I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories - - of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.
I signed up for an online
writing course (provided free through my local library but having participants from all over North America) and this was one of the
resources recommended for the class. It's a quick read, and there were some
interesting ideas in it, but being written in 1986 by a former hippie-dippy
(straight out of college in the 70s, the author opened a cooperative restaurant
called The Naked Lunch), Writing
Down the Bones didn't quite
connect with me.
First of all, author Natalie
Goldberg recommends carrying a spiral notebook around everywhere and filling at
least one per month with whatever nonsense comes to mind; and to set aside a
strict time allotment for this writing every day, whether you have something to
say or not. She's a poet and she says that she often finds perfect lines for
poems, ideas for poems, or even complete poems when she rereads these
notebooks, but that does not seem useful to whatever form my own writings take.
Also, Goldberg is a practising Buddhist and many of her lessons are based on
the sayings of her Zen master, Katagiri Roshi, like: "Capability is like a
water table below the surface of the earth" which is taken to mean, "No one
owns it but you can tap it. You tap it with your effort and it will come through
you". So much of the Buddhist-inspired instructions didn't resonate with me -- like growing to recognise the cosmic
interconnected of everything, to the point where one can honestly state that an
ant is an elephant -- but there were
some good ideas.
I especially liked the idea
that the facts and details of my boring life are just as extraordinary as the
facts and details of, for instance, a Hopi Snake Dancer. I was just thinking
about this the other day as I was reading a Haruki Murikami book: as the
protagonist spoke about frying fresh vegetables with bonito flakes and soy
sauce, or wanting Salisbury Steak and giving a hunk of beef a medium chop with
a large knife, I thought that no one would be interested to know what I was
having for dinner; let alone how I was preparing it. But Goldberg says:
Original details are very ordinary, except to the mind that sees their extraordinariness. It's not that we need to go to the Hopi mesas to see greatness; we need to view what we already have in a different way. It is very deep for the Hopis to have a snake dance, but it is also one of their festivals that has been performed every other year for their entire lives… If we see their lives and festivals as fantastic and our lives as ordinary, we come to writing with a sense of poverty. We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close. Details are not good or bad. They are details.
As I did connect to some of
these ideas, I might be willing to read some more of the recommended resources.
This is the first book that I've put here without first adding to my goodreads account, mainly because I am embarrassed by the covert writing that I have struggled to finish and don't want people asking questions about why I'm taking a writing course -- there's an expectation (at least in my own mind) that someone would take a writing class because they think they can write something publishable, if only they polished their skills a bit. (More on this later.)
The first lesson was Tuesday, and after "Demystifying the Writing Process", we were asked to write a brief introductory paragraph for the discussion board: who we are and why we're taking the course. I wrote:
I am a stay-at-home Mom whose kids are nearly gone (sigh) and am staring down the rest of my life wondering, "What now? What do I call myself once 'Mom' is no longer my job?" You know how people say that if you remember what you loved doing as a kid, you can't help but be fulfilled doing that as an adult? Well, as a kid, I had a series of notebooks and I crammed them to the margins with poems, short stories, observations and philosophical musings (certainly immature but original to me). This has long made me think that I would enjoy once again "filling notebooks", but to my great disappointment, that well of creativity that I used to access seems to have been closed off to me: I read nonstop and have had a book reviewing blog for the past two years, but my writing is no longer as automatic as it used to be; not only do I struggle to find an original point of view, but even the "right words" escape me. Of course, my brain is getting older and affecting my memory, the old skills have gotten rusty, and I have no doubt that my critical side is holding sway. My purpose for taking this course is simply to shake up my brain and my process and, hopefully, recapture the joy that writing used to bring to me. I have no secret ambition to publish anything (okay, I was excited when I had a column printed in the local free newspaper a while ago), but as my blog often includes the personal stories that books jog in my memory, I'd like to leave my mark there as creatively as possible.
This is mostly the truth of it, but I was recently intrigued by two different articles I saw online. First, in this article, the author describes her friend's publishing experience:
The idea to become a romance novel writer was inspired by a friend’s success. Interested in experimenting with self-publishing, and on a dare, she took a pseudonym and wrote a romance novel. She loaded it into Amazon’s Kindle store, where it sold like crazy. She began promoting it 9-to-5. She gave her fans teasers; she offered the novel for free, occasionally; she reviewed the work of other self-published romance writers. She wrote seven more books—a whole series with titles along the lines of Forbidden Firefighter or Playboy Cowboy. The books climbed the Amazon Kindle rank and continue climbing still.
She paid off her mortgage.
I know I'm not a writer, but I do have a mortgage and nothing but time for self-promotion. I also have just enough hubris to believe that I could conceivably crack the Harlequin market (and even though the author of this article said that her own literary romance effort only sold 17 units, the success of Fifty Shades of Grey -- now in theaters -- makes me believe that anything is possible).
The other article was from buzzfeed, about a series of crazy gay erotica that the writer had stumbled onto. With titles like:
Now, as a strictly mercenary exercise, couldn't anyone write books like that? If the titles were outrageous enough, wouldn't curious readers fork over the price of a cup of coffee to see what's between those covers? Not that I'd be interested in writing oddball gay erotica, but couldn't the concept transfer to something I would be interested in?
This was all just internal musings until I happened to see the free writing course, and hey, why not see what's what?
Two other recent events: The Canada Writes contest for Creative Nonfiction is currently open to submissions, and although I did write a piece for it, it's just too personal to send out into the world (because I do have that hubris that tells me there's a chance it could be selected -- above the submissions of actual authors -- and although it's a truthful account, it could hurt some people's feelings). Also, I had noticed on my library's home page that they were accepting submissions for their Poem-A-Day contest, and although I hadn't written a poem for years, I honestly considered whipping one up, knowing (that hubris again) that it would probably be selected. I let the deadline for the poems pass me by, but maybe I'll try next year. (I do still have two weeks to submit to Canada Writes though...)
And here's the thing: I do think of myself as a competent -- if untrained -- writer and I can either continue to protest that "I'm not writer but" or I can try to develop some skills and take a stab at it. Maybe I'll find a way to discover my truth or maybe I could make some money -- either way, I have nothing to lose.
Today was the second lesson of the course -- On Detail and Description -- and our assignment was to light a candle and:
Write a one-paragraph only description of the lighted candle. Show us your candle so we can experience it with you. Be honest. Use specific words and sensory details as a way to focus rather than trying to aim for universal truths. The truths come on their own if you are accurate and honest. Feel free to let ideas emerge from your description. Emotion may also play a part. That's fine. Explore the power of description.
And here's the thing: I completed the assignment and posted it hours ago, and unlike that introductory paragraph up there that I submitted on day one, I have no feedback so far and I'm the only one who has submitted. Writing is stressful enough without thinking I've done something wrong here -- I'm feeling exposed and unsure. At any rate, here's my piece:
A birthday candle, a twist of cheap pink and white wax, was all that I could find to light. I melted the bottom of it with a flimsy paper match from a souvenir pack (Eat at Earl's!) to stand the candle upright on a plate and there are hardened pools of greyish wax trailing to its base. The flame seems strangely large for the size of the candle and it burns white and fast, rigidly righting itself to plumb, even as the furnace kicks on nearby. The black wick is lengthening as the candle runs itself down, exposing the inner bones like a rotting corpse. I've never just sat and watched a birthday candle burning; the urge is to make my wish and blow it out. I resist the urge. As it shortens, a common chemical reaction consuming the wax, I have the thought to compare a rapidly disappearing birthday candle to the impermanence of life, but that's forced and wordy, not my honest response. Sometimes a candle is just a candle, and as its substance runs down, I am not reminded of hourglasses. As the waning flame makes a terminal gasp of brilliance, I am not reminded of hospice rooms. I am, however, reminded of parties and wish I had a piece of cake. The wax now gone, a snail of blackened wick is coiled on my cakeless plate, and after a thin thread of faintly grey smoke curls from the remains, I recognise the smell of birthdays past and feel a descending gloom; feel the sudden absence of light. The wasted wish.Okay, rereading that, I think that Natalie Goldberg was onto something: there might be a poem in there.
