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Today's Writing Prompt: When I write with the open mind of a beginner and claim each moment is fresh and brand new, what I (see, hear, taste, touch, smell, know) is.....
Last night Emma said, "I don't know how you do it: all this writing on demand. It freaks me out to even think about it. I couldn't do it."
I thought about it for a while. I didn't have a trite, canned answer for her.
I could have gone with "I love to write" and while that is true, it doesn't explain my devotion beyond understanding of words and more specifically, writing words when it will benefit and serve other people and the world.
More accurate was the way I explained my writing fascination and commitment to her.
I love creating games. Sometimes that requires focus even while tired or in those moments when it feels as if there is nothing else to give. There was a time when I may have given up, now, I simply discern how to kick my writing up a notch as you may choose to do, too. One of the games I play is to approach the page, every day, as a beginner. I look at each day, each page, as if it was a fresh page. A brand new notebook. A clean slate. A white canvas.
My only requirement is that I do my best with the words on that day and to take that day as a brand, new day. I also look at each brand new day from the perspective of a brand new writer. Every day I am different, I am new, with a new set of circumstances. As Greek Philosopher Heraclitus said so many years ago, "You may never step into the same river twice."
That is the single most important writing game I play.
For those of us who have been here during the past few weeks, you know I have said to look at where you were when you started and then follow up with the AND part of AND now you write. AND serves us as a writing bridge. We all start somewhere and hopefully we all go somewhere else - through a program like this, to a place of growth and discovery, to a place of word play, word art, creative flow.
Sometimes, like yesterday, we go to a place with our writing like Jan went during our telephone writing session. She read her words, fresh off her pencil, aloud and there was that soft hush after she finished. My response was, "That was a five minute free write? Sounds to me like five years of therapy." Maybe I could have said to Emma, "I write on demand because I have learned when I put my fingers to the keyboard, awareness and breakthroughs happen. Sometimes it is like therapy only better and not as expensive."
Yesterday I went to a writing program at a local creativity center. I always feel slightly nervous about participating because the teachers there get slightly nervous, knowing I am a writer and a teacher myself. They think I will judge their teaching (which I never do.) They worry about their performance as teachers and writers. They don't realize how open, how carefree and how much of a beginner I am when I approach each session.
I also worry that people will feel uncomfortable when they hear me share the writing which comes, fresh off my pencil. I am not one who looks at every day values such as "good, bad, fair, uncomfortable." I look for honesty, authenticity, transparency. I look for interesting word choices and most importantly, feelings I share with the writer and the reader.
Yesterday I was taken by surprise in several ways.
I didn't know, for example, we would be writing poetry at the creativity center. One of our assignments was, believe it or not, to write haiku. I didn't tell the teacher I have been teaching haiku for years. I didn't tell her I write, on average, more than 100 haiku a year (or more) and have been known to partipate in what I call "haiku volleys" with friends, writing haiku back and forth the way some people volley insults or quips, I volley haiku.
My haiku came out in what I call a "haiku symphony". It was several haiku long and was a story, complete with a beginning, and end, an arch. Color, texture, rhythm, assonance. Some people there didn't know what haiku was and here I was, a long time practitioner of the art form. I didn't share my usual mini-lecture on the form, though it did ring in my ears a bit.
I let go, I practiced being a beginner.
Even as a beginner, though, I maintain the skills acquired from years of practice. I have written so much haiku that I am adept at carving images in short, concise turns of phrase. Being a beginner and having a regular practice is like fertilizing the playing field with super-growth fuel. It makes any writing seem effortless because it is effortless. Michael Phelps didn't win all those gold medals by sitting beside a pool thinking about swimming, he won gold medals by practicing and participating. He dove into the pool and did his best over and over and over again.
Each race, brand new. Each circumstance, fresh and unique.
Today's Writing Prompt: When I write with the open mind of a beginner and claim each moment is fresh and brand new, what I (see, hear, taste, touch, smell, know) is.....
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