Weaving The Dream

A friend of mine, recently fascinated by the Greek goddess, Artemis (also known as the Roman goddess, Diana), made me realize that Artemis the Huntress is a good role model for creatives—for artists and musicians and writers and such.

Why?  Because she is the goddess of the forest–all that is wild and untamed and unknown.  With her bow and arrows, she both protects the chaos of the forest and captures whatever she hunts.

Like Artemis, I, too, am the goddess of a wild, untamed and unknown forest.  No, not my backyard.  My creativity.

I don’t know about you but I have myriad interests and abilities that sometimes make it hard for me to decide what to focus on first—a case of not being able to see the tree for the forest!

I easily lose track of priorities.  I often fail to act first on projects that will produce the most results.  And, because I work at home, I can spend days on details, reading email, doing research, and reading the latest professional journals (and baking cookies), before I realize that I’ve spent no time writing, weaving, or lining up work—a case of not seeing the forest for the trees!

I take the bow and arrow of my energy and, in essence, shoot at anything that moves, like a branch waving in the breeze, or a shadow moving beneath the leaves.  Not only am I apt to miss, I end up with a lot of wasted arrows I have to hunt for and nothing that can sustain me.  This makes me—and Artemis—unhappy.

Shooting hither and thither might sharpen my eye and build my muscles (have you ever tried pulling back on a bow?) and that is a good thing, but ultimately, if I am going to develop more than muscle—if I want to write a book, snag a speaking engagement, and bring home food for the table—I need to first, choose my target, and then take careful aim.

Today I am aiming at editing a manuscript and finishing the weaving of a shawl.

What are you aiming at?
 

1. Honor the Dream!

Many people assume that sleep dreams are nothing more than a rehash of the day’s events.  I speak from personal experience when I tell you that they are so much more than that.  Most dreams, like a fine work of art, are multi-layered, and offer much in the way of inspiration, guidance and motivation if we give them the honor of paying attention to them instead of deleting them or tossing them into the recycle bins in our minds.

2. Keep a Dream Journal

One of the best ways to honor them and to mine them for their creative wealth is to keep a dream journal, recording our dreams on a regular (not necessarily daily) basis. Give your dream a title, record its date, and then write the dream down in present tense.  Why?  Something about the way the brain works—if you record it in present tense, you remember things you might otherwise forget.

Writers, from Dante to Poe to King, used dreams to feed their writing.  William Blake used dreams for both visual and verbal inspiration.

3. Use those Dreamscapes

If you are a painter, making use of the dreamscapes of your dreams can be a straightforward matter of painting the image.  If you are a writer, playwright, or choreographer, consider the dreamscapes as settings or backdrops for your story.

Examine the landscape for mood, colors, odd juxtapositions of images or visual puns, and for time period and place.  Record any scene that captures your imagination in as much detail as you can, either verbally or visually or both.

4. Who are those Very Important Dream People (V.I.D.P’s)?

Just as the people that cross our paths in waking reality are grist for our creative mills, so too are our dream characters.  And they will fade into the ether never to return if we don’t capture them in our dream journal.

First, record or give them their names.  If you have no name, then give the character a name according to her role in the dream, for example, “mother”, “scary old man”, “benevolent guide”.  Then, write a description of the character, including clothing.  Is there something about this person’s character that plays into your current project? Does he take center stage, or act in a supporting role?  What does she have to say to you if you dialogue with her?

5. Ask for a Dream

If you could ask your creative muse a question, what would it be?  Make the question as succinct as possible and then write it down and put the paper under your pillow. Yes, I know this seems a little out there but, for whatever reason, it helps.  Think of your question as you drift to sleep.

 You may find the answer floating to the surface of your hypnogogic (that time just before sleep) dreams, or it may come to you in a spontaneous dream.  Record your dream or whatever images, words, or feelings come to you.

Don’t discount anything even if it seems too far out in left field to be applicable.  Remember to look for puns and other verbal riddles within the dream.  And finally, be patient.  The answer to your question may not show up the first night, or the second.  Sometimes it takes a week or more.  You don’t have to ask every night, but at least do it several times a week, trust in the process and stay patient.

Whether you need to break through a creative block, figure out the next scene or step in your project, or want an idea for your next book or painting or song, dreams are an unending source of inspiration and one of the best tools for a meaningful creative life.
 

For several years in the spring, an area of unidentified plants sprouted and grew in our back yard.  They didn’t seem to blossom so, having no idea what they were, my husband cut them down with the first mowing of the yard.

But then, a couple of years ago, my husband and I went out to dinner at our small local restaurant.  The menu noted that it was ramps season and then listed several specials for the week featuring ramps.  I decided to give one of the dishes a try.

After the waitress set the artfully prepared plate before me, I looked at the leaves and said, “Bob, look!  Aren’t these the same leaves that are growing in our yard?”

After consuming the dish with its pungent, yet earthy taste, we came home and hurried to the back yard.  Yes, ramps were running riotous in our backyard!  Hurray!

What are ramps?  Wild leeks that grow in places like Quebec and West Virginia and here in New York. Some places hold festivals to celebrate this plant with its unusual flavor combination of onion and garlic. Ramps may be short for rampions, which are native to England and other parts of Europe, (though somewhat different there) and play a central role in the story of Rapunzel.

Remember?  It’s the theft of those rampions from the witch’s garden that forces Rapunzel’s parents to give her up to the witch where she is then imprisoned in a tower with no door.  And even the witch has to use Rapunzel’s long hair to get into the tower. In fact, the name Rapunzel supposedly derives from the Latin name for rampion, Rapunculus.

To me, the ramps definitely have their own kind of magic, growing wild in the spring, sending up those leaves with their red stems for several weeks and then seeming to disappear.  Because they grow wild, you have to look carefully to find them.  And, if you aren’t paying attention, you can miss them altogether and miss an earthily delightful addition to your diet.

Just as we can sometimes miss the seasoning and magic of the wild things that sprout up in our writing or other creative project.  We can be so focused on our vision for that book, or painting—how we imagine it should look—that we enthusiastically weed out and mow down anything that doesn’t seem to belong or, perhaps worse, we fail to recognize the freely offered wild and tasty things that spring up along the way.

Yet, sometimes, it is precisely those magical wild things that can add a flavorful seasoning and significance to our writing or creative project.

True, we don’t want to harvest them all.  If we did that there would be none for the next time.  Nor do we want to add so much of that wild seasoning that we overpower our work.  But a careful selection, a willingness to expand our creative diet and to experiment could result in an expressive dish that is uniquely ours.

Last night, my husband and I had grilled salmon, sweet potato fries, and ramps sautéed in butter.  Yummmm!

Yes, it’s spring.  Are you harvesting your creative rampions?

Last weekend, my husband and I watched a movie my aunt recommended to me, “You Kill Me.”  Ben Kingsley stars as a Polish alcoholic hitman from Buffalo whose drinking inevitably ends up causing him problems “on the job.”  The mob sends him to San Francisco to dry out, with interesting consequences for everyone.

In the opening scene, it is winter in Buffalo (i.e. snow up to your …) and Kingsley’s character, Frank, is in his kitchen drinking from a bottle of vodka that he puts down long enough to put on a coat and hat.  He picks the bottle up, opens his front door, steps outside, takes a slug or two from the bottle, caps it, looks carefully, and then tosses the capped bottle down the steps into the snow. 

Frank shovels down the steps until he gets to the bottle, picks it up, uncaps it and takes a few more slugs, caps the bottle, and then tosses it farther along the walk.  He shovels more snow until he once again arrives at the bottle and then repeats the process all over again.

Isn’t that a great image or metaphor for the power of motivation?

Frank knew himself well enough to realize that if he was going to get all that snow shoveled, he needed motivation.  Granted the motivation was an addiction, but because he wanted that vodka badly enough, he shoveled quickly and efficiently to get to it, several times over.

Motivation is important for creativity.  How badly do I want to get my books written?  If I want to write—and sell—a book, then I have to be willing to shovel the snow, to do the work to make it happen.  Then I can drink in (don’t moan, it’s a good pun) the feeling of achievement and success.

Whether it means doing research, planning story structure, or ultimately, sitting down and putting one word after another, I have to do the work.  I have to be willing to dig in and pick up shovelful after shovelful of words.  A writing friend of mine recently commented to me on how much fun it is to come up with the idea and storyline for a novel, but how much work, how even painful it is to sit down and actually write the story.  Yes, it can be backbreaking, painful, exhausting work.

But how badly do I want it?  How badly do you?  If you want to see that story in print, hear that composition performed by an orchestra, see that landscape hanging on the wall, you have to want it enough, desire it enough with your whole self to do the work.

The scene also reminds us that it is a good idea to reward ourselves along the path of our hard work.  The creative project can require weeks, months, or even years of our creative time and energy before its completion, so treating ourselves along the way to some of the things that nourish our creativity can keep us going.  You know—like dark chocolate, a hot bath, reading a good book, watching a darkly humorous movie like “You Kill Me,” going for a walk—little rewards, little sips here and there, to keep us going.

So plan some rewards along the way, remind yourself how badly you want to see that completed project, and start shoveling.  And tell me, what keeps you motivated?

And while you are doing that, I am going to go see if I can get my husband to massage my back!

I was talking on the phone the other evening with a writer friend of mine.  She and I along with three other writers check in with each other by email on Sunday nights to share our weekly writing accomplishments, to state goals for the coming week, and to occasionally whine or commiserate when the writing—and our lives—don’t go as planned.

After reading everyone’s check-in for the week, my friend was feeling impressed by the accomplishments of several of the writers but, by comparison, that she just wasn’t doing enough.

“Hmmm,” I said.  “Let’s see.  You have a full-time demanding job and you…” I listed several other activities she was involved in during the week and on weekends, including family commitments.

“AND you are working on a book…Yep, you are definitely sitting around doing nothing!” I finished.

Laughing, she thanked me for reminding her of all that she does.  Then we brainstormed ideas for her book.

What is it about creatives, especially creative women, that we constantly feel the need to compare ourselves to others?  Why do we succumb to doing that especially when the usual result is a feeling of not being enough, not doing enough, not succeeding enough?

Feelings of “not enough” often translate into feelings of incompetence and lack of self-confidence.  It is hard to be creative in that space.  It is hard to believe in the value of our work and from there it gets hard to make our creativity a priority in our time and space. In fact, we are apt to waste time beating ourselves up about our shortcomings instead of writing or painting or composing.  We end up creatively blocked.

When I get into that place of feeling like I don’t produce enough, that I’m not earning my keep, so to speak, I start making lists of everything I have accomplished for the day no matter how small.  In addition to helping me see all I do, it also nudges me into my creative work because somewhere on the list, by the end of the day, I want to see my writing or weaving included.  I don’t want to see that I spent all my time taking care of everything and everyone else while neglecting my creative work.

If you want to avoid odious comparisons, try this journal technique.  For five to seven days (depending on how you work), make a journal entry for that day that lists everything you do between the time your feet hit the floor until you fall sighing back into bed.  You can include everything from brushing your teeth to writing a chapter, to paying bills, or you can list only what you deem are the important activities (but be careful how you define that), or you can list only those activities related to your creative work.  At the end of that list, write one creative task you want to do the next day.  Then challenge yourself to make sure that task makes it on the next day’s list of accomplishments.

At the end of the five or seven days, look at all you’ve accomplished over that time and compare yourself to yourself!  Did you do more than you thought (which is what often happens), or was this an easy week and you’d like to accomplish more next week?  Don’t berate yourself for not doing more because that takes you back to the place of “not enough.” Instead, consider the easier week one of gathering your energy for the week to come.

Adopt the practice of self-acknowledgement.  Save the odious comparisons for car shopping.

Last night my husband and I watched Michael Clayton with George Clooney.  When it was over, we looked at each other and wondered…

Why had it been nominated for so many awards—including Best Actor and Best Motion Picture?

We agreed we liked the movie, and that the storyline was interesting (and probably all too close to reality), but overall, it just didn’t evoke enough mental or emotional hooks to have us saying, “Wow!” at the end.  I am glad I watched it for just two reasons—because I wanted to be informed about it, since it was nominated for an Oscar, and because the performances by Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson were very well done.

But our response to the movie proves a point that is important for most professional artists to remember—art, in any form, is a personal experience, a matter of taste.  While I wasn’t wild about the movie, someone else, like our son, Chris, who has introduced us to a number of good films we might have passed up otherwise, may have enjoyed the development of Clayton’s personal and professional dilemmas and that odd scene where he communes with the horses.  Or not.

When I first started attending craft fairs to sell my rayon chenille wearables and throws, I had to keep reminding myself that not every person who walked into my booth was going to like my work, let alone want to buy it.  Not everyone likes rich colors or swinging fringe (I know, hard to imagine).  Still, if I was patient and persistent, eventually the right people, the right customers, for my work would come into my booth, engage with me about my work, and then make a purchase.

I keep this in mind when I send out query letters, article submissions, and book manuscripts.  Not every agent or editor is my ideal customer, nor is every reader my ideal reader.  Just as everyone doesn’t love colorful, velvety scarves, not everyone loves the combination of myth, fairytale and fantasy.  Some people like their fiction hard-boiled, fast-paced and action-packed.  Some people prefer stories about real (as opposed to imagined) people or events or information. Some readers like writing with lots of dialogue and action and minimal description.  Others, like myself, like writing with that Victorian tendency to fall into luxurious paragraphs of description.

Even those who love the combination of myth, fairytale and fantasy like different twists on it—some preferring romantic, others horrific, and still others, contemporary. 

As writers and artists who depend on the acceptance of agents, editors, selection juries, and the general populace, it is important to remember that art is a personal experience—for everyone.

This is why it is important to do our homework before we submit our work for review, researching the agents and editors, the galleries, or the venues that represent our kind of work.  By looking carefully for the right fit, for people with similar artistic tastes and interests, we are more likely to find our niche in the marketplace, and less likely to be disappointed when our work isn’t snatched up like the amazing goldmine of creativity that it is.

As for “Michael Clayton”…Well, now don’t roll your eyes, I confess that I would rather watch Cher in “Silkwood”, but then, I suppose that is just a matter of taste…
 

Although it is March and the sap is rising, it is still winter here in the Northeast.  A few days ago we woke to a temperature of minus 6 degrees, while at least ten inches of snow blanketed our yard—and our roof. 

As I sit here going through email and scanning for freelance writing jobs, my eyes stray to the icicles hanging from our roof. 

We live in an old Greek Revival farmhouse built sometime in the 1840’s and although my husband has re-insulated most of the walls and roofs of our home, this roof is not steep enough, so snow builds up.  Heat escaping through the roof from the bedroom melts the snow from underneath.  The snowmelt runs down to the eave to drip, drip, drip and then freezes, creating icicles of varying length and thickness, from the delicately beautiful to the monolithic.

Watching this process teaches me an effective way to create—the drip, drip, drip approach to creating—slowly and steadily.  I call it the icicle theory of creativity.

This theory chips away at the daily worry about creating enough, the guilt when we don’t, the procrastination that can then ensue, and the depletion of energy from dealing with the guilt and worry and procrastination.  And, this theory also melts that chilling excuse of not enough time.

Here’s how it works.  Instead of committing to writing, for instance, for two hours or one hour or even a half of an hour, arriving at the end of the time having done nothing more than watch the cursor blink at us while the clock ticks, what if we made a commitment to write one page a day?  Too much?  What if we wrote one paragraph a day?

Just like the drops of melting snow sliding inexorably down the icicle to freeze at its tip until finally the icicle is so heavy, so large, so…complete that it breaks free and falls to earth, one word, one sentence sliding past another and freezing there can create a poem, a short story, an essay, or a novel.  One brush stroke sliding over another can create a painting.  One note sliding past another can create a sonata.

In fact, Jack M. Bickham in his book, Writing Novels That Sell, advises writers to commit to writing not for a length of time every day, but for an amount of writing.  “But if you promise to yourself that you’re going to do five pages a day (or ten!), and stick with that decision, then you won’t just sit there very long.  You’ll get productive in self-defense.”

But if five pages are too much, then try the icicle theory.  A page a day will net you 365 pages in a year—or even 200 pages if you take the weekends off along with a few holidays.  200 pages is a short novel or half of a longer one.

The point is not to let the idea of the end result—that huge monolithic icicle of a novel—keep you from starting or from writing a paragraph or page a day.

Try it.  Drip by drip.  Inexorably writing, painting, or composing.  The icicle theory of creativity!

Well, last Friday I received another rejection of my manuscript, The Shadow Weaver, blasting my hope of working with an agent who had generously offered to look at my first three chapters again if I made some revisions.

Unfortunately, it appears that the changes I made weren’t enough to “involve her emotionally.”

Sigh!  I went into a funk.  One of those maybe-I-shouldn’t-be writing-fiction-or-even-writing-at-all funks.  You know—the one where you want to go hide somewhere like a deep, dark closet or a deserted island somewhere and just bawl or throw a tantrum.

Well, I don’t have a deep, dark closet—I live in an 1840’s Greek Revival farmhouse.  They had wardrobes back then, not big closets.  And, since I live in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, there are no islands close by.

So here is what I did instead.  Maybe these five tips will help you get through your next rejection, since we all get them, sooner or later.

1. Have a tantrum even if there is no island.  I shed some tears for a few minutes and then visualized throwing myself down on my studio floor and screaming and kicking.  While I may not have done it physically, the visualization seemed to help.  And that way, I didn’t scare our dog, Duncan, into searching for his own closet.
2. Seek comfort from a friend.  After my modified tantrum, I wondered, “Who could I tell that would understand and sympathize?”  First, I called my husband who is very understanding and supportive but isn’t a writer.  I needed the sympathy and empathy of writers.  After talking with one friend by phone, I then sent out emails to several other writer friends.  Over the next 24 hours they all either called or sent emails sympathizing and empathizing and generally reassuring me that I was a good writer and there was a home for my story out there somewhere.  Then I had some dark chocolate—it’s a good friend too!
3. Go for a walk, work in your garden, or indulge in a hot bath.  Releasing some of that disappointment and stress through physical activity and relaxation brings about a sense of calm, clarity, and perspective.  I took Duncan for a walk and recalled how many times J. K. Rowling was rejected before an agent took her manuscript for Harry Potter.  Was I going to quit now?
4. Get back on the horse.  I know the wisdom—getting back up on the horse keeps you from being afraid of the horse.  It also keeps you from becoming paralyzed, from not moving forward.  The friend I talked to on Friday, gave me some sympathy and then, even more important, some valuable information about some publishers.  So on Saturday, I sent out another query with a synopsis and the first three chapters according to the guidelines of the publisher.
5. Keep creating.  Now that you are back up and swinging again, don’t sit around waiting for the reply.  Eons could pass—and often do in this business.  Instead, move onto the next project.  Give yourself something to look forward to each morning other than the empty mailbox or the quiet phone.  Take a deep breath and write—or paint, or dance, or compose.

The bottom line is our art is more than what we do.  It is who we are.  I am a writer.  I can’t stop writing, whether I get to share that with the world the way I want to or not.

Tantrums are a good thing.  So is getting back on the horse.  Call your friends.  Keep writing, keep creating.  And go have some really good dark chocolate. 

I belong to a group of five women writers who check in with each other once a week by email.  The check in provides a way to mark our progress on our journey to writing success – however each of us defines that.

Last week, one of the writers checked in and apologized for not accomplishing “more working writer stuff” after a holiday week that included a sick husband, sick child, and a baby only a few months old.  Not to mention the job she has…

While she was juggling all that, she also managed to make a visit to the yarn shop to supply one of her creative passions—knitting.  And, she looked at notes about her protagonist’s job choice.  And she thought about what her own ideal work situation might look like.  Whew!  Just reading that makes me tired.

I guess the only thing that qualifies as “working writer stuff” is actual pages written on paper or screen.  No written pages, ergo an unproductive writing week.

She is not the only one to apologize for unwritten pages.  The rest of us have apologized for the same thing because of work schedules, fatigue, depression, and just the general insanity of living.

I think it is funny, actually, that with her months-old baby in her arms she doesn’t realize that what she just went through is a perfect metaphor for this creative conundrum.

That baby of hers?  Well, before she held that “product” in her arms, she went through nine months of watching what she ate and taking vitamins to nurture what couldn’t be seen, especially those first three or four months.  After all, other than morning sickness, fatigue, and an occasional flutter, what did she have to show for all the eating and vitamins, exercise and sleeping she did those first few months?  Nothing.  For all she knew, she could have just been putting on weight.

And those last three months? Oh sure, she was definitely growing something, although by the last month she was probably convinced it was never going to show up.  And she probably got tired of people asking her, with a nervous eye on her now monstrous belly, when she was due (almost as bad as being asked if we have finished our manuscript—yet).

Many pregnant women in the ninth month wonder if we will ever have anything to show for all our months of conscious eating, exercise, and increased discomfort, yet do we called ourselves unproductive?  No way!  Fat, maybe.  Frustrated by the wait, yes.  Unproductive, no.

What we all forget and need to remember from time to time is that much of the creative process and therefore creative productivity is unseen.  Much of what nurtures and feeds into the final product— reading, listening to music, baking cookies, talking with a friend, hugging your child, having a good cry, falling into deep sleep—may look like it is accomplishing nothing, like it is falling into some black hole, making us feel unproductive. 

Yet, as long as we don’t allow those things to become distractions or excuses (a very fine line there sometimes, I admit) then we need to value them as the kind of productivity that can’t always be measured within a day or week or month.  By acknowledging the new experiences that provide new perspectives, the conversations that raise new questions, the imaginings and quiet, staring-into-space times as the nutrition and nurturing necessary for giving birth to our creative projects, we honor the process as well as the product.

Honor your unseen productivity

The Sirens and the Muses are duking it out in my studio again. 

You know the Sirens—those luscious, lovely, hypnotic singers said to lure unwitting sailors to their destruction on the rocks—and artists from their studios.

Supposedly, the Sirens once had wings but were stripped of them when they challenged their sisters, the Muses, to a singing contest and lost.  But they just don’t know when to give up.

I’m sure you’ve heard them in your creative space as I have in mine—singing of fun and pleasure, of abundance and reward.  Saying, “C’mon!  Let’s party!”

What’s confusing, for me at least, is that the Muses sing about all those tempting things too.  Well, okay, they sing about hard work, commitment, discipline, and solitude as well.  But those other things…I swear I can hear them sing about fun and pleasure and reward…Right?

After all, when we are in the flow of our creativity, doesn’t it feel like play, like fun, like whooping up and down in the roller coaster, with our hair blown back in our faces, and our breath caught in our lungs?  And when we move out of that place, when we come to the end of that ride, don’t we feel a sense of accomplishment and reward?  A “Whew! I made it!” feeling that is so powerful that when you get out of the coaster you feel like your feet barely touch the earth?

And we all want to feel that again—over and over.  The problem, the challenge, of course, is that sometimes it is hard to hear the Muse’s voice over the Siren’s.

One of the Siren’s, the one who keeps batting her eyelashes, will start in her loveliest voice, lilting and soft, “Oh why don’t you read that new book you just bought.  That guy’s chest on the cover is enough to make even a Si-i-ren droo-ool.”

Or another Siren, the one who dresses and sings like a deep-voiced mezzosoprano, “The garden is growing, the temperature warming.  Summer will soon be gone…”

Then that sad looking Siren with her hair hanging in her face, “Woe, oh woe!  What kind of friend are you who hasn’t called Marsha (sob) in more than a month?”

Painfully, they aren’t even singing in harmony–and then they try to outdo each other, getting louder and louder like some awful nightmare of American Idol!  How is a person to hear the Muse’s voice in all that?

Well, I find that creating a ritual to silence the Sirens and to invite the Muse into my creative space is one good way to win the battle.  Putting on special music, lighting incense, and saying a special prayer or blessing are ways I signal to myself that it is time to listen to the Muse and ignore the Sirens.

Too, it helps if I promise the Sirens beforehand that they will have their turn, that I will come out and play periodically—you know, have a piece of chocolate, call that friend, read the next chapter in that new book—then they are more likely to stay silent or least sing softly while my Muse and I go for that wild roller coaster ride together again.

But that is just one way.  There are others.  What is yours?

Well, I just wrote this piece, so right now the score here in my studio is: Muse 1, Sirens 0.  But the day is young yet…