Archive for the ‘creativity’ Category
Just the promised update on my progress: I’m now at 4614 words, just four hundred shy of the total of 5000 for the third day. A tenth of the way toward the month’s goal.
Still writing — I’ve just begun a crucial scene. My two main characters finally meet, though they’ve been circling each other, and in one way or another aware of each other, for a few days of story time. A decent amount of backstory has gotten filled in, through interactions with other characters, so their meeting should matter. Always a good thing to ask when you’ve got characters doing anything: does it matter? It’s a version of that cruel and very necessary question: So what?!
Since the novel straddles the supernatural/erotic divide (at least right now — who knows where this draft will go next?), I’m hoping for a tense, revealing encounter. OK, enough procrastination. I do laundry during breaks when I’m writing. It always needs doing, so it doesn’t feel procrastinatory? procrastinational? procrastinative? — and it gets me up and stretching, going up and down stairs. And usually a new idea will arrive while I’m separating whites and colors, or measuring detergent. So, up to sort and measure and start, then back to work.
In her blog, Alison Leigh Lily writes beautifully about the human body as a holy thing, an altar:
So, too, my body is the altar in the nemeton [sacred grove–ADW] of my soul — that small, solid piece of world that settles down like a stone into my awareness. And that awareness in turn is carved by the spiraling torrents of the sacred world, the sun that crafts the seasons out of mud and wind, the moon that pushes the sea to its extremes, the stars that draw the eye into the great distances that yawn open between us, the deer, the jay, the badger, the rustling oak and every being and body that dances through its longing, hunger, fear, curiosity and sleep. All these things turn about the sculpted edge of my nemeton, the sanctuary my soul has made of itself, the self that calls itself “I” and reaches out into the world to touch the chaos that has given birth to it. Sitting in the center of that nemeton is my body, all surface, the appearance of skin and hair and angles and soft curves of fat and loose muscle. Like a ladder that reaches into the dark. A spine, a wellspring, a single tree, a tongue of flame. My body is the altar around which my spirit gathers itself into stillness. Not a temple, but only a simple, useful table where I sit down to do my work.
And some of the work we are called to do is to recognize that altar. In the Bible I read, “I will go up into the altar of God” — introibo ad altare dei in Latin. I use it as a mantra, a chant, to be mindful of the altar as a place to ascend to. For it feels like we do actually rise up, into the body, out of thought, out of waking, out of the distractions and worries and daily obsessions, the small news that passes for important events that other people call “headlines,” but which are mostly just footnotes — out of the image and into the reality, into this body that is part of the world, not a thought or an idea or a remove from the thing itself, but the place where we experience a universe.
I strive to occupy this body, this world, as fully as I can, to be fully incarnate. Not to forsake this great, unheralded, impossibly large opportunity to know, to dare, to will and to be silent, to listen for the voices of the Others who move all around me, chickadee at the feeder, crows scavenging a dead squirrel on the road early this morning as my wife and I drove through the dark and the fog to her weaving apprenticeship.
And Tom, who introduced himself yesterday afternoon — a neighbor, out chopping wood. He paused from his work and called to my wife and me, walking slowly over to where we were unloading our car. “It’s something I can still do, and it needs doing,” he said to us, as he stood before us, dressed in blue sweat pants, a gray sweatshirt, a blue hoodie, pieces of leaves and bark plastered to this clothes. “I was just recovering from knee surgery when I had a stroke. And I was recovering from the stroke when I lost my job. But I can still chop wood, as long as I don’t have to bend my legs too much.” So I touch that friendliness, and something of the spirit in him, that brought him to our doorstep to chat in the fading afternoon light of a day in early November. Is any song more wonderful?
“Sanctuary my soul has made of itself,” Alison says — a poem, a song, a prayer for this life, this world.
“Prayer is about being hopeful,” says Sister Alice Martin. “It is not a phone call to God’s hotline. It’s not about waiting around for an answer you like, especially since sometimes the answer you’re going to get is NO!” And she continues, “If you are going to pray, then don’t worry. And if you are going to worry, then don’t bother praying. You can’t be doing both.” I know which one I want to choose, often as I can, prayer at this altar of my body.
So once again I’ve signed up with National Novel Writing Month — Nanowrimo to the online community of the literarily hopeful and the creatively insane. The goal is 1667 words per day, enough that by month’s end, you have a first draft of 50,000 words. A decent goal, and a manageable one, provided you don’t spook yourself, or find excuses more enjoyable than writing. Last year, working full time, I wrote 10,000 words of a novel — a solid opening week. Then I lost it. Teaching draws on many of the same energies as writing, and I simply didn’t have the energy to do it all. Now, on leave and still healing, I find, a year and more out from follow-up radiation after cancer surgery two years ago this month, I’m back at it.
I’m posting this here to give myself added reason to finish this year: peer pressure! You’ll know just how I’m doing, because I’m letting you in on the mess and marvel of it all.
As I’ve learned repeatedly, whenever I write, I discover something worthwhile. So in one way it doesn’t matter if I “finish” because I’ll still have material to work with. Not an excuse for not meeting the Nanowrimo challenge, but a none too shabby side benefit of committing to, and following through on, getting words on the page.
The novel I’m working on is VERY “drafty” — beyond an unusual main character, I don’t have much more than a couple of plot ideas, not enough — yet — to hang an entire novel on. But I’m not worried. I have an opening scene completed this morning that already introduces two characters I hadn’t anticipated. And that gave me some stuff to hang a piece of plot on that came into view as a result of the scene. So, progress!
I’ll update you on my word count every time I post here, and let you know how it all turns out — maybe even post a couple of excerpts from time to time, as it takes shape. Right now I’m at 676 words. I need another thousand just to make the daily average. So far so good!
Now to make good on the inwardness and creativity released on Samhain. Suddenly, no surprise, I have several other things to write as well: birthday cards to my uncle and first cousin, a thank-you note and a full length letter to colleagues, incidental email, and a monthly initiate’s report for another path I follow.
Oh, and about the elephant of the title? Maybe it’s a symbol for writing. Or not. Just a title, perhaps. Or something about memory and size and sheer bulk. Or solidarity among writers. Or herd instinct. Whatever the case, since you’ve been patient, here are not one but several elephants for your pachyderm viewing pleasure:
Here‘s the URL.
Just the promised update on my progress: I’m now at 4614 words, just four hundred shy of the total of 5000 for the third day. A tenth of the way toward the month’s goal.
A Druid Way 
