The page is a cliff. You approach it with trepidation, wary of the fall, uncertain of the distance or the landing. The solid ground of not-writing below your feet, and the sheer drop, a wave of cold air, then… nothing. How can it be a daily practice, this throwing yourself off a cliff? No wonder
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” Such a modest, yet all-out ambition. You don’t need a bigger light, someone else’s light, a best-selling light, a more commercial light, a light that will let you quit your job, a light that outshines someone else’s light or the streetlight or the moon. You
Listen! Listen to the small sounds of the early quiet: dog lapping at the water, heater rising to greet the turning of the seasons, refrigerator’s low hum. Listen again, deeper, listen into the beat and pause of the words within you. The rhythm coming through your hand, pen to page, offers a particular pulse. But
For setting yourself racing against time, against the speed of your thoughts tumbling through, pouring in granular, perpetual motion. Go. Q is for Quixotic, for following dreams and scooping up whims, guesses, ideals, possibilities. Harnessing your attention to the wild-dog-pulled sleigh of your imagination. Go. Q is for Quilt, for piecing together disparate scraps into
Q is for Quicksands Read More »
What psychedelics do according to my rudimentary layperson’s understanding of the science based on reading part of one book (consider this a disclaimer!), is suppress the control of a central part of the brain that both coordinates input from various sensory-gathering parts of the brain and also regulates the traffic of that input, preventing collisions and
P is for Psychedelic Read More »
The page is the answer to all your questions, from “what happens next?” to “should I keep trying?” The page answers yes and better than yes. The page produces story, scene, character, wisdom, humor, the small scratch of life and the wide, convex horizon. The page brings out the writer. Don’t want for inspiration or
Dreaming, getting words on the page, delving into a realm you are simultaneously creating (or recreating) is a trick that involves chaos, extreme disorder. Revising is messy, too. At present, I am patching half-comprehensible signals from my unconscious into a well-worked manuscript, creating ruptures, making lumpy what was smooth, and drafty (pun intended) what was
Much that is immediately visible to you will conspire against you. For many of us, a voice arises when we go to write or think about writing that says, “What if it’s terrible?” The only answer a writer can give to that question is to shrug. What it it’s terrible? It’s a silly question that
A Practical Alphabet for Writers: T is for Tenacity Read More »
I was in a memoir class not too long ago, as a student. There were about ten of us and each had a story to tell. Some were experienced, even published writers, and others did not even have a particular affinity for writing, but we all had an idea of what our books would be
A Practical Alphabet for Writers: S is for Story Read More »
You have at hand so many master writers, living in your house, clustered in your writing space, by your bed. They will teach you not just what they know but what they did, for you have them in the form of their books, their stories, the words on the page, the images, the dialog, the
A Practical Alphabet for Writers: R is for Reading Read More »
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