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Making room for the muse

A few weeks back I wrote a post on how I find time to write. Making time for your art is critically important — if you never sit down to write then at the end of the day you’ll have written nothing. The rules of art are simple like that. But there’s a second half to the story that isn’t as obvious and doesn’t get talked about as much: you need to find time to write, but you also need to make room for the muse.

This is an idea I first stumbled across when I was reading Danielle LaPorte’s book, The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms. In Session 10, “Make stuff that feels good to make”, she writes:

“Muses simply must be adored. They’re as grandiose as they are generous. They like to be respected. If you meet them halfway, they’ll give you the moon, the breakthrough concept, the stroke of genius. Dis your muse and she’s likely to stop dropping by. She righteous. She likes to be appreciated. Genius is like that.”

And I’d never thought about it that way, but immediately the idea struck me as so, so true.

Finding time is only half the battle

Don’t get me wrong — finding the time to write is a mission-critical priority. But it’s still only half the battle.

You have to show up at you computer, at your desk. You have to do it often (preferably every day). You have to do it habitually (preferably at the same time every day).

You have to do it. Period.

But the thing that happens when you start to show up is that you realize you get stuck. You show up and sit down and writer’s block creeps in and suddenly you don’t have any ideas to write about. And that can be endlessly frustrating, especially if you are like most writers and your writing time is pretty limited (maybe you, like me, still work a day job).

But here’s the thing, inspiration always strikes. Maybe she waits an hour, a day, a month, a year.

The only thing I know for sure is that she’ll always be back. Someday. Eventually.

And the question I’d like you to ask is this: what can you do to invite the muse into your life?

I think Danielle LaPorte’s point is the first step.

You have to honor inspiration when she shows up.

Inspiration isn’t always convenient. In fact, I’ll make that a stronger statement: inspiration is almost always inconvenient.

She shows up on the bus when you’re squashed in next to a stranger and can hardly fish your pen out of your pocket. She shows up at work when you’re busy and trying to focus on something else. She shows up when you’re still awake at midnight and counting off the minutes between you and 5:30 am when your alarm goes off and you’re supposed to get out of bed to write. She shows up in the shower. She shows up on your walk home from work when it’s so cold out you risk losing your fingers if you stop to make a note.

She shows up in the quiet moments when you’ve forgotten you’ve waiting, watching for her. The muse is fickle like that.

So first and most importantly, honor the muse when she shows up. Pull out your pen, risk the possibility for frostbite, make a note — do whatever you need to do to make sure that brilliant idea isn’t lost to the fleeting whims of thought. I like Evernote and Google Docs. Anne Lamott likes index cards. From her classic book, Bird by Bird:

“Whenever I am leaving the house without my purse—in which there are actual note pads, let alone index cards—I fold an index card lengthwise in half, stick it in my back pocket with a pen, and head out, knowing that if I have an idea, or see something lovely or strange or for any reason worth remembering, I will be able to jot down a couple of words to remind me of it.”

I’ve been trying this out for a few weeks now — honoring the muse when and how she shows up.

I’ve drafted essays clutching my phone clumsily on the bus. I’ve furiously scribbled poetry over lunch. I’ve grudgingly turned the light back on at 12 AM and gotten back up to write.

And if I have anything to say on the matter at this point it’s this:

Something kind of magical is happening.

I’m writing more. I’m writing better. I’m taking advantage of inspiration when and where it shows up and the ripples of those moments are creeping out into the rest of my regular practice. I write more, more easily, and my work feels more inspired.

I started by trying to schedule writing like a job. Up at 5:30 for writing. Out of bed by 6:45 for work. And then just work, work, work until I was home again and too tired to feel much like writing. And that works — kind of. It works better than trying to schedule my writing time for after work when I’m tired and distractible.

But by honoring the muse, I’ve changed the rhythm of my writing practice. Instead of writing for an hour every day it’s more like I’m always writing. I’m writing in the back of my head, waiting for that magical connection between disparate things that will spark my next great thought.

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts! How do you make room for the muse in your life?

What’s worked for you in growing your creative practice (writing or otherwise)? What have you tried that hasn’t worked? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. 🙂

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

The agony of anticipation

It’s in. It’s done. I press “Submit’ or “Publish” or “Send”.

Suddenly all those moments of effort and labor are gone. Their results ent off, winging their way as photons streaming through fiber optic cables.

Except for the times they are gone as pages printed, folded, and neatly tucked away into the corners of gentle envelopes.

But in the moments after I press “Send” or hear the mailman fetch the letter from the box — that is the moment when doubt creeps in and I suddenly find myself transported back hours, back to staring down the blank page once more, frantically re-working my awkward phrases and crippled sums in a desperate bid to reassure myself that the clamouring questions can be answered.

What if I didn’t do it right? What if it’s not good enough? What if no one likes it? What if Everybody hates me forever?

I know my fears are hyperbolic and inflated and I despise them for their groundlessness even as I feel myself succumbing to their trembling hysteria.

I lose myself for a moment or two — I stumble and fall into the trap even as I see it looming. For a moment, a minute, my ravening mind turns in on itself in a whirlwind of self-flagellation.

How dare I send my heart out into the world, dressed only in it’s glorious frailty and imperfection? How dare I raze the walls of my sovereign shelter and invite chaos into the breach? How dare I flay truth from the bones of my dignity and bare my breast to the world?

How dare I dare to make this inglorious leap into the unknown?

But just as the pressure builds to the point where I cannot bear the weight of my own self-recrimination, where I can feel faith in my actions crumbling, where I long to press rewind (I’m so sorry. Please just let me take it back.).

At that moment Reason steps in.

Reason brings logic and perspective back to table and points out that nothing irreparable has been risked. Reason knows that failure will not be the end of any part of who I am.

Reason understands that inviting risk is as important and inevitable as breathing.

Fear is not assuaged but Reason persists and ultimately Fear subsides, curls up somewhere in the back of my mind — unconvinced and ready with a scathing I told you so.

And so we continue, Fear, and Reason, and I. As we run, trip past “Send”, and leap once more into the deep.

Is “Everybody” out to get you? Or is it just yourself?

I face down the “Send” button on my email daily. I publish on the blog.

Sending my work out into the world is something I struggle with daily. It’s a constant battle between me and my doubt — and my guess is that maybe it is for you too.

Martha Beck suggests that we carry around with us a notion of a generalized “Everybody” who exists to judge us. We notionally reference our Everybody when we say offhand things like “Everyone must think I’m a jerk” or “Everybody knows I’m an idiot now”. But the thing about our Everybodies is that (if they’re real at all) they’re made up of just a handful of people.

Try it out — next time you catch yourself having an “Everybody” thought — “Everybody thinks my writing is stupid” — try and figure out who exactly is “Everybody”. Has anyone told you directly that your writing is stupid? Try and think of a handful of people who you know for sure believe that about you. I usually can’t do it, but if I can I often find they’re not people whose opinions really matter. And so I try to ask myself if those opinions are really worth worrying about (after all, you get to pick your “Everybody”).

And if you have “Everybody will…” thoughts (“Everybody will think my writing is stupid if I share it”), I think it’s useful to realize that those are fear thoughts. It’s a kind of sloppy shorthand for “I’m afraid everybody will think my writing is stupid” and in that case it’s usually the fear you need to address — and again your Everybody may be helpful: do you know people who already don’t think your writing is stupid? Why not try letting them be your Everybody for now? (“What does Everybody think? They think my writing is great!”)

 

I’d love to hear from you! What do you do when the doubts creep in?

And, as always, if you liked this piece — please share!

 

A meditation

This week I’m happy to share with you a prose-poem I wrote on the things that get in the way of writing — enjoy!      
-Jessica

 

There’s a warm cup of tea on my desk and I finally can feel my fingers for the first time in hours as the warmth of liquid comfort creeps through my veins and slips hurriedly out into my extremities. My fingers sit on my keys and I wait.

Inhale.

I wait for the muse or my soul or whatever it is you want to call the first stirrings of inspiration. The flutter of here and now and this and why don’t you start here, with this beginning — with this warm cup of tea and my fingers, their skin overly dried and roughening but still a little soft from the water of dish-washing and counter-scrubbing, still noticing the ache between my shoulders after what feels like a cathedral of floor-sweeping.

Exhale.

The silence creeps in and I don’t know what to say. Inspiration refuses to budge and I can feel lists upon lists, quivering in the back of my mind. Reminding me that I forgot the stretch of counter with the toaster, that I haven’t touched the crumbs that have collected on the kitchen table, that the dust bunnies beneath my dresser just keep growing. There’s a thousand and one things that I still need to get to.

Inhale.

I keep my fingers on the keys. It’s a kind of rule these days. Fingers on keys is safe.

When I was little and just learning how to type they used to call these the home keys — asdf jkl; — the place your fingers rest in the moments between typing. The place from which all typing begins.

These days I find myself more familiar with the home keys than I have ever been as I sit, fingers on keyboard, and wage a war with myself over my own right to write.

Exhale.

The thing about stories is they speak to us. As readers and as writers, stories bloom in our mind and they teach us something about the kind of people we are — about the kind of people we wish to become.

When I was little I didn’t dream of writing. Or maybe by the time I did it was already too late. I think that by the time I dreamed of writing I’d already learned that writing isn’t a “real” job and that I shouldn’t bother to try. I’m doing my best to unlearn that thought now, facing it down every day as I sit — fingers poised on keys that are ever so slowly starting to feel like home.

Inhale.

I think that’s all it is really, in the end. Coming home to ourselves over and over and over. Showing up. We’ve all become so busy that it’s nearly impossible anymore to find the time: time to breathe, time to sit, time to rest, time to sleep.

It’s even more impossible to find the time to write.

Because writing is like fighting demons and the moment you sit down the thing that comes up is resistance and — even though the desire to write has been niggling all day as you bought the groceries and did the laundry and cooked and then cleaned up from cooking — as soon as you hit the chair and find your fingers waiting on their favorite keys the only thing you can think about is the laundry that still needs folding, and whether you should check on the crock pot, and haven’t you been meaning to vaccum for weeks?

Exhale.

The trick is not to do it. The trick is to keep your fingers there, in the home position that’s starting to feel less like a home and more like a prison the longer you wait — as the clamour of all these other things (useful things…) you could be doing just keeps getting louder. And louder.

And the thing I think it’s important to know is that you have to just keep sitting.

Inhale.

Every moment is a choice. And in this moment I choose to come home to my writing.

Exhale.

 

Now I’d love to hear from you! What gets in the way of the important things you’ve been meaning to do?

If making time for the stuff that matters is something you struggle with. Here are a few resources you might want to check out on why it helps to do the important things before the urgent ones (hint: your email is urgent, but not important!).

And if you liked this piece, please share!

 

How to turn an idea into a story

Story is something I struggle with as a writer. By nature I’m a poet rather than a story writer. I enjoy painting with words more than I like telling stories. And I have a hard time turning my creative ideas into stories. For poetry this isn’t necessary — a poem captures a moment, a thought, a feeling. A poem doesn’t have to be a whole story.

In practice, I find that for anything longer than a poem you can’t just have an idea. You really need a story and a character if you are to have a hope of making it all the way through to the end.

Your idea is just an idea, and isn’t a story (at least not yet)

I don’t know about you, but my ideas almost always start off as just little fragments of thought. Maybe I’ll stumble upon a great opening line, an intangible sort of feeling-thing, or an image that fascinates — but I never have a whole story plop down into my brain as if sent from the universe (or at least very, very rarely).

So it’s important that, as a writer, I learn how to fan the flames of these creative embers and turn your ideas into stories.

And, as far as I can see, there are really only two ways to do this: you can write like a “plotter” or a “pantser”. By which I mean you can sit down and think your idea through until you find the story in it, or you can just start writing by the seat of your pants — putting that little ember down on paper and hoping that it catches fire.

I’ve tried both, and they both work — but I think there are important advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

Pantsing: It works better with ideas for beginnings

If you’re interested in just starting and seeing where you’ll end up, it helps to know where to start. What I mean is the seat-of-your-pants approach works best with ideas that are already interesting opening lines.

If you’ve got a good place to start then diving in may be a perfectly awesome thing to do. Yes, at some point your momentum will run out (probably within the hour if you’re me), but why not charge ahead while the brilliance of the idea is still gathered close around you? Write down as much as you can, as soon as you can. See where the pen takes you. If you don’t like where you end up, you can always go back and re-work things later.

Which is all well and good, but probably only 10% of my ideas come to me as fascinating opening lines.

So what do you do when you don’t have a clear notion of how your story starts?

Plotting: For when you really haven’t the foggiest

If you don’t know where to start then I don’t really recommend pantsing it. You could, but in my experience where you’ll end up is with a quagmire of vague descriptions and unresolved details that will require massive revision at some future date.

So instead, why not do yourself a favor and set things up for success by giving a bit of thought to turning your idea into a proper story?

Let’s consider an example

Recently I had an idea that came to me as an image: unusually colored eyes under a niqab-like veil. Now clearly that’s not a story. It’s really not even a scene. It’s basically nothing.

I could have taken the pantsing approach and written my vision down as a first line: “The first thing I noticed were her eyes….” or “I watch how his brow creases as he meets my gaze and I turn away — I hate they way they always stare whenever they catch sight of my eyes”.

But you can see the problem already, can’t you? These opening lines are crummy.

For one thing, I’ve not said anything about what makes the character’s eyes weird, for another we’ve got not setting, no scene. Instead we’re floating adrift with no purpose and no reason why the reader should care.

Pantsing isn’t really going to cut it with this one. Maybe I’d get to something resembling a decent story eventually, but not before generating tens of pages of useless floundering that would later need to be re-written — and I don’t have that kind of time to waste in my writing life. I’m guessing you don’t either.

So here’s what to do instead.

Plotting: Using interrogation to turn your idea into a story

Here’s an approximation of my thought process for this eyes-under-a-veil idea I’ve been chewing on the past few days:

  • What if it’s not just women who wear the veil, what if it’s everyone?
  • What if they’re worn all the time, even in the home?
  • If all you ever saw of people were there eyes what would be different about their culture?
    • I posit: you’d have 1000 words to describe the color, shape, and texture of eyes & eyebrows
    • And maybe: you’d have an elaborate verbal/gestural etiquette to make up for lack of visual cues
  • How would you be able to tell people apart? Maybe you wouldn’t? (But it seems like differentiation would be necessary for a functioning society)
    • Maybe your veil would be unique, an emphasis on different colors or different fabrics by which people could recognize you
    • What if you wore your life story embroidered on your veil?

Now we’ve found something interesting

What if there was a society in which everyone was covered head to toe by a veil, but their life stories were painted upon them for all the world to see? What if you embroidered your own veil as part of a coming-of-age ceremony? What if part of what you embroidered was your name?

It’s an intriguing idea. But you’ll no doubt agree it’s still not a story. For one thing I haven’t invented any characters yet, and you really can’t have a story without at least one character.

With the world is better-defined, we can start to see what kind of stories are a good fit

For example, what if the character was transgendered? First, we’d need to answer how gender plays out in a society in which everyone is always veiled — but assuming a gendered society, what if as a teenager/young adult you made your veil in secret, beginning the task of telling your life story in color and thread? What if you were transgendered and made your veil for the gender you identified with, not the gender you were assigned at birth? What would happen when you revealed your veil at your coming of age ceremony? How terrified would you feel?

That could be an interesting story with a scared and vulnerable and very human character at the center of it. There’s obviously a lot more detail that would need to be fleshed out, but at this point I think you could start writing, but I think at  this point we’re getting close. Most of the rest of the details could be made up or figured out as I go along.

As much as I like pantsing it, I think it’s important to start with a story — and not just with an idea.

Now I’d love to hear from you — turning ideas into stories is something I’m still figuring out for myself, so if you’ve got any tips or tricks I’d love it if you’d let me know in the comments!

How do you turn your ideas into stories?

How I find time to write

How I find time to writeDo you struggle to find time to write? I know I do. One of my resolutions for the New Year was “to write until I finally feel like a ‘real’ writer” — so with that goal set for 2015, I’ve been taking a hard look at how I spend my time.

Because the fact that I had to make this a goal means that I clearly haven’t been focusing enough on finding time to write.

Plus, it’s not just writing, is it? It’s everything. It seems like everywhere you look these days there’s someone with a time problem. You don’t even have to throw a stone anymore to find someone whinging on about all the things they’d do if only they had the time…. Our national time crisis is so bad the Economist bothered to publish an article about it.

So in the face of such time-scarcity, what’s a writer to do? The bad news is that sometimes desperate times call for drastic measures. The good news is that you probably already have more time than you think you do.

Here are seven strategies I use to find time to write:

Hint: These strategies won’t just help you find time to write! They’re relevant for anything project you’ve been struggling to find the time for.

1. Get up early. 

This is a habit I’ve only just started it this past week, but so far it’s going great and I’m actually really enjoying it — I haven’t been up this early since college and I’d forgotten how quiet the world is before sunrise. Getting up early is a bold move and one I’ve been pondering for at least a year, but it wasn’t until my new resolution got me focused and I stumbled across this highly motivating blog post that I finally decided the time had come. As of this week my alarm goes off at 5 am, and I’m writing by 5:30 am. This gives me an hour of distraction-free writing time before I have to get up and go about my day. It’s early days yet, but so far the results have been remarkable.

2. Find the time when you’re at your best. 

Sometimes you can’t increase quantity but you can increase quality — if you can’t find more time in your schedule, is there a way you can rearrange things to take advantage of your most creative time? For me, getting up at 5 am does this. I’m always exhausted when I get home from work and don’t have much creative mojo left in me. If you’re a night owl, maybe staying up late to write works best for you. Maybe your best hours are right after lunch. Find whatever works for you and rock it!

3. Lose the distractions.

It’s taken me just about two years to win this battle (bad habits die hard!), but I’m pretty much there these days. Distraction means different things to different people — for me the worst offenders were my Netflix subscription, a handful of TV shows I’d been watching for years, a rampant blog addiction fed by Feedly, and a bad habit of getting sucked down the black hole of Google. These days I’ve cancelled my Netflix subscription, I don’t watch a single TV show, and I’ve massively pruned back the number of blogs I subscribe to (via RSS or email) . The goal here is to keep the focus on quality, not quantity. 

Also, if you’re struggling to wean yourself off of distractions, do NOT keep them open in tabs in your browser. If you’re done with Facebook and it’s time to write, close it down. I also think disabling your wi-fi before turning your computer off for the night would work great for early morning writers (so far I haven’t needed to, but I’ll start if I have to).

4. Streamline anything and everything.

Aka, your slow cooker is your best friend. Cooking is something I like to do, but it can also be a huge time-sink. Between menu planning, grocery shopping, and food prep, cooking for the week ahead can pretty much kill an entire day of my weekend. This strategy is about finding ways to spend less time on the things you need to get done, without sacrificing the quality of the result, and the slow cooker is my best weapon — an easy way to make a week’s worth of nutritious meals, literally while I sleep.

5. Kill your social life.

I wish I jested — but I’m actually serious. Or at least I’m mostly serious. As writer Dani Shapiro so astutely points out life is the stuff of art, just as art is the stuff of life and so you can’t really have an art without a life. But these days there’s a lot of opportunities to waste your time in the company of people, and speaking personally, I’ve found that in my life there’s simply not a lot of room for both. Again, my best recommendation is to choose quality over quantity. Do the people you spend time with energize and nourish you or do you leave their presence feeling drained?

6. Leverage your commute (if you can).

This is my least favorite option and I rarely practice it. The reality is that I spend 10 hours a week on a bus and which is a lot of hours I could be using for writing. Unfortunately the reality is also that I get so self-conscious writing on the bus that I pretty much can’t string words together into meaningful sentences. The only way I’ve found to make it work is on my phone (the screen is too tiny for me to read — let alone the person sitting next to me!) — but writing on one’s phone, while possible (I’ve managed at least 2 pages/hour in times of desperation) is generally incredibly slow and frustrating. If you can write with someone sitting next to you and have the time to do so, then I wish you godspeed. Personally, I’ll stick to the company of my Kindle.

7. Take your writing on vacation.

This is an option I’m planning to try out this year, but which I haven’t done yet. It seems to me like planning a writing retreat for yourself would be a fun (and budget-friendly!) way to vacation. Whether that’s as part of a formal writer’s retreat, a rented cabin in the woods, or an AirBnB flat in the city of your choosing — I think it sounds like a pretty fantastic way to spend a week’s vacation!

That’s what I’ve got for now — If you have any other ideas, feel free to share them in the comments!

I’d love to know: How do you make time for the things you love?