Weaving The Dream

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. 

In my dream, I am walking through my (waking reality) house to put something I am holding out back.  I come out of a front door but instead of walking around to the back yard, I open another door in the front onto a corridor that leads through the house to another door in the back.  As I step into the corridor and close the door behind me, I think “This is a shorter route.  Why do we get stuck traveling in the same patterns all the time?”

Then I notice that there is a door on my right that I remember leads to another part of the house.  I open the door on an unfinished bathroom.  The shower and sink are installed but not the toilet.  There is a large radiator-like fixture in there as well.  I come out and see another door on the same side.

I open it into a large room that, at first, looks like everyone’s ideal media room but the room appears unfinished, sculpted in what looks like Styrofoam. I think how big the space is and have an idea where everything goes.  Then I turn and look back in the direction of the door I came through and what has previous been black and white is now in full color. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a sense this isn’t real, that this part of the house doesn’t exist.

I see a kitchen with a sink, open shelves above it and a large island/bar.  There is a woman standing there that resembles our mail deliverer who is there to help me.  And I say “I could give workshops here!”  She nods yes, says I could and because of her response, that she sees what I see, I think, oh it is real!  I am so excited about the possibilities, and when I turn back to the media area it is a finished, furnished, comfortable living room.

Now I see an open staircase going up to another floor and I investigate and discover another sitting/living area to the left and know that there are bedrooms beyond on the right – a place, I think, where people who come for my retreats and workshops could stay..  I am so excited by the possibilities.  I wake up.

The title of this dream is appropriate since I have had other dreams about this house having more space, more rooms, yet undiscovered, yet unfinished, and I am always happy about the extra space, regardless of its condition.

Two things strike me about this dream, however.  The first is the comment to myself at the beginning about moving out of old patterns and paths.  Doing this in our lives and our creativity, opens us up to both seeing things in a new way and to discovery.  I would not have found this space in the dream if I hadn’t taken a different path.

The second interesting thing is that in many of my previous dreams the extra space that is off the family room of our waking life house, has, to this point been in the raw or unfinished state.  In this dream, with the exception of the toilet and some paint in the bathroom, this space is finished.  In fact, I remember in the dream having the recollection that a couple and their small child had lived there for a year so the space was even previously inhabited.

This dream had me springing out of bed this morning, humming with the idea of news paths and hoping that the image of a space to teach – a finished space—implies that the I am moving closer to being able to do the kind of teaching and other work that I want to do.  That soon, I will be able to live in this new space, i.e. this new place in my life.  The space is comfortable with cheery colors, comfy furniture and natural materials.  Roomy but not overwhelming.  Intimate, actually, the way I like to work with people.

So what new paths do you need to take?  And what creative space or creative dream do you yet need to claim?

Potential and possibility shimmer in that space and that dream.  Maybe I should title the dream, Spirit House, instead.

Part of the joy of celebrating a new year is letting go of and saying goodbye to the old year, especially if that year has been particularly challenging.The year both my mother and grandfather died, and the year my husband’s father and then mother died were two years I remember being particularly glad to say good bye to, embracing the following New Years with a sense of hope and relief.

Just in time for Christmas…a winter wonderland!  The snow fell softly but steadily yesterday from late morning until early evening here in the foothills of New York’s Catskill Mountains—whisper-light snow, perfect for kicking with your feet or for diving into to make snow angels.

The steadily falling snow piled into billowy drifts.  Our six small pine trees that Bob draped with white bee lights two weekends ago, were now also frosted with soft white mounds, turning nature’s beauty into holiday magic.

In the dimly lit darkness, Bob used the snow blower to clear the driveway while our son, Jason, and I shoveled the walkways, the patio, the paths to the bird feeders and up the hill to the woods where the dog has his latrine.

I knew where to shovel because our dog, Duncan, had already plowed through, decking himself with snow on his back and snow balls on his legs in the process.  As I shoveled his path to make it easier for him and us, I thought about how winter forces us to define and recognize the paths we habitually travel—we most often use this door to go out, we walk this direction at this angle uphill, we go to this point and that place.

Winter snows discourage meandering outside—unless you have snowshoes or cross-country skis on.  So, we clear and shovel our habitual paths, and then follow them as long as the snow lasts.

Sort of like what we do with our lives—our creative lives especially.  Which is odd considering that our creative lives are where we should be meandering the most.

But having done the work to clear our creative paths by creating routines, connections, and habits, we can often fail to explore new opportunities, new relationships, new ideas because they require more work—in effect, more shoveling.  And heaven knows our muscles are still aching from the last effort at clearing paths.  And what is wrong with those old paths anyway?  After all, they are usually the shortest, fastest, and easiest ways to where we want to go.

Nothing, of course, is wrong with them, but what happens to some of the critical elements of creativity—discovery, growth and…well, fun—if we stay on the old paths?  We can’t kick up snow or throw ourselves into snow angels by staying on those paths.  Creativity demands exploration.  Life does too.

Maybe that is why Duncan politely sniffed the paths we carved for him and then loped off into the pristine snowscape of uncharted yard.
 

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

Okay, tomorrow is Thanksgiving and, since the origin of the holiday is our ancestors giving thanks centuries ago, numerous articles online and in print the last few weeks tout the importance and benefits of being grateful.

So, since everyone else is reminding you to be grateful, and some are sharing with you what they are grateful for, I won’t.  I know—you’re grateful, aren’t you!

Instead I want to stress the importance of accepting gratitude or receiving thanks.

I don’t know where we got into the habit of brushing off thanks, of discounting appreciation, of pooh-poohing gratitude but it seems that we are as bad at receiving thanks as we are at receiving compliments.  Maybe our parents were worried we would get a big head or something if we received too much gratitude.  Or maybe our therapists were concerned that we would only do good things in order to receive gratitude.  (And I have to wonder, how bad would that be? Think about how much nicer the world might be if we all got off on doing good things just to hear someone say thank you to us!)

How good did you feel the last time you gave someone a gift and received their thanks in the form of a hug, a kiss, a thank you or, one of the sure signs of gratitude, tears?  The thing is, discounting the gratitude in effect discounts our gift, whether that gift is of time, money, love, or other resource.  How many times have you expressed appreciation to someone only to hear them say, “Oh, it is nothing.”

What is nothing?  The act of giving?  The gift itself?  If that is true then where is the gift, where is the meaning and intent behind the gift?  So, what, you gave me something that is nothing, means nothing to you?  Then why bother?

I don’t know about you but when I say thank you to someone, I want them to fully accept and take in my gratitude and appreciation because that too is a gift. 

See, giving is a circular action of giving, receiving, and giving appreciation for the giving.  If we don’t fully receive the gratitude, we stop the circle of giving.  We halt that flow of life that creates abundance.

So much of the recent writing and teaching on abundance, like The Secret, stresses the importance of feeling and expressing gratitude to the Universe, God, Source in order to keep the flow of abundance going.  The implication, then, is that the Universe, God, Source happily and completely receives your gratitude.  So happily, in fact, that He/She/It gives to you more, and then happily again receives your thanks.  On and on.

Giving and gratitude are part of a whole.  “You can’t have one without the other,” as that old song says.

So don’t just give thanks, receive it.  Joyfully.  Completely.  It is NOT nothing.  It is something.

Happy Holiday!

You’re welcome! Truly!