Moonlight and Frog Song: Finding the Sacred

I grew up in a very religious household. To my young mind, religion was about rules and punishment. I figured god was like my mother: quick to anger, quick to punish, and really sick of dealing with his unruly children. I practiced religion as a way to avoid eternal punishment, much the way I practiced docile behavior as a way to avoid spankings. The latter didn’t really work, but I clung to the former through my adolescence and into my early twenties.

I also grew up in the country. I didn’t have many friends, so I spent a lot of time wandering around the woods by myself. Out there in the trees I felt something I couldn’t name, but it was deep and real and beautiful. The world out there felt alive. There was a presence in the forests and fields, and it tingled with magic. Sometimes it frightened me a little bit, but my fear was tinged with awe. I never tried to articulate it to anyone; for one thing, I was a little bit afraid my fundamentalist mother would tell me it was wrong, since most things that made me happy were bad. For another, the feeling was too intense to explain; I’d tried writing about it, but words couldn’t capture it.

In high school I threw myself into religion with zealous fervor. My life was like that Jesus Camp documentary, only with older kids. My connection to the mystical force in the woods went to sleep, eclipsed by bible studies and youth meetings. And when it came time to choose a college, I went for a private Christian school . . .

Sacred

And got the surprise of my life when all the other Christian students and professors had ideas about god that were utterly different from my own and from each other’s. I spent my college years tearing down every assumption about god and about life. I searched for something that felt real and true, and came up empty over and over.

Then one night during the summer after graduation, my friends and I went for a walk in the campus nature preserve after dark. It had been suffocatingly hot and humid all day, but the air was cooling. Walking through the dark felt like dipping into a swimming pool after the heat of the day.

In the woods the air was full of the stirring of leaves and the eerie music of frogs. The moonlight turned all colors into shades of silver and black and glinted on the ponds and streams.

And wandering through that beautiful night, I felt a wholeness that I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid talking to the trees around my house. And I realized what I was seeking, and not finding, in the churches and bible studies. I was looking for something sacred. And I felt its overwhelming presence in full moonlight and frogsong.

That night was a turning point for me, though I didn’t know it yet.

Years later, I’m still learning how to connect to the sacred, how to live a life that is imbued with spirit. To me, true spirituality is engaged with the sacred in the here and now, in the real world, every day. It’s a path, possibly without a destination. Or maybe I should say it’s a way of being in the world, rather than a goal we shoot for. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, or reincarnation, or what’s out there. All I know is that I feel the presence of god, spirit, whatever you want to call it, and I want to engage with that presence to make my own life, and the lives of everyone else, more beautiful and worthwhile.

Of course, I think the role of religion and spirituality in every life should be to make it more beautiful and worthwhile. I think the best way to determine the validity of the spiritual path you are walking is to ask yourself: does this make me happier? Does it make me a better person? Does it make me more kind, more compassionate? Does it help me grow and heal? If you can answer “yes” to those questions, celebrate that. If not? Well, I guess that’s something to think about.

An Inspiration Round-Up

I’m on the run this week due to my own poor planning, so I can’t even begin to think of a blog post today. I thought I’d share with y’all some things on writing around the web that I found crazy awesome.

When Sugar–advice columnist for The Rumpus–hears from a 26 year old woman who “writes like a girl” and is a “writer who can’t write”, she responds with “So write . . . Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.” The result is epic. Here’s a snippet to entice you:

Yes, we can rattle off a list of women writers who’ve killed themselves and yes, we may conjecture that their status as women in the societies in which they lived contributed to the depressive and desperate state that caused them to do so. But it isn’t the unifying theme.

You know what is?

How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included.

Next up: we writers are fabricators, it’s true. But we get in trouble when we lie to ourselves. Chuck Wendig simultaneously calls us on our shit and entertains us with his brilliant post, Lies Writers Tell.  The enticing snippet, on the lie “I don’t write for money”:

Oh, aren’t you fucking special. You’re above money, are you? You have transcended the need to exist in this material world? “I write my inky words on paper and then I eat that paper and live within the ether of mine own storytelling!” Hey, good for you, you crazy little Bodhisattva, you. I tried not paying my mortgage and when you do that, the bank sends ninjas.

I do not have the luxury of caring naught about currency.

Next is Austin Kleon’s Steal like an Artist, complete with stick figures and random photos and this little bit:

Believe it or not, I get a lot of inspiration from people like Bob Ross and Martha Stewart. Bob Ross taught people how to paint. He gave his secrets away. Martha Stewart teaches you how to make your house and your life awesome. She gives her secrets away.

People love it when you give your secrets away, and sometimes, if you’re smart about it, they’ll reward you by buying the things you’re selling.

Next up, a video of J.K. Rowling’s “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at Harvard.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Finally, another video: Elizabeth Gilbert talking about the idea of a muse or a genius, to help us deal with the pressures of worrying about writing (or other creative work), on TED.

Enjoy!

Inspiration, Perspiration, Motivation; or, Our Heroine Gets Over-Excited, and Occasionally Swears

I’ve heard so many people talk about “well I started writing, but I got distracted and I need to get back to it”. Indeed, I’ve said something similar a million times myself. Life is really good at keeping us too busy to write. Life is good at keeping us from doing lots of things we want to do.

But since I decided that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from writing, I’ve learned some things that have been very helpful. Some are techniques, and some are just realizations that helped me wrap my head around this insane process that I love so much. And, though I am not a paid professional, I thought I would share those things with you, in case you find them helpful.

The first thing I’ve learned is that I need a writing buddy. I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but I cannot stress it enough–get a writing buddy. My writing buddy and I check in with each other daily on how things are going. I know there is someone else out there paying attention to whether or not I’m working on my writing projects, and it’s just the right kind of accountability. But that’s not the only thing that’s helpful: we also work in tandem.We “meet” via Google Chat, and discuss how things are going. We brainstorm (it’s awesome brainstorming via chat, because then everything is saved in a file in gmail so that you can refer back to it) and problem solve. And then we set a timer–usually 20 minutes if we’re composing new writing, 30 minutes for editing sessions. We each focus intently on our projects during the timed session, then we come back to chat and compare notes, discuss any new issues that have come up, have a little personal chat time, and then do another session. It’s actually pretty amazing how much work we both get done this way. We are both easily distracted, so the combination of accountability plus a timer helps us to focus.

This is related to the second thing, which is that we really do try to write every day. Some days it doesn’t happen. We both have kids, we garden, we preserve food. I have a million other projects going on. But schedule in time to write almost every day, even if it’s only for an hour. I’ve actually had days where I only got 20 minutes or half an hour, but I squeezed in what I could.

Which leads to the third thing, which is that writing is never going to just happen. You want to do it, you have to schedule it. And then that scheduled time needs to be sacred. If you skip it, there should be a damn good reason. And sometimes there WILL be a damn good reason. And sometimes you may have to decide, “this period in my life is not conducive to writing”.  And that’s okay too.

But I’m learning that, if a friend wants to meet for coffee, I can schedule that around my writing time. It’s okay to tell my 11 and 14 year old kids, “I’m writing. I need for you to give me this hour without interrupting me unless it’s a life or death situation.” And then make them stick with that. (Obviously, it’s different with younger children who can’t do things for themselves. Writing Buddy Laura has to work during her two-year-old’s nap time. So right now, we schedule around her toddler.) Neither of my kids has so far died or been otherwise damaged by my closed door policy. I think it’s good for them to see me doing what’s important to me and setting healthy boundaries.

The fourth thing is that inspiration is NOT the greatest factor in writing. Writing isn’t some mystical, ecstatic experience that descends like a dove from heaven and overtakes you. If you’re waiting to feel inspired? You will finish your novel in approximately 250 years. If you finish at all. Inspiration is only the jumping off point: it’s the seed, the spark, that first idea that fills you with excitement and giddiness. And it’s a WONDERFUL start. But if you want to finish, you can’t rely on inspiration. You will have to rely instead on motivation and perspiration.

A lot of people seem to think of inspiration and motivation as sort of the same thing–when they say “I didn’t feel inspired today”, I think what they really mean is, “I wasn’t motivated today”. But they’re really not the same. Inspiration can set you in motion initially, but without continuing motivation you will get nowhere. To motivate someone is to “provide with incentive, move to action, impel.” My blog buddy Cat has a great post on this subject. One of my favorite quotes from her musings on the subject:

Some writer’s get feisty when they believe their fellow scribes are not willing to put in the time, yet insist on instant gratification without the work.  In a recent discussion, one asked in this paraphrased kind of way, “If I was a dentist could I just shrug and tell my patient, oops, guess I don’t feel like drilling today?”

If you want to write, you have to . . . well . . . write. You have to do it regularly, if you want to finish something. Writing is work. It’s delicious, satisfying, beautiful work, but it is still work.

But work is good. We have this idea in our culture that work is soul draining, unfulfilling drudgery. And many jobs are just that. But work is an important part of life–and at its best, it can give us purpose and let us contribute something new to the world that wasn’t there before. Work can be a passionate and life-feeding process. But it will always be a process which requires us to give our time and energy. If you want to write a novel, or your memoirs, or a comic book or screenplay or poem or children’s book, you should be willing to perspire for it. Regularly.

And now that I’ve been all pragmatic, I’ll move on to the airy fairy fifth thing. Which is that I DO believe there is some bizarre kind of magic that happens in the writing process. I DO believe in divine inspiration, or a muse, or whatever you’d like to call it. There are things that come to me during the writing process that I’m pretty sure I’d never create on my own. BUT, I think that your muse, your divine inspirer, your grace, whatever you call it, STILL expects you to do the work. It isn’t the job of the muse to drop the finished work in your lap, or to deliver some kind of disembodied dictation which you merely transcribe. If that’s happening,  you aren’t creating, you’re channeling. Different process entirely. Still an awesome process, but not the same thing. The muse gives you the spark; then you have to carry it, feed it, nurture it, work for it, and something beautiful will come from it. And once you start working, sometimes the muse will give you new things to add to the process, some amazing bit of fuel for the fire that sends flames shooting skyward. But you still have to take what you are given and shape it. I am finding that the more I give to the process, the more I receive from it. I think that’s like anything else in life–what you put in to it determines what you get out of it.

The sixth–and last–thing is this; if you don’t love the process of writing, you shouldn’t be doing it. It’s crazy and ridiculous to write only for the sake of being published. Do I want to be published? Hell yes. Would I love to earn money with my writing? Absolutely. But if I knew I would never get a cent from writing? I would still do it. My writing buddy isn’t even sure she WANTS to be published–but she loves the process, so she does it anyway, and lets the publishing question be a problem for her future self. I DO want to be published, but I refuse to answer questions from my friends about when I think it will happen. I have no guarantee that it will ever happen. I hope it will, but I don’t know. But I write because I want to, because I need to, because there is no rush in the world like taking part in the unfolding of a story. If you don’t feel that way about it–are you sure you want to do it? Or do you just like the idea of having a book with your name on it? If you don’t enjoy the process, maybe you should find something that you DO love doing. And if you DO enjoy the process, then don’t let anyone convince you to stop, even if all you do with the things you write is tuck them in a box. Publication should not be your only reason to write–and it shouldn’t stand in the way of your writing either. Write because you fuckin’ love it–because otherwise, what’s the point?