Creative Attunement March 10-17 2014: And Then There Were Two

For this week, my thoughts have been on the way I approach creativity as a writer. The way I “roll” as a writer. What I mean by that is I’ve been examining my thoughts on what kind of writer I am.

When I began my writing career, and I had the dream of being an author fresh on my eyelids, I was what you would call a one-Muse woman. I was one of those individuals who would write on one book at a time. Write on one story, and in that way woo one Muse, and be wooed in return by that one Muse.

I think this is in part because of my loyalty. The loyalty I have as part of my personality, and the level of commitment that I like to feel that I have toward a work that is speaking to me. I suppose I didn’t like the idea of “swapping” on my Muses – creating one out for the other. I suppose in the past I felt that this might weaken my “resolve” to finish the work. I felt that it would cause my “eyes to wander” so to speak, and in that lose my potency.

That I would somehow become distracted, and that distraction would be horrible for my creative process, and completely ruined my ability to finish the work once I started.

And I thought that way for a long time. It wasn’t until recently (and I mean recently by earlier this year) that I decided – realized the magic of Two.

That’s right, after almost 15 years of being a one-Muse writer, I have turned into a multi-Muse writer. And I suppose this too, also mirrors the widening and defining that my heart and my concept of love has gone through as well. But that is a topic for another blog post.

So what is the magic? The magic is that everything I thought as a “negative” to having more than one thing I was writing – more than one Muse I was courting – turned out to be wrong. Very wrong. Instead of a second Muse taking away from the first Muse, and making me lose my commitment, a surprising thing happens. My commitment to each Muse actually grow stronger because of the presence of the other.

Having a second Muse allows me to shift my focus ever so slightly. It allows me to leave the “bedroom” the creative space of one Muse and gone to the other. This is important because this shift – this change of scenery – allows me to see each piece with new eyes. To interact with each of my beautiful Muses with refreshed vigor. With refreshed commitment and vision, because I have been able to feast my eyes and heart on something else.

But one of the greatest gifts that I have found by working with two Muses instead of one is the fact that it keeps my creative muscle sharp. It keeps the edge of my pen sharp so to speak, because I’m not getting tired – I’m not getting lazy by writing in one voice on one topic for too long.

Most importantly however, is the fact that by having two Muses I actually protect myself against falling into a creative dead zone, more popularly known as “writer’s block.” I don’t believe that this exists in the way that most people do, but I have found that by having more than one spirit to commune with, I am less likely to fall into a place of discontent, disillusionment or confusion. Into a place where I can get my bearings or the will to write.

So if I ever have a moment where creative energy stops flowing from one Muse, all I have to do is calmly go and visit the other. And so from this year, and my writing process, this is helped me get more consistent writing for myself, as well as a decrease in my fear and discomfort of a potential slow spot in my work.

This is completely different than the way I used to feel when I was writing with only one Muse. I used to dread the moment where the work would become slow, or I would have to work a little harder to get the words on paper. And that’s because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I didn’t have any other inspiration to turn to, and so this added a level of desperation to my work. A level of feeling like “Well, this can’t be happening right now. I can’t be losing my creative energy (my sexual desire) for the work, it’s characters and its meaning. If I do, everything stops.”

I don’t have this now, as not all of my eggs are in one basket. So I don’t have the same need for the one Muse to be consistent or to be invulnerable. I can allow that Muse to be however she is, knowing that the fire will come back. And it does come back. For each Muse. And they are kind of like polyamorous partners in that way.

In that when you leave one, you have not forsaken that one. You are just enjoying a different experience for a while. But that when you come back you’ll have all the energy and the desire you need to continue. Muses work the same way, and this year has been proof of that.

It helps too, that my beautiful Muses are completely different yet complementary goddesses. One is more masculine and the other is more feminine, and it is so so beautiful to get to see and enjoy the spectrum of this female presence.

So if you feel like your writing life is becoming stale, you may want to consider adding more Muses to your home. More stories to your queue. Not only will this stretch you creatively, but it will give you a chance to explore some new and different lands, while you are still staking a claim on your first expedition.

Until next time!

Creative Attunement December 9-16, 2013: The Importance of Being Omniscient

As I was writing during the latter part of the week last week and through the weekend, I had an interesting experience. I’ve never really had something like this happen before. It’s what happened when I wrote in two different perspectives, and about the same moment in time.

Now, as a writer I’m used to being omniscient. I’m used to seeing the big picture, and being able to drop in and out of different character’s heads. It’s an occupational necessity, as the whole story can never be seen from one angle. But before, when I have written – when I have decided to change perspectives, to drop into the head and heart of another character, culture or otherwise, I haven’t ever shown the same moment in time. It has always been a little further in time, or a little in the past. Or, if it does match up with the events going on in the “main character” experience, it’s the other side of it. It’s the complementary aspect. But it is only complementary because it gives the other side of the story, but this other side is somewhat blind to the event or events as they happened in the main storyline.

This is not what happened over this past week. I am currently writing a collection of pieces which focuses on a particular moment in time, and from two perspectives. Both of these perspectives are recounting the moments as they happen. As you would expect from something with multiple perspectives. The difference, however, is the fact that these perspectives are constantly rubbing shoulders with one another. These perspectives live with each other. Literally. They share the same space, and they are intertwined with one another.

So, foolishly, some part of me assumed that I would get the full story from one of my characters. After all, he is an honest fellow. Why wouldn’t I get anything but the full and complete picture? Well, I didn’t. And that’s because just as people are “blind” to their own shortcomings, their own issues, so too are my characters. Apparently, my characters also will only admit that which they feel like admitting. The rest, they will happily leave to someone else, or hope that it never becomes known.

I didn’t realize this until I dropped in to my other perspective. Until I got behind the eyes of my lesser-explored companion, I had no reason to doubt whether the other character had been completely and brutally honest with me. I found quickly, that he wasn’t. And that my other character was about to be completely and brutally honest for him.

As he began to tell me his side of the interaction, details began to change. Details were added. Words changed in his mouth, and the mouth of his beloved. As I wrote, I marveled at the difference between the two. This was the same moment in time – the same exchange, and yet it was worlds away. Initially, I tried to make this other perspective can form. I tried to make it match the account of my original leading man, but I quickly realized I couldn’t do this.

Not if I wanted to remain in integrity with my role as scribe. So I let the other character tell his story. Make his alterations and his additions. And I am still allowing him to do so. And I am glad. For through this I understand the Importance of Being Omniscient. Your omniscience is not simply given to you because you are the Almighty Author. You have the power to see through any eyes you please, but only if you utilize those eyes.

Omniscience is the result of collective character impressions, not the “scribes-eye-view” that authors use without even thinking about it. In other words, the ability to see the story – the lay of the land – in its ultimate form. This ultimate form is subject to change, and as my other character taught me this past week, it will change. And it should change, only to be sure you’ve really heard the whole story.

About you? When details start to conflict in your story, do you try to make them conform, do you change your story altogether, or do you wait to see how it unfolds?

Creative Attunement October 15: Is It Still Spiritual?

For today’s blog post, I decided to do something a little more personal.  Not that everything I write here isn’t personal (because it is), but I felt like speaking to a personal experience that I’ve had in writing and in life.  And for me, when an experience happens both in writing life and in lived life, there is something to it.  Something that ought to be shared.

“Is it still spiritual?”  This is the question I am asking today.  What am I talking about when I ask this?  Think for a moment about this view of the world – it’s not right or wrong, it simply is – things are black and white.  They are either good, or they are evil.  In a spiritual sense, there is a very hard line drawn between what is good and evil, and what a person can or shouldn’t do depending on what side of this line they happen to be on.  The same is true in writing.  I will explain more about that in a moment, but first I’d like to illustrate something.

In my experience of some parts of the New Age community (yes, I am a New Ager myself) I have experienced this phenomenon that once you become spiritual – that is once you have decided to pursue a spiritual practice, point of view, or way of living – that you can’t or shouldn’t experience, express or otherwise given to unpleasant experiences.  Dark parts of yourself, and of human nature.  That once you have set yourself up on this path of a spiritual seeker, that everything in every waking moment needs to be sunshine beams and rainbows.

That somehow or another being spiritual means that you are resistant and/or show resistance to anything that is not of a spiritual nature.  That is not love and acceptance and peace and harmony.  That somehow everything else on the other spectrum isn’t spiritual.  That if you were to acknowledge that darkness, feet into the darkness, or perhaps even dare to speak to it, that you would be an un-awakened individual.  Or that you have not yet attained the desirable state for a spiritual individual, and that it is desirable for you to ignore or simply “send love and light” to those things which trouble you (violence, death, anger, substance abuse etc. etc.).

For me there is no line.  A friend of mine once said, “I choose to look at my spiritual experience as a yin and yang.  That the darkness is also spiritual.  That the darkness also is an expression of the divine, just as the ‘light’ can sometimes be an expression of the shadow.  Of the unacknowledged self.”

So I know you’re asking, “what in the world does this have to do with writing?  This is a writer’s blog, for God’s sake!  Why are we talking about spirituality?”

We’re talking about this because I see writing as a spiritual exercise.  I see it as a part of my spiritual path, and a way that I connect with the creative source within and without – the divine.  For me it is a way that messages come through and are put down and books, both for the entertainment and the education of any and all who read them.

And, as a writer, I have encountered the same reluctance to acknowledge the spirituality – the divinity – the sacredness of my supposed “rough writing” versus my “soft writing.”  My rough writing is what I describe as a no holds barred, tell it like it is, in your face approach to writing.  Where I say what I mean and mean what I say.  Where my characters have the tendency to get under your skin, and make you beyond uncomfortable.  They may even piss you off.

My soft writing is something I don’t do so much anymore.  It’s where my characters hesitate, hedge, sugarcoat and generally try to present a view of the world that has some dark spots, but generally is inundated with light.  With goodness, kindness and less success of the hero.  In these stories, the suffering is not excess, is not brutal.  It is a softer approach to truth speaking.  It is a gentler Muse.

And, just like the line between good and evil, there was a line for me between soft and rough.  When I started writing, I was a softy.  I wrote in a very gentle, very non-combative way.  I made points in my stories, but it was very self-effacing and dare I say naïve.  When I wrote this way, my friends and family were more than willing to see the spirituality – the divine behind my writing.  The soul, because it was speaking to them in a way that they expected it to speak to them.

But anyone who has ever had any spiritual practice of any kind, or any contact with the many faces and forms of the divine knows that divine communication almost always comes in the form we are least expecting.  And that is so that it can make sure that people are listening.  Truly listening, and without bars and judgments.

So when I had a shift in my writing life, and I had more fiery, and rough-around-the-edge muses, I began writing rough.  It was exhilarating, because I got to express.  I got to paint vivid, sharp pictures, which were completely different from the soft, lyrical pictures I had painted before.  Now, when I spoke of blood or spoke of darkness – it truly was.  It wasn’t just the word on page that may or may not threaten anyone.

With this change, came a reassessment of what was truly behind my writing – and by people who had been all too willing to see the grace and the art and the wisdom behind my creations.  They began to say that my work couldn’t have possibly come from a spiritual source, and because I dared to have things like rape, like injustice, like broken families in my novel.  Because I dared to say a bad word, and because I dared to show people the monsters that really existed out in the world, and I dared to get angry.  I dared to look at what was happening to women, and say something about it.  And all because I dared to do that, my supporters began to say to me, “That writing can’t possibly have any soul in it.  It can’t possibly have any divine purpose in it.  The divine wouldn’t tell you to write such a thing.”

And they said so because they saw me as a softy, and didn’t think it was proper or true to me to take up the other side.  Well, for me writing has no boundaries.  Just because you start in one arena doesn’t mean you can’t and open another.  And it doesn’t mean that you can’t go back and forth.  I do, and I do all the time.

But spirituality – along with writing – does not exist in a box.  It exists on a continuum, and it is all valid.  It is all part of the unique and special design of the universe.  Everything must further human and soul development, regardless of its origin.  Whether it is from the “light” or the “dark.”  And it is the same with a book.

A Muse is a messenger.  A literary Angel, that can alight on my mind, intent on giving me a message.  And this message is not mine to judge, it is not mine to categorize.  It is simply mind to take down as it is told to me, and to share.  So if you have a devilish idea running around – a Muse that is a little hot to the touch, and dares to bring in controversy – embrace him or her.  She may be in a darker form, but she is divine nonetheless.  She may have black wings instead of the traditional white, but she is still worthy.  And her message is still worth being heard, if only to reach those who are in a world that is hard, that is harsh.

She is a vehicle to help readers and consciousness transition period to move forward.  To move beyond their current state, and into another one.  There may be as saying “the devil is in the details,” but the divine is also there.  It is there in every form in every encounter, and it is the same with a written work.  Do not ever allow someone to tell you that because you have done anything less than take your readers an omelette trip to fairyland, that you have committed a literary sin.

I have found that the book people resist the most, is the book they need the most.  But, as with everything in life, people can resist the medicine, and yet beg for the cure.

Creative Attunement October 9, 2013: Sharing Your Soul

“To write means more than putting pretty words on a page; the act of writing is to share part of your soul with the world.”

As you may have guessed already, this quote is going to be the focus of today’s blog post.  Thanks to Plotters & Pantsers for this thought-provoking, blog-inspiring picture quote!

To me (I don’t know about you).  The act of writing is so much more than just putting pretty words on a page.  Though, that in itself is a skill.  A gift.  As we explored in my last blog post, writing is a very private, personal affair, but is almost certain to have a public life.  Most writers who write write because they want to share themselves.  Share something they’ve experienced.

 But the sharing is something that is not done lightly.  And so the writing is also not done lightly.  Each word for me, is meditated on, Each word is a piece of my soul.  It is a piece of my consciousness that has been transformed from energy into a word on the page.  Once there, it becomes a reflection of “me” an aspect of “me,” one which will then belong to many others.  Will be revised and added to, the more I am read.

 The more my story is passed along, the more people come to understand something about me.  And as a writer, I can only hope that what they understand is what I would wish them to understand about me.  But we can’t have any control of this.  We don’t have any control.  And this is what makes writing a fearful and courageous act.

 It is the reason we have books like the War of Art and The Courage To Write..  It is the reason Basil Hallward says an Oscar Wilde’s famous novel when talking of his portrait of the young and beautiful Dorian Gray, “I’m afraid I’ve put too much of myself in it.”  Because we can’t help it.  We reveal ourselves, when we may be doing our best to hide behind a mask.

 Most frightening of all, however, is the fact that we also cannot help how our soul fragments are interpreted. They may be interpreted as supremely good or evil, when in fact the writer may have wished for something entirely different.  The writer may nonchalantly say, “Oh, but this has nothing to do with me.  You see, this is about elves and dragons – not about me.”  But that is sheer ignorance.  It is always about you, when even when it’s not.

 You are always in your work, even when you think you’re not.  And I believe Mr. Oscar Wilde, if he were here for this conversation, would agree.  You are always in your work.  The writer cannot take him or herself out, because to do so would be to not write at all.

 Which is why so many people don’t write.  Not because they’re not any good, but because they know to do so would be to become completely vulnerable, and at the mercy of their reading public.

 There is no cover and no shield, and no way to control the situation.  Once you are out in the book, you are out, and you become the intellectual property – the brainchild – of every person who reads you.  And they, as many readers of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray have done, will build their own consciousness, their own constructs and belief systems.  And those will also become a part of your work, whether you imagined they would be there or not.

 And most non-writers know this.  This is the nightmare – the Phantom in the closet that keeps them from their computer, and their writerly dreams.  Writing writers know this too, but they are more willing to contend with the Phantom in the closet.  To take their pen out anyway, and see where it goes.

 But they going to this territory with acute senses, sharpened by many nights in the thick of their story, in the thick of their lives, searching around for that next glimmer of light.  That next bit of inspiration, while all the while wondering, which part of myself might I have unveiled this time?  Is it who I expected? 

 A lot of times it isn’t.  And when it isn’t, even the writer may be blindsided by the part of him or herself that has welled to the surface. I know I was.  I have had this happen, and my writing career hasn’t been the same.  The self that came through on a particular book shocked and invigorated me.  It completely overwhelmed my friends and family and had them asking me, “What’s happened to you?”

I wasn’t quite sure what had happened to me.  Except that a new aspect of myself had been revealed, and that this one was darker, more blunt than people expected.  And it was at that time that I realized the blessing and the curse of writing: you put your soul into it, no matter what.

Because it takes heart and soul to sit at the keyboard.  It takes that kind of courage, and every time you sit down, you know shit’s about about to get real.

I’ve said it before: writing is a sacred act.  It is an act of communion between yourself and your muse, but that doesn’t make it any less likely that at the end of it all, you’re going to be left with your whole self hanging out for all to see.

Creative Attunement July 18, 2013: “I’ll write when…”

For the first time since I started this blog, I missed a week. There was no creative attunement for last week. And that was because I felt I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to sit down and write, because I knew what I would face on the page would be some of my deepest fears. Deepest desires.

Am I doing what I’m here to do? And my original? Am I insightful?

Do I make good choices for myself and my art? Am I sacrificing everything for my art, or am I sacrificing art for everything else?

Even as I sit down, I do not have answers to these questions. I have not written into them enough to have the answers, or see into the detail. For this is what happens when I write. I see into details, bring situations to life, and sometimes, I even give form to solutions. Not only to characters in my stories, but to myself as an author. As a creator.

So this week I really danced with the energy of “I’ll write when I’m ready. “This is a crafty energy. Because it embodies a dual nature for me, and possibly many of you reading this. That energy of procrastination, but also that energy of patience. Of going with the flow. Of not wanting to write, and following the heartbeat of the Muse.

This week, I dipped into both procrastination – the fear and reluctance to write – but I also dipped into patience.

And I was not the only one. A friend of mine, a rather intuitive individual, who has a book inside of him, but hasn’t decided whether he will let it out, was posting about this particular book. His relationship with it is an interesting one. A relationship characterized by fascination, but also, I sense terror.

Of that book, when I asked him if he would ever start writing again, he said, “I don’t know if the world is ready. I don’t know if they ever will be, to be honest.”

To this I responded, “You don’t write because people are ready. You write because they’re not, and at some point they’re going to need your message. Your particular antidote, and in the form of that book.”

Though he had no formal response to this, and got me thinking. When we say, “I don’t know if the world is ready for XY or Z. I don’t know if the world is ready for this story or that story,” we are not really talking about the “world.” We are talking about ourselves. What we really mean to say in that moment is, “I don’t know if I’m ready to write a book with that message.” What we mean to say is really, “I’m not ready to work with that Muse.”

In a way, you are saying, “I’ll write when I’m ready. I’ll write that idea when I’m strong enough, when people are forgiving enough, when the world is conscious enough,” and so on. You are making excuses for yourself when you do this. You are putting yourself down when you do this, and rejecting the Muse at your front door.

If the Muse has showed up, and his or her knocks at the door do not cease, then you are being called out. As much as you feel that you aren’t ready (let’s stop putting that on the other 6 billion people on this planet), you wouldn’t be saddled with the book if you couldn’t handle it. If it wasn’t somehow integral to your mission. Your specific offering.

The more an idea overwhelms, brings about feelings of inadequacy, the more it was meant for you.

So, for this week realize that there is a time in a place for patience, and there is always the threat of procrastination.

But know that you will only be ready when you decide to begin. So start. Write a word, sentence of paragraph. Anything. Instead of writing one more minute in the future, and putting your page off one more second, write. Right now.

You can never tell when the world will be ready, but you can decide when you will be.