The Way to Write is to Write: Writers Support Workshop, Session I with Petals & Bones

Yesterday was the first session of my Writers Support Workshop in Santa Rosa, just 20 minutes along a back road from my farm cottage. Four women writers gathered around a table after-hours at the Undercover Baking Agency in a newly hip corner of town: SOFA, or South A Street Arts District, featuring the highest concentration of artists' studios in Sonoma County, as well as the Spinster Sisters restaurant, where I had a bite to eat afterward and took more notes from the session.

Writing facilitator extraordinaire, Leilani Clark, coached us with a couple prompts that weren't typical of a writing workshop, since this one's really about finding ways to be accountable to our work rather than a focus on the craft itself, although we will be exchanging a bit of writing for feedback and suggestions. First, we listed what gets in our way, leading to 'failure' to write. Here's mine:

1. Prioritizing everything else (work, finances, home projects, exercise, trip planning, emails, family, social life, recreation, house cleaning, gardening, etc.) before writing.
2. No writing schedule. I leave it for after work or weekends (too busy, too tired, no time).
3. Unrealistic expectations/ambitious goals create pressure to complete a finished, polished product that's publishable vs. approaching writing as daily or weekly exercise and practice.
4. Creative writing at my desk at home, which I associate with writing for work
5. Isolation: nobody is offering feedback or insisting I write (no deadlines)

After we each shared our laments on procrastination, Leilani validated the difficult nature of self-discipline: "No one's waiting for these essays to get out." Harsh as that may sound, it's the truth about writing, unless you're in a program or class... or support workshop. So we're to team up in pairs that check in each Sunday evening on the week's progress, as well as set goals for the week ahead.

My goal this week: delve into some interesting or problematic string to solve for half an hour each morning--before work begins. My fear is that I'll get so involved that half an hour won't be enough. But, hey, I've been working more than my minimum hours this month so there's wiggle room.

Leilani read aloud a poignant essay in the Poets and Writers column "Why We Write" about a writer whose father called her from India each morning to make sure she was writing until she finished her novel, which was finally accepted by a publisher the day her father died.

As an exercise, we wrote and shared our own "Why I Write." Mine took a surprising turn toward the copywriting I do for a living. What pushes me to write for pay are the billable hours I log, the deadlines documented on spreadsheets and the expectations of others who edit my work that gets posted weekly. When I count up the hours and multiply them by what I make, I think, "Wow, that wasn't so hard." But when it comes to creative work--that gut-wrenching, imaginative or stuck-in-the-mud mind-work on a piece that's personal--well, that's another story. Then it's entirely up to me.

Leilani reminded us that there's value to simply writing, even if it doesn't ever make it out into the world, and I found it freeing to reconsider how I want to approach the task. My ambitious goals can motivate me, but all too often they become obstacles in this game of self-sabotage. I want to bring the playful curiosity back into my writing work, which in itself is what feeds me.

Here's another tidbit from the magazine's "Writers Recommend" section:

"Writing is about getting to a place of deep mediation. The writer’s job is, at a fundamental level, all about finding the habits that will get you there—somehow. Human beings are, fortunately, trainable animals."   

                                                           -- Peyton Marshall, author of Goodhouse: A Novel

As Leilani said, "The way to write is to write."

Reading, Writing and Scratching the Itch

Well, it's been one week since I blogged about getting back in the writing saddle, and I find I'm still struggling to straddle the obstacle of scheduling time.  In my defense, I did work 9-hour days T-F, and this week's plan is to hone those hours down so I can begin anew. Although I haven't yet sat at the keyboard (aside from copywriting hours), I awoke from 2-3:30 a.m. one night and spent it re-reading essays in my thesis manuscript. Something about that etherial time of night lends itself to imaginative meanderings of the mind, so I was able to sit with the pages I thumbed in my lap without judgment, but with curiosity. There are three essays with braided stories and my next task is to untangle them on Scrivener so that I can reweave the strands into something new.

My bedside pile of books and magazines

As always, deadlines help propel me toward my goals. I did sign up for the fall Writer's Inspiration + Support Workshop, which meets once a month for three months, starting Sept. 21. And there's a Sept. 22 deadline for a Creative Nonfiction contest on a theme that my particular story addresses:

For an upcoming issue, Creative Nonfiction is seeking new essays about WAITING. We’re looking for well-crafted true stories of delays, postponements, and pauses that explore and examine our relationship with time.

In the meantime, reading (and hearing others read) also serves as inspiration. Recently I went to a Get Lit event at one of the wine bars in my town, Petaluma. Among the three featured readers were Stefanie Freele, whom I've blogged about, and Daniel Coshnear, whose fiction class I took four years ago and whose book, Occupy and Other Love Stories, I wrote about for the Press Democrat. I purchased a book from each, and have been reading and enjoying Coshnear's short story collection, Jobs and Other Preoccupations, which offers much food for thought for rethinking and revising my own short fiction. And last week I bought the cartoon memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a laugh-out-loud but poignant portrait of aging in America by New York Times cartoonist Roz Chast. So, I didn't write, but I spent an entire afternoon reading in the park.