Weaving The Dream

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…

Yesterday I received an email from the husband of a weaving customer of mine.  He works for the Library of Congress and had discovered that my book, Weaving a Woman’s Life: Spiritual Lessons from the Loom, was there, properly catalogued and shelved.

Wow! I thought.  My book.  In the Library of Congress, where my sons can find it and, when the day comes, their children can find it as well.  When I shared this delightful information with a friend, she said it was one of my legacies.

And that got me thinking about the word legacy—something handed down by a predecessor, sometimes a gift in a will.  Something we leave behind for others.

My house is filled with legacies.  There are the paintings and sculpture created by my mother who died of breast cancer at the age of 53.  An avid antique buyer and collector, she also left me the large Early American china cabinet in our dining room, my collection of antique sewing collectibles, and the oak washstand in our family room, among many other things.

My father gave me the small, etched water glass that belonged to his grandmother bearing her name, Cornelia, and “Chautauqua 1895”.  I also have the oak kitchen table that belonged to my father’s mother and father, which he and his sisters used to run and hide under when they were growing up.  My paternal grandfather gave me the mantle clock that sat in his parlor but didn’t run.  Years after my grandfather’s death, my father repaired it and it now sits ticking on our mantle.

As a young girl, I always longed for a vanity table.  After my mother’s aunt died, I received one of hers along with the mirrored tray, hand mirror, and face powder holder.

The interesting thing about legacies is that you usually don’t just receive the item—you also receive the memories about the person who handed it down.  In this way, a small part of his or her spirit or presence remains in your life.

One of the best examples of this, and for me one of the legacies I treasure most is the collection of daylilies my father has given me.  An avid aficionado, my father has raised and bred daylilies for years, even earning certification as a daylily judge.  His flowerbeds trumpet over 50 types of daylilies.

Knowing that he and my stepmother intend to move soon, last year he carefully went through and divided his daylilies to give me fans or rootings of each type.  Some I planted last year and some are still waiting in pots for their permanent homes.

They are in full bloom right now, many of them, and I perambulate along their beds, talking to them, complimenting them on their exquisite beauty, removing the spent blooms, and all the time, I am thinking of my father and the care and commitment he gave to these flowers. 

Like the lilies, if given care and commitment, our children are living legacies.  How we raise them, who they become as people can affect family, friends, communities, and the world well into the Future.  My three loving, compassionate, creative sons are my and my husband’s most significant legacy.

Legacies are important.  They provide connection and foundation for the present and the future.  They can give us something to hold onto or push away from.

What legacies have been passed down to you?  What are you leaving behind for others?

Okay, this is bad.  This is really bad.  After all I read about keeping my blog up to date and blogging at least two or three times a week, it has been just over two months since my last entry.  Two months!

And every time the doorbell rings (well, it doesn’t, actually, since it is broken) or the phone rings, then I worry that the Blog Squad (Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman, www.buildabetterblog.com) have arrived to carry me off to jail for fraud and failure to follow through.

I could say that my long absence here was due to that rejection previously noted in the last entry but truthfully, rejection doesn’t immobilize me for long.

I could also say that June was the month where I felt like Lucy in the chocolate factory.  For those of you too young to remember that classic episode, she and Ethel take a job on a chocolate production line.  The belt carrying the chocolates moves faster and faster past them until they can’t keep up.  First they stuff the extras in their mouths (every woman’s dream), but then, when that doesn’t solve the problem, they stash them any place they can find—their apron pockets, their bras, etc.  The perfect example of too much of a good thing.  That was me in June.

I barely had time to recover from the excitement of attending BEA (Book Expo America) in New York the very first weekend of June and meeting with a couple of agents and publishers, then I was off to Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York to teach dreamwork at the International Women’s Writing Guild conference.  And let me just say here that if you are female and have ever considered the idea of writing, this conference is the place to be for stimulation, motivation, and amazing friendships.

On top of it all was a huge writing assignment on Empty Nesters for an online magazine, which promises good exposure and reasonable pay, but kind of killed my desire to write anything else during that time.  (I now consider myself, however, an expert on the Empty Nest!)

Then there was my daughter-in-law-to-be’s bridal shower…  You get the picture.

And the more time that went by, the harder it became to settle back into blogging.  And the guiltier I felt.  And the guiltier I felt, the less I felt like writing and the more time went by.  And the more time went by…well, you get the picture.

Of course, the best way to beat guilt and procrastination is to take action.  So here I am.

And the lesson?  The lesson is that any habit, any discipline, any craft, takes consistency.  The minute you fall out of your habit/discipline/craft, you have to start all over again to build up the rhythm, the motion, that forward drive.

So I am kind of starting all over again.  And now that I have, I have ideas and topics lining up, crowding around, shouting, “Me! Pick me!  Write about me!”

Sigh!  Feels good…and I hope this will convince the Blog Squad to give me probation…

Went out to the mailbox yesterday, little expecting that there was a ticking bomb inside.

OK, maybe that is a little dramatic, but I am a writer and what was in that mailbox is something every writer dreads…a letter of rejection.

This letter, standard in its form—sorry, but you aren’t for us, sure you will find an appropriate home, etc. etc.—was from a well-respected agency who had asked to look at the entire manuscript of my fantasy novel.  I was so hopeful.  After all, how many times do we get that far in the process?

Rejection in any form is a hard thing to take.  I know.  While my weaving and writing have been accepted and purchased by the best, my weaving and writing have also been rejected by the best for almost 15 years—by craft show juries for the best craft shows (even after being in them previously, always a puzzler), by craft galleries and museum shops buyers, by well-to-do private customers, and by those adorably confusing and unpredictable agents and editors.

Rejection, as hard to take as it sometimes is, is just the nature of the business.  In fact, it is the nature of life. And yet, we always wonder why?  Why don’t they like me?  Why don’t they like my work?  Why, why, why…?

If we can move past the place of curling into a ball and chanting,  “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going to eat some worms!” then we can use those rejections, personal or professional, for evaluation, motivation, and action.

First, we can check to make sure that we are bringing the best of who we are and what we do to our relationships, our creativity, and our work.  Then, we need to remember and understand an oft forgotten truth that is really difficult for some of us to swallow.  Repeat after me, “Not everyone is going to love me, my work, or my creative expressions.”  Did you choke on that a bit?  Take a swallow of water.

Sorry, that is just the way it is, AND that is what makes life so grand and exciting.  Everyone is different and has different tastes and desires and needs.  The challenge, yes, challenge, is to find the match to who we are and what we have to offer while not compromising the essence of our work or ourselves.

So we use the fact that this lover, this employer, this agent/editor doesn’t like who we are or what we have to offer to take action to find the one who does.  As sales and motivational leaders like Tony Robbins remind us, each “no” brings us that much closer to the “yes”.  So, we use the rejection as a catalyst, as a kick in the pants to get moving onto the next candidate in our search for true love, fortune, and fame.  That way, instead of blowing us, and our self-esteem, into smithereens, we cut that colored wire of rejection and totally disarm the whole thing.

So, yesterday, after doing the curling into a ball and chanting routine for a few minutes, I sat down at my computer and did some networking with authors and publishers who will be at Book Expo America which I am planning to attend, and even set up an appointment with a publisher.  I used that blasted letter to get me moving on to the next possibility.  I totally disarmed that letter.

I am still thinking of putting it in the freezer to chill off, though.  Just in case…
 

Recently, I was a guest on a panel of authors speaking to writers at an event sponsored by the International Women’s Writing Guild, held in New York City. The event was on a beautiful spring weekend when most people would rather be outside in their yards and gardens.

But writers will gladly give up fun in the sun to find out the secrets to getting a book published—and they will travel a far distance for the same reason.  At this event, audience members were from New York City, the surrounding metropolitan area and nearby states, as well as from as far away as Texas and Peru. The authors on the panel also came from far away places like New Orleans and Michigan.

While I was amazed at the distance people had traveled to be at this NYC event, I realized I should not have been.  After all, for five years I was a volunteer Speaker Host at the Maui Writers Conference.  Each year I spoke with writers from all over the US who had planned and saved and finagled in order to come to the conference, attend the seminars, and meet the agents and editors in this paradise setting. Writers will go to great lengths and great distances to study and learn about the art, craft, and business of writing.

Here is the thing though.  We—and by “we” I mean anyone involved in creativity of some form—can use the learning process as a form of, uh oh, PROCRASTINATION!  Yes, the more we think we have to learn, to read, to study, the longer we are able to procrastinate, put off having to actually create, having to actually risk life and ego to finally put our imaginative ideas into form.  And this attending of conferences, reading more books, taking more classes, eases that nagging sense of guilt that we should be doing something.

Don’t get me wrong!  Conferences, books, seminars, classes are important stepping stones to successful creativity—but they are not the true destinations.

As I listened to the other panelists share their stories that day, I heard a similarity between all ten of us.  First, we each had a strong belief in our work, our writing.  Secondly, we had the willingness to do whatever it took—within legal bounds, mind you—to get our books published, even if we had to do it ourselves.

We may do it kicking and screaming, as I did when I finally decided to self-publish my book, Weaving a Woman’s Life, but, in the end, what else can we do if we are to truly and fully honor the Gift of our creative work?

So we must decide.  Are we willing to invest at least as much time, energy, thought, and effort into creating and sharing our work as we are in planning and getting to that next conference? 

We will travel far and long to listen to others tell us of their successes and how we too, can be successful with our creativity.  But the really important questions?  How far will we go to make our creative imaginings manifest in the world?   How far will we go to honor the creative urgings of our souls?