The Writing Warrior

by Laraine Herring

  You cannot do the same thing every day and remain in balance. Don’t create a structure that does not honor your humanness. After all, it’s your humanity that allows you to see that dogwood tree in just that perfect way so you can write a haiku. It’s your humanity that allows you to experience the wide range of emotions that will allow you to create a compelling plot. It’s your humanity that makes you just like all the rest of us and uniquely you. Honor it. Don’t fight it.

  Structure must have flexibility. Don’t be afraid to play with the edges of the structure provided here. Allow it to change as you change. Don’t feel like you have to do this every day forever. Listen within. Go within. The structure that you need will emerge, and it will have more staying power because it came authentically from you. Use the structure in this book as a foundation to leap into what only you can create.

  Resist the urge to look for a single Holy Grail guide for your writing practice. You are not the same person each day. When you find a practice that works, commit to it, but be flexible with that commitment. The time may come when it is no longer a fit, and you may feel that you’ve “failed” at your writing practice. Don’t place the blame outward. Instead, reflect inward. What didn’t work for you and why? Be honest. What would you rather do? Or are you observing simple laziness?

  Allow for this freedom in your writing too. Yes, you need a container. That container may be a scene or a character or a driving question. But let there be room to bounce around within the container. Don’t hold too tightly to an outcome or a result. That may keep your characters marching in line, but it won’t let them speak with their own voices. As a writer, be ever respectful of your characters’ voices. Let them know that you are there and that you will love them no matter what they say.

  Though the bones of a human body create a person’s frame, they are not the person. For there to be life, there must be air—breath and the space within the vertebrae, space within and around the organs. For there to be life, there must be water—the fluids of blood, saliva, water. For there to be life, there must be fire—the electricity of the heart’s pulse. And for there to be life, there must be earth—the flesh itself, the ivory of the teeth, the eternity of the bones. You can arrange a skeleton’s structure, but you won’t get a human being. For that, you need that bit of magic that occurs when everything is in perfect order. And for that to occur, you need patience and persistence.

  Show up. That’s all anyone can ask of you, and indeed, that is all you can do. Show up. No conditions. No preconceptions. No agenda. See how light that feels already? Conditions, preconceptions, and agendas are bulky and heavy. There’s no need to clutter up your writer’s self with any of that baggage. Lose it on the connecting flight, sit back, and relax. It’s not as complicated as you think.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Practice

  Be regular and ordinary in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

  —Gustave Flaubert

  The foundation for your Writing Warrior path is a three-part practice. It consists of a three-part breathing exercise, a shaking practice, and a writing practice. Please do this practice for a minimum of forty-nine days, no matter how far along you are with the writing exercises in the book. Forty-nine days allows you to practice commitment. It is long enough for you to see the effects on your body and your writing. It is long enough for you to experience any discomforts that arise and bear witness to the wide range of avoidance tactics you may find yourself using. These observations, without judgment, are key to your understanding yourself as a writer.

  The practice can be done in fifteen minutes if that’s all the time you have. On days you have more time, stretch the practice out for an hour or longer. The most important aspect is consistency. Give yourself the gift of discipline. We’re all human and our lives are not the same every day, so don’t beat yourself up and walk away from the whole thing if you have to miss a day’s practice. Just begin again. You’re learning to build a relationship with these exercises, the strength of which will carry over into your relationship with your writing. This practice will help to center and ground you and will help you develop intuitive listening and compassion. Please do the exercises in the order presented. Have pen and paper handy for the last part of the practice.

  A few things to remember:

  You are not trying to get anywhere or achieve anything.

  You are not trying to look like a yogi or write like your most beloved author.

  You are not going to feel the same today as you are tomorrow.

  You are not always going to want to do this practice. Do it anyway.

  THREE-PART BREATHING PRACTICE

  Three-part breathing is fundamental to the Writing Warrior’s path. It will also help train you to breathe properly throughout your day. Don’t worry if it feels weird. Many of us don’t breathe properly. We tend to breathe shallowly into the chest rather than deeply into the belly, and we rarely completely exhale. Three-part breathing will help bring awareness to your breath, as well as fill your body with more oxygen. You may do this standing, sitting in a chair, or sitting on the floor. If you sit in a chair, keep both feet rooted flat on the floor. If you are sitting on the floor, prop enough blankets or pillows under your hips so that your hips are higher than your knees. (Sit on the front edge of the blanket, and let your knees relax down toward the floor.)

  Begin by placing your hands on your navel and press firmly. Take a deep inhale and fill your belly, letting it push your hands out and away from your body. Hold the breath for a few seconds. As you exhale, press your hands into your belly as the air releases from your body. Don’t be afraid to press your palms into your belly; you won’t hurt anything. This will help to promote diaphragmatic breathing. Many people pull their bellies in on an inhale rather than pushing their bellies out. This forces the air up into the chest, resulting in shallow breathing. We want to move that breath into the belly. Continue breathing like this for at least one minute until you can feel your breath pumping slowly into your abdominal region.

  When you feel like you’ve mastered the rhythm, expanding your belly on the inhale and collapsing your belly on the exhale, move your hands up to the bottom of your lower ribs. With four fingers of each hand in front wrapped around the lower ribs, point your thumbs toward your back. Inhale and press your ribs out. Exhale and push your ribs in. You’re actually doing this movement with your breath, not with your hands. Your hands are there to help you bring awareness to your rib cage. The ribs can actually expand and get wider with each inhale, and contract on each exhale. This helps to increase your lung capacity. Stay with this movement for at least one minute.

  Then take your fingers and place them over your clavicles, also known as your collarbone (the top bone of your shoulder on your front). This is where the last bit of breath fills your body. First the breath goes to your belly, then to your lungs, and then up to your clavicle area. Breathe deeply; feel the breath fill your belly, expanding it, then rising to your ribs, expanding them out wide, then lifting your clavicles as you finish the last bit of inhale. When the breath reaches the clavicle area, the clavicles will lift up, expanding the rib cage even further. Then release and slowly breathe out from your clavicles, past your ribs, and emptying your belly. Think of your body as a vessel. When you pour water into the vessel, the water is first going to fill the belly, then the lungs, and then finish at the top of the chest.

  As you practice this breathing, think of expanding your belly and your ribs in four directions: front, back, left side, right side. Once you feel comfortable with belly breathing and full body breathing, you can relax your hands, letting them rest in your lap in a comfortable position, and enjoy the experience.

  Minimum time: five minutes.

  SHAKING PRACTICE

  The shaking practice is the second part of our foundation practice. It’s just like it sounds. We’re going to shake our bodies. I already hear your resistance through the ether! What’s this shaking thing
? What does that have to do with writing? I don’t understand it. How do I do it right? What’s the point?

  Most people have been introduced to deep breathing at some point in their lives, and, of course, the idea of a timed writing practice is nothing new either. But shaking? Yeah, I know. It’s weird. I thought so too. When I teach it in workshops and classes, the students generally think so too. Until they try it for a while and then send me e-mails telling me how well it worked.

  The shaking practice is not complicated or esoteric. Dogs shake when they get out of the bath. We spontaneously shake out our wrists or ankles when they are stiff. Dancing is a form of shaking. A mindful shaking practice will have transformative effects on the practitioner. As writers, when we break up the stagnation within our body, we open up energy channels, enabling us to sink quickly into a more profound and authentic relationship with our writing.

  This may seem too easy, or just plain strange. When I first learned the shaking practice, I hated it. It made me itch and it made me cranky. But I was told to shake daily for ninety days as part of my round of Taoist yoga training. I trusted my teacher, so I shook. After a few days, the shaking became less annoying. Then it became fun. Then I began to notice an unexpected lightness. I began to notice more energy and a more immediate connection to my writing—to the writing I was currently engaged with and to new stories floating on the horizon. Shaking helped me be more present. It helped me let go of what I didn’t need, and it created space for what needed to move in. I had not expected this.

  I began to teach shaking in my writing classes, and I discovered that my observation was not a fluke. Students opened up quickly (after the requisite period of whining). Their writing became much more present and direct. They couldn’t hang out in intellectual abstractions. The shaking allowed them to fully embody their skins, which allowed them to fully embody their writing. They learned to be present with what they were feeling and to let it go when the feeling was complete. In order to write authentically, we must know how to go into darkness and we must know how to return cleanly. Shaking helps us cultivate this. It allows things to surface naturally and fall away naturally.

  Here’s the best thing about the shaking practice: You don’t have to set an intention for it. You don’t have to know what you want to work through. You don’t have to create a framework for it to reveal its secrets to you. You just have to show up and shake and then observe yourself over the days and weeks that you’re shaking. Shaking without an agenda, breathing without an agenda, and free writing without an agenda will help teach you to detach from an outcome. It will help free you from limitations in your work you may not be aware of. Shaking isn’t about knowing anything. It’s about not knowing. There is no wrong way to shake. It’s the body’s normal response to help eliminate stiffness and stagnation.

  How to Shake

  Begin by standing with your feet together, knees soft, jawbone relaxed, tailbone slightly tucked, and your tongue lightly touching the roof of your mouth behind the tooth ridge. On an inhale, step your right foot out to the side and set it down. You’re now in a wide-legged stance. Exhale. On the next inhale, raise your arms above your head while rising up on your toes if possible. Hold your breath and sink into a squat, coming only as low as is comfortable. If squatting is not possible, then simply skip the squat, lower your arms on an exhale, and begin to shake. If you do move into the squat, when you’re ready, exhale and leap up from the squat, landing solidly with both feet on the floor, and begin shaking. You do not have to jump. You can keep your feet rooted to the ground the entire time. The shaking originates from within your belly. It can be soft and internal, or it can be more energetic and external. Each day your body will tell you what it needs.

  The first few times, you may want to pretend you’re being shaken by something else just to get your body moving. Don’t worry about what you look like. Nobody is watching. Once you get the hang of the movement, begin to focus on your belly in the place between your navel and pubic bone. Let your shaking originate from there. That center of our bodies is our place of power and stability. Imagine a red or orange ball of light in your belly. This helps bring heat into your belly and starts generating internal movement.

  There are lots of options available to you now. You might like to pretend that you’re really cold and shiver. You might feel energetic and want to jump a bit. You might want to keep your eyes closed, or only slightly open. Try not to let your eyes wander around the room, though. You’re allowing energy to disperse through your eyes when you do that.

  During the shaking practice, allow your mind to travel through your body, sending energy and awareness to your eyes, ears, nose, throat, teeth, tongue, shoulders, back, spine, elbows, wrists, fingers, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, belly, hips, knees, ankles, and feet. You might like to click your teeth together and see how that feels. With loose fists, you might like to tap down the sides of your arms and legs or over your skull. Experiment with all the ways you can get in touch with your body. Linger any place you feel tightness or resistance. Allow your breath to move into those areas and loosen them up. Remember, where your attention goes, energy goes, so use this opportunity to listen to your body’s wisdom and open up to a more intimate connection with your internal body.

  Some days you may feel like more vigorous shaking. Some days you may wish to do gentle shaking. The important thing is just to shake. Some days you write for hours and other days only for a few moments. Shaking practice helps this normal flow of things feel more natural and familiar. Remember that you are bringing energy (using attention and movement) throughout your body. You’re waking yourself up from the inside out and developing focus and clarity within your mind. Think of shaking as an internal cleansing bath for your body.

  You may itch at first. You may feel silly. You may feel tingling in your arms and fingers. These sensations are perfect. Pay attention to your own body and its needs. Some days I am active in my shaking, while other days I keep my feet rooted and do more of an internal shaking.

  Each day, when you feel like you’ve moved energetically through your entire inner body, begin to slow the shaking down until you reach stillness, with your feet firmly rooted on the floor, your arms relaxed at your sides. Bring your feet back together and feel the sensations of your body as it transitions from movement to stillness. When your heart rate has returned to normal, practice the three-part breath once again for a few deep inhales and exhales.

  Minimum time: five minutes.

  WRITING PRACTICE

  Please do this writing practice longhand if you are physically able to do so. As with the three-part breathing and the shaking, we’re not trying to accomplish anything in particular with this writing practice. You should be relaxed after the first two parts of the practice. Now just sit down and start writing. Don’t worry if you write nonsense. Don’t get attached to it if you write something brilliant. Just write whatever is emerging for you. Don’t stop to think about it or edit it. Don’t worry about whether or not you can “use” it for anything later. We are simply observing our writing in connection with our breathing and our inner listening.

  Minimum time: five minutes.

  Remember: reading about something is not the same as doing it. Observe yourself in all your excitement about and resistance to these concepts. Let your rational mind take a break, and let your feeling self find a way through the merging of body, breath, and language. Show up without attachment. Breathe. Shake. Write. Notice. You are cultivating powerful tools for your Writing Warrior path.

  THE WRITING WARRIOR PRACTICE

  Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

  —Frank Herbert

  At the end of each section you’ll find Writing Warrior Practice exercises. These sections provide a summary of the key concepts of the previous chapters and writing exercises in two categories: Internal Conversations, for deepening your relationship with yourself, and Write Now, for deepening your works in
progress. You may wish to keep a journal specifically for working through the exercises in the text.

  Part 1, Breaking Ground, introduced you to the concept of being a Writing Warrior. I encouraged you to recognize that structure is necessary, but fluid, and I gave you the foundation practices for this book: a three-part breathing practice, a shaking practice, and a writing practice. The foundation practices will introduce you to the concepts of self-observation without judgment, attachment and aversion, and self-study, which will be addressed later in the text.

  INTERNAL CONVERSATIONS

  You can use the internal conversations exercises for personal work. The deeper your relationship with yourself, the deeper your writing becomes. Feel free to use prose or poetry to respond.

  Free write around the words “structure” and “discipline.” After a few minutes, stop and look honestly at your responses. What were your connotations and inferences? What made you uncomfortable? Look for the place that is both flexible and strong, the balance between creating a prison cell for your writing or being a limp noodle in your practice.

  What resistances, if any, are surfacing for you around the Writing Warrior practice? Are there any fears? Try to find the underlying reason for these resistances. Go deeper than “I don’t want to.” Listen softly. Pay careful attention to the word choices you use. The words themselves will provide an insight.