dish waits to be lit when I'm ready. 

   Here I've surrounded myself in imagery that feeds my process (and encourages long visits from my muse).  Here I sit.  Here I write.

   How about you?  Is it time, perhaps, to take a look around?  Is it time to create a space with conscious intent?  Is it time to make some changes to the one you already have? 

   Is it time to sit?  Is it time to write? 

a simple sketch with meaning for my writer self

 

the tree from whence it came