Don’t Think. Write!

Many authors who write about writing say, “Don’t think. Write!” I am one of them. But I also think it is fair to say to those who write, “Don’t think. Play!” If you allow yourself to play when you come to the page, you are more likely to create a unique world for your readers. In a poem of mine, I wrote: “In the morning…/ I toast some hearty homemade bread, cover it in almond butter / and slices of banana. Breakfast looks like Basho’s pond / with lily pads. I am twice nourished….” That’s how I encourage myself to play — it is the associations we make between what we are taking in now and what that makes us think of that help us create writing that enriches others as well as ourselves.

When the Writing Isn’t Going Well, Use Sweet Talk

If you want to treasure your writing, but you feel grumpy about the way it is going and may soon be screaming and yelling in frustration and frightening it further away from your finger tips, change course.

1. Offer chocolates, because as Yeats said, to write one must always be a little in love and when you digest chocolate your body makes endorphins that make you feel infatuated.
2. Remember what it was you appreciated in your writing in the first place. If it was particular images or phrases, say them aloud with feeling. If it was that you wrote at all about a particular experience, praise the courage this took. If it was that you felt you were taking flight from a quote or passage you admired and joining a treasured conversation, reread that inspiration. If you can’t think of anything you liked in your writing, give thanks just for being able to take down what you saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched in this world. The magic will come back.
3. Find something to whisper in your writing’s ear. When you feel lost  about where to go with your writing or afraid of why your love for your writing seems to have gone away, quoting the romantic words of other writers works wonders. Here are five of my favorite sweet nothings:

• …it is impossible that you have no creative gift…you cannot be sure that it is not a great gift. — Brenda Ueland
• We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.  — Rainier Rilke
• You have something to say, something to share with the world or with the people close to you. Your life is important, and your memories document how you have changed your corner of the universe. — Robert Goodman and Peggy Lang
• Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
  — Anton Chekhov
• The world is full of paper. / Write to me.  — Agha Shahid Ali, “Stationery”

Know the Way Writing Creates Real Wealth

I have to concede if you want to get rich, in the monetary sense, you should probably do something besides write. But for me, it’s enough that writing makes me rich in other ways. In my opinion, I was poor when I wasn’t writing, when I didn’t trust the value of taking time to put my heart and mind on paper, when I thought that since I wasn’t already published, my desire to write was dilettantish. It wasn’t until I started taking writing classes that I began to grow out of the poverty of not trusting myself as a writer. In those early classes, I recognized that I felt better days I wrote than days I didn’t write, that my classmates’ writing and discussions about writing enriched my world.

Thirty years later, I am a wealthy person by many accounts: My writing has helped me understand those I love and myself, sustained me through the tragedy of losing my son and allowed me to write him and my late father back to life — I can see, hear, and feel them. More than I ever believed possible, I have reached the hearts and minds of others through my writing, whether I am well paid for that or not.

Recently, my 8-year-old grandson, who had purchased a copy of my memoir and been first on the book-signing line after my reading, interrupted our family’s adult dinner conversation about health care reform. “Grandma,” he said, smiling at me, “your book is good.” How could I feel any richer?

Think of All You Write as Real Writing

You can decide to enjoy whatever kind of work and daily writing you do and employ it to develop your creative writing. If you write frequent emails, pay attention to the details, tone, and succinct way you find to say something. If you are writing fiction, you can have your characters write emails to you or your coworkers or family. Suggest these characters email frequently. You’ll learn a lot about them while employing the kind of writing you have time for every day.

If you write reports, realize that editing for clarity and the use of accurate detail is an exercise in revision that is helpful in all writing. Realize, too, that  the very form of the reports you are used to writing can be borrowed for creative writing. A special education teacher I know said the only writing she knew how to do was for Individual Education Plans (IEPs). She wanted to do personal essays but felt she knew nothing of the craft. I suggested she write herself an IEP. The result was brilliant — she wrote an IEP for how she would manage and flourish in her coming retirement including the ways her family could support her in her life change. The piece held good advice and lots of humor. As any reader could tell, this author was educating herself about herself, just as she would educate parents about their children.

My husband, Kurt, consulted with a broadcast radio station to help them fix a slow computer network and wrote a report about the problem and the solution. Then he wrote an article for lay people about high definition radio.

Think of work writing as skills building, format providing and information gathering. Whatever your job or volunteer activities, milk the circumstances you are in for everything they can yield for your writing rather than waste time wishing for altered circumstances. By considering what you are already writing as your “own writing” and using the forms you are most practiced in, you will learn ways into creative writing and fill your box of craft tools from ones you’ve been practicing all along as well as add new ones from your reading and participation in workshops.

You support your families, communities and yourself with your work; you can support your writing, too. By considering what you are already writing as your “own writing,” and using the forms you are most practiced in, you will learn to get into a writing mindset quickly and without resistance.

So: play, talk sweet and create emotional wealthy — that’s what all your writing is for!