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Toward the end of the evening, she entertained questions from the audience. We might take a few clues from her answers. • Question: Did you always want to be a poet? • Question: How do you deal with your inner critic? • Question: Can you tell us the meaning of your poem “The Journey"? • Question: Which birds, trees, and flowers are most inspiring to your work? . • Question: What advice do you have for a beginning poet? . © Susan Reuling Furness - 2008 A Picture Helps Write 1000 Words Many writers seem to think in words, but I think in pictures. This image mind is a blessing, but also a curse according to my family. I suppose it is not easy to have a mother who notices the new scratch on the car or an item missing from my cosmetic drawer. An askew window screen apprehended my son when he slipped out one Saturday night. I do not set out to see these things. I just do. Unfortunately, this is not the same as having photographic memory. Although I can often summon the picture, it is equally true that I lose critical data. I might remember the color of the label on Johnny Cash’s “Walk The Line*,” but I cannot recall the instructions for the printer. This image-mind affects how I write. For those whose first aptitude is verbal or linguistic, words fly like sparrows from the wire. My writing takes longer. I often fumble for the words to describe the image I see. I have learned that taking pictures helps me find the words. It is almost as if a photographed image frees up some brain cells typically used to store the image. When I open my digital photo album, I can relive the moment I stood on a cliff overlooking Hell's Canyon or the party after Jeremy’s wedding. Although these moments can never be adequately articulated, that’s the assignment for a writer. Likewise for you. Even if your verbal aptitude runs ahead of visual aptitude, photographs will help you remember the images you want to describe. While some people carry a note pad wherever they go, a picture IS worth 1000 words. Good detail brings writing to life. Why not put a camera in your pocket? (it was a Sun Record with a yellow sunburst) © Susan Reuling Furness - 2007 Southwest Idaho typically enjoys four seasons of live-able weather. During the summer months we luxuriate in days, which end in alpenglow long after ten o’clock. Nothing beats an evening of outdoor theater or music, or an exhilarating trip down the Snake River in a raft. But the summer of 2007 pitched an uncharacteristic fit. A relentless heat wave and the devil-sun baked the landscape as well as the people. Dry lightning storms set off range and forest fires, which decimated hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland. Landowners lost homes, cabins, and livestock. We suffered in the choking smoke and grieved the loss of forest land. As summer and the fires waned, my dreams reflected nightmare summer. The dream-maker decided to play the memory of Boise buried beneath a blanket of smoke. From a tall, dream-building I gaze over a sea of stagnant air. I woke with a heavy heart. I remembered to write the dream words in my journal: darkness, firestorm, smothering, suffocating, black, trapped, despair. As the day progressed, the words began to assemble into phrases in my head . . . flames of uncertainty; billowing doubt; prisoner of darkness, raging despair. Like poetry, dreams speak in symbols. We can find rich imagery in our dreams. When routine lulls you away from the Muse, try borrowing from the programming of the dream-weaver. Firestorm What we fear are the flames of uncertainty We hope to outdistance What we need is © Susan Reuling Furness - 2007 The Rocky Territory of Clumsy Attempts . . . knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world . . . – Albert Einstein “What do you need to be creative?” Kim Stafford asked when he appeared in Boise. Someone answered “other people.” Still another replied “The Divine.” The woman beside me suggested, “experience.” Stafford, a poet and writer, knows that creative energy is prompted differently for different people at different times. You may feel the Muse stir in a gift-wrapping store, an urge wakened by the ingenuity of other people. On the other hand, you may be inspired by Mother Nature. A recent daytrip to the desert stimulated more than a gentle nudge to write. Images and stories flooded my mind on the drive back home. Creative inspiration comes from different places, but in my humble opinion, the woman who suggested we need “experience” was wrong. “Experience” implies a gained knowledge or even expertise. “Experience” hints at the idea that one learns How to be creative. “Experience” suggests that creativity ought know what it is doing. Such an idea will crush the inventive spirit. The word activates my inner critic, which judges most everything I do. You and I need to set good boundaries with that part of ourselves. Although there is a time and place for editorial input, the time is not while we are creating. We cannot create something – anything – if we fail to provide room for experimenting, faltering, and dancing with the unknown. The seeds of creative thought grow in non-judging soil. An over-zealous critic is responsible for books that are never written and ideas that never leave the ground. The critic immobilizes dreams and destroys the playful spirit of your art. If we plug our ears to the critical voices, creativity has a chance. For an idea to take root, we need our daring. To quote Miles Davis, the famous jazz trumpeter, “There are no mistakes.” In his book Creating, Robert Fritz contrasts learners and performers. A performer is expected to be at the top of the game. The violin virtuoso Istzak Perlman brings his audience a perfected rendition of a Bach Violin Concerto. We forget that before he mastered the concerto, Perlman stumbled through many clumsy attempts. We begin learning when we enter the rocky terrain of trial and error. Not knowing where your writing will lead should be exciting rather than intimidating. Creative energy soars when we remember that we are not on stage all the time. Rather than judging your clumsy attempts, consider them with respect. Sometimes it helps to begin in privacy, but better yet, find enthusiastic companions and coaches to help you enjoy your successful experiments and your creative duds. Given the right conditions, you are free to invent, play, explore, discover, and CREATE. Have fun. © Susan Reuling Furness - 2007 Writer's Mind I made this pledge to myself: I will not let another day pass without capturing some memory. I don’t want to lose the rich visual image of this morning’s moon, a huge yellow ball suspended over the city. I want to keep a mental scrapbook of my vacation and my day-off and the hours I spend at my chosen profession. My wish is for something more than Swiss cheese for a memory. Writing will help in two ways. The first is obvious – what I record in a journal remains retrievable so long as I hang onto my journal. Less obvious, however, is this. Writer’s Mind, that inquisitive, searching for detail, holds the writer in the present tense. Writer’s Mind shows up and stays present. Keenly observant, Writer’s Mind remains relaxed. Your Writer’s Mind will see “the fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty with a luminous complexion” rather than simply “a pretty girl.” Paying attention to detail enhances more than your memory. As you pay attention, you refresh your mood and improve your writing. Start paying attention to detail today. © Susan Reuling Furness - 2007 Until the economy turned a few years ago, I did not notice the pressure. Then I saw it . . . my own vulnerability to subliminal societal suggestion (aka peer pressure.) We tend to think peer pressure ends after adolescence. Not true. Like other adults, I am swayed by the company I keep. I may also fall prey to the arm-twisting of clever advertisers who offer a daily dose of pressure products to help me be loved, successful, and beautiful. When the economy bubble burst in 2008, I felt a strange sense of relief. Life slowed down. I found myself living more simply. Suddenly it seemed unnecessary to keep up with the Gates or the Jones. If money buys stuff, it also buys stress. Indeed, there is a silver lining. Less cash means less buying, less running around, less time in the car. Less stuff translates to fewer things to clean, maintain, repair, and re-cycle. Voila! Less pressure. Suddenly there is time to drink a cup of coffee, write a letter, read a book. More time to write. More time to notice small wonders. Time to weigh-in on what really matters. © Susan Reuling Furness - 2010 Oh Where Oh Where Did My Creative Go? It is morning. You plan to make the most of this day. You’ll clean the garage first. Next you will call Mother. Then! Yes then, you’ll sit down to write. “The garage must come first,” you tell yourself, “it’s been a year since I parked the car inside.” “Mother – well, she’s important, even if our conversation is tedious. She always talks about the same things . . . people who are sick, people who died, what to wear to the wake, where to get a good set of reading glasses.” Life seems dreadfully dreary except for your writing, which you’ll do when these deadly projects are finished. Then! Yes then, you’ll sit down to write. Fast forward to 10 p.m. The garage appears less frenzied. You can squeeze the car between the storage boxes, the broken lawn mower, and the grease-coated camp stove. Mother’s mood was brighter than usual when you called. She has new hearing aids so she could hear your empathic “u-huh’s” as she droned on about Mr. Parmoloy’s funeral. That undertaker certainly does good work! With a sigh of relief, you sit down to write. Then it happens. Blammo! Zap! Your mind goes belly up. You draw an absolute, inclusive blank. You think of nothing to say except thoughts that sound savagely stupid. The page is a virgin stranger. Your writing would violate its perfection. Enter the classic image of a writer who sits before typewriter (okay, a keyboard in today’s world) staring vacantly at the equally vacant page. Piles of wadded paper surround the holy isle of this writer’s kingdom. He is bankrupt, empty, and stuck. It can happen to any one. Where did the creative go? In truth it went nowhere. It is there, but bored, very bored, the same as you. A starving child will not thrive and the same is true for the child who lies at the core of the creative. To create is to give permission to that youngster . . . permission to play, be spontaneous, and open to adventure. The imagination needs something to peak its interest. It will die in a desert of logic. Without you as playmate, your imagination will pick up its ball and leave. Everyone is creative but too often we lose sight of imagination. Some of us deserted our creative during childhood when a tender-hearted novice met with a harsh judge. Other people exorcise the creative by comparing themselves with Hemingway, Faulkner, or Thoreau. That's a bad idea unless you are John Steinbeck. Regardless of how creativity is lost, the writer with a blank stare has forgotten what tickles his fancy. No wonder he cannot think of a thing to say. Tickling your writer’s imagination is really quite easy if you don't get lost in negative self-talk. To say, “I’m washed up; never had it in the first place” only feeds bad karma. Breaking out of boredom requires a small spark and the safety to explore. As my Spanish teacher used to say, "You must give yourself the permission to appear foolish." John Gardner, a novelist, would chime in, “Genius is as common as old shoes. Everybody has it." Indeed, everyone has creative genius, but the genius needs to be fed. © Susan Reuling Furness - 2010 The Journal vs The Creative Writer I know a few people who disparage their journal writing. They see their journal as an inferior form of writing. In response, I return to Robert Frost and his time-honored “The Road Not Taken” Two roads diverged in a yellow wood Flashback: Mrs. McBride, the English teacher at Morton Junior High, drones on, “This poem is not about a man taking a walk in the woods.” She wears an officious scowl as she insists, “The poet is using metaphor to warn us that we are forced to make choices. Even when two options look very enticing, you must choose.” And be one traveler, long I stood, Then took the other, as just as fair, I am in eighth grade. Choosing an outfit for the basketball banquet inspired me more than poetic metaphor. Yet as the years wore on, I returned to this poem many times. Sometimes I face a crossroads and realize Mrs. McBride knew a thing or two. But I also find a flaw in her logic. Although she said we are forced to choose one road over the other, as a writer I can travel two roads at once. When it comes to self-discovery and growth, the journaling road and the creative road connect, depart, and reconnect in the woods. Like siblings on different highways, both journal writing and creative writing spring from a single gene pool. In time, the roads always re-unite. No need for indecision as you stand in the writing woods. Regardless of your first step, both roads lead to greater sensitivity and awareness. No need to ask which road is “right.” Poised with paper and pen you soon learn both paths are worthy. Some say Alice Walker’s book, The Color Purple, is fiction while others insist it is biographic. No one seems to know for certain, except Alice, who once said, “Writing is a ladder out of a deep pit.” Your pit may be one of self-doubt, depression, or intolerance but as Walker suggests, the very act of writing words on the page will help you out. So pick up a journal or begin writing that novel. Either way you will work with the same raw material as Alice Walker or Stephen King or Margaret Atwood. You will work with your own set of conflicts and beliefs. Regardless of the road you choose, you encounter the complexities of life. As you walk through the woods, take a deep breath. There is no forced-choice. The writing road moves in meaningful territory and your journal or fictional plot, or memoir will always lead back to you. © Susan Reuling Furness – 2010 Give Up Control Another King, Miss Ruth King, who taught junior-year English at my high school, thought differently. Using the Ruth King model, the author must pre-determine the story and its elements. Before pen hits paper, one must determine the characters, time, place, plot and subplot. The ending is determined before the author writes the beginning. Miss King lived by the rules of order and control. She graded us on conduct and the neatness of our notes rather than focusing on the creative quality of our work. In her world there is no room for spontaneity or inspiration. No room for the Muse. At the time, Miss King’s way seemed the “right” way to write because she held the key to report cards. Later, I had a few college instructors who reinforced the Ruth King method. Yet when I practice Miss King’s strategies, my writing tastes like forced meat. Clumsy phrases pass through the meat grinder and the resultant stories are worse than chopped liver. I prefer to take my chances with Stephen King rather than Ruth. When I give up control of my story, everything changes. This is when I fall in love with writing. When I listen to myself and follow the train of my thoughts, the door opens to destinations I never imagined. This must be how it works for Stephen King. In some way, this is a perfect metaphor for life. The person who said, “ Life is what happens while you are making other plans,” understands that we need to remain flexible and spontaneous. Although giving up control is not always easy, learning to “go with the flow,” will enhance the story of your life. When your characters throw curve balls, when the plot twists and turns without your permission, try to relax. Knowing what comes next is not always important. I plan to stick with the Stephen King method. Life may be preparing me for a delightful ending. © Susan Reuling Furness – 2010 Writing Competitions – A Few Pointers You Are a Writer “I am a writer.” Amateurs resist these words. Often I hear, “I would like to be a writer” or “I try to write." These people insist, "I am not a writer.” What we call ourselves is a question of personal identity. To discover something about your writing identity, you might close your eyes. What images do you see of yourself as a writer? Do you see yourself standing proudly with notebook in hand? Do you see yourself sitting at a writing desk or in a journal-writing group? Or is your picture one of hiding in the shadows, standing in the corner waiting to be recognized? Are you struggling to build your identity as one who writes? “Who am I?” Philosophers have struggled for centuries with identity questions and I do not pretend to know the answers. Instead, I encourage you to think how your language influences your confidence. What you call yourself really does matter. A student tells me, “I feel like a fraud if I call myself a writer.” When will that student claim his/her art? Is the word writer synonymous with published? Do you need your own book? Must it sell? This thinking often grows extreme. Perhaps you must make the New York Times Bestseller list or win a Pultizer Prize before you call yourself a writer. I understand the hesitancy. A beginner tends to feel humble or modest; maybe even embarrassed. Bold statements at the beginning appear arrogant and foolhardy. A novice seldom wants to flaunt early attempts. Yet, from the time the first word hits the page, you are writing. William Stafford, the beloved poet who is quoted at the beginning of this article, believed that the very act of writing makes a writer. Confidence gets in the way of claiming your place as writer. But language creates problems too. In the sentence “I am a . . . ,” the word following “am” describes the “I” in the sentence. When you say “I am an American” you define yourself as a citizen of our country. The definition is fixed. The “I am” remains constant throughout your lifetime. Same with “I am a woman/man.” But English uses the same words to define non-static parts of our identity. For example, the statement, “I am an adult.” This can mean the speaker is eighteen or thirty-three or ninety years old. Once adult, we remain adult, while at the same time, we are not fixed. Don’t most of us also behave more adult-like at forty than we did at eighteen? As with writing, we become more proficient adults over time. We seldom hear anyone say, “I am a beginning adult” or “I am trying to do adulthood.” Natalie Goldberg (author of Writing Down the Bones) tells us that writing is a practice. Writers are tennis players with a pen for a racquet. If we hope to improve, we must practice. As with adulthood, tennis and writing require repetition, observation, experimentation, and rehearsal. Mistakes and false starts pepper the learning. And practice brings growth. The more we live, the more we mature. The more we write, the better our writing endeavors. Practice refines the skill. The language we choose can handicap us as we move toward our hopes and dreams. If you say, “I am not a writer,” you move into the shadows where you must practice your art in isolation. Although Emily Dickinson secretly wrote poems in her attic, most of us do better with help, encouragement, and an attitude of confidence. Let your definition of writer include learning and practice. Try saying “I write. I enjoy writing. I’ve recently started writing.” When these words flow with ease, try saying, “I am a writer.” Embrace your identity as one who enjoys the practice of writing . . . one who paints the world with words . . . one who aspires to bolder horizons . . . one who writes. You are a writer. Writers I Have Known Earnest Hemingway Emily Elizabeth and Robert Plato and Socrates © Susan Reuling Furness – 2007 But I Don't Know Where To Begin A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. – Robert Frost If you feel a lump, as Frost suggests, do you how to capture it? What if you feel no lump, but only a tiny protuberance? Not knowing how or where to begin is the granddaddy of all writer’s blocks. The beginning will soon be the end, a dead end, before a single word hits the page. I know two secrets to help you over this hump. First, how you begin doesn’t matter. Your initial words serve only as place-holders for the brilliant beginning you will write later. Secret number two: Write something to begin – write anything. This matters a great deal. If you plan to write about the economy, begin with your first thought, even if it is no more profound than, “this recession really sucks.” Sounds sophomoric? No matter, write on. Suppose you have no clue about your topic or theme. Write a message to the cat: “Hey puss, what shall we write about today?” You might continue . . . “Perhaps we should write about the sunset last evening. Or maybe I should write about the mouse you caught in the garage.” The secret is to put the pen in action. If you remain relaxed, your pen will pick up the random thread and carry you into meaning. After a while you will find your focus. Feeling depressed about the world? Imagine you are writing a letter-to-the-editor about the state of the union or the unjust treatment of the homeless and disenfranchised. Feeling nostalgic? Write about great-aunt Charlotte’s watermelon pickles and the outhouse on her back lawn. If you lack inspiration, pretend you are Dave Barry and play with the Vestiges of Veggies (a great name for a rock group) or imitate Naomi Shihab Nye while you capture a dialogue overheard at the bus stop. Your random beginnings take you to interesting places if you will simply follow the train of your thought. William Stafford wrote a poem every day. A superb teacher as well poet, Stafford explains, "A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had started to say them." Put the red ink aside. This is not the time to edit. Change nothing until you fill several pages. Later, when you get ready to edit, you may find your beginning is irrelevant or awkward. So what? A sleepy pen needs time to discover which way is up. Learn to appreciate any beginning knowing full well the beginning words will eventually fall on the editing room floor. Stafford tells us,” To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can’t keep from thinking. If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing to come, and I’m off.” In her book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg suggests, "Keep your hand moving. Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying." Goldberg offers these rules for writing the first draft: 2. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar. And don’t worry about staying within the margins and lines on the page. 3. Lose control. 4. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. 5. Go for the jugular. If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy. So begin! Eventually you see how a dancing pen engages the Muse. You will find your way to what matters most. Soon you will uncover those thoughts waiting beneath the laundry, the garbage, and cumbersome mental debris. © Susan Reuling Furness - 2010 |
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