The Writing Warrior

by Laraine Herring

  CHAPTER 10

  Illusion of Thoughts

  Attachment is the mind stuck to an object.

  —Lama Zopa Rinpoche, The Door to Satisfaction

  The first house I owned had an evaporative cooler in the kitchen window. It was an old unit, jerry-rigged together on some two-by-fours. A piece of Styrofoam filled in the cracks around the cooler and the window’s edge. Dusty blinds covered the other half of the window to keep out the sun. I just assumed the window wouldn’t open. After a few years, I decided I wanted more light in the house, so I hired a handyman to come out and measure the glass and order a new windowpane that would open and let in some fresh air. He came over and measured, and then returned with a piece of glass. When he went to install the new glass, he called me over.

  “This window opens fine. Did you even try to open it?”

  I had to laugh. No. I had never tried. I had just assumed it was shut and stuck. The sunlight had been available to me the entire time.

  We find ourselves in dangerous territory when we take our direction from our thoughts, both in our day-to-day lives and in our writing. The terrain becomes even more dangerous when we assume that these thoughts are reality. As Buddha says, “It is our mind which creates this world.” In this sense, it’s challenging to see the hand of the creator when the creator is you, but you must find a way to begin to notice this. Just as it’s hard for us to see our own writing clearly, especially in the initial throes of writing, it’s very hard for us to see our own fingerprints on our life’s path. What doors have we already closed because we think they can’t be opened? What writing ideas have you not allowed yourself to follow because you believe you’re not a good enough writer, or the idea has been done too many times before, or you don’t think you have anything new to say about it? How many conferences or networking situations have you backed out of because you think you’re not good enough yet? How many have you backed out of because you think you’re too good? Don’t become a prisoner of your thoughts, and likewise don’t attempt to master them. They come and they go. They’ll always come and go. Let them. When you hang on to a thought, you’re breaking the flow of that thought’s path. You’re keeping it from doing what it is designed to do—arise, pass through, and disappear. Make no mistake; you hold the thought. The thought does not hold you.

  It’s pretty easy to see how this relationship with thoughts can affect your relationship with your writing, isn’t it? After all, when all is said and done, there’s just you and you hanging out in that room, or in that coffee shop, or on that mountaintop. If a thought arises that can bully you into quitting, that’s a problem. If a thought arises that can convince you that every word that drops from your fingertips is perfect and golden, that’s a problem. Thoughts are going to arise. That’s what thoughts do. Some days your thoughts are going to be soft and sweet. Other days they may leap out at you with daggers and stab you in the heart.

  Don’t make thoughts something more than they are. They’ll rise to the challenge, and before too long you’ll forget they’re thoughts and decide they’re you. Cut that off at the pass. The practice outlined in the beginning of this book will help you learn to recognize your thoughts for what they are—part of living in these beautiful fleshy bodies. They’re just a part, though, not the whole deal. Stay awake and they won’t run your life. Fall asleep and you’ll find yourself wondering where your life went and who was in charge while you were gone.

  CHAPTER 11

  Illusion of What a Writer Is

  Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day . . . and rightly so.

  —Sue Grafton

  During the introductions at one of my short-story classes, a beautiful woman with primary-colored jewelry told the class she had enrolled because she was terrified of writing and her advisor had told her she should take a creative writing class to get more comfortable with the writing process. I assured her she was in the right place, and all seemed well. She attended the first three classes, read the assigned reading, and participated in the discussions. Then, on the fourth class, when students were supposed to come with their first writing activity, centered on characterization, she flipped out. She called me, truly afraid of doing the writing. “I don’t know how, I don’t know how, I don’t know how,” she kept saying.

  I tried to reassure her that if she knew how to do all of it then she probably wouldn’t have signed up for the class. I told her to just write something down, anything, and it would be OK. I told her that her mind was getting in her way. I told her to breathe. She came to the class, but she hadn’t written anything. She had the opportunity to hear what other students in the class had written, and I told her she could write something for the next exercise. I got another phone call before the next class. “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never done it before.” She was clearly afraid of putting anything down on paper in case it was “wrong.”

  Nothing I could say could convince her it’s never wrong. Writing leads to writing. The crap comes before the good stuff. She held a belief that there are people who are writers and people who aren’t, and that those who are writers write daily with great joy and confidence. Those who are writers always know what’s going on with their work. They always have something unique to say, and they always use just the right word. They never worry over what they’re going to write, and the universe always lauds their work when it (of course) shows up on the best-seller list. Then there’s everyone else, the group of which she considered herself a charter member. Everyone else struggles. Suffers. Can’t think of anything to say. Writes choppy and sloppy sentences. Writes clichés and melodramatic scenes and stereotypical characters. Everyone else misses the irony in the short story we read that the teacher is going on and on about (real writers, of course, not only saw the irony, but would have written it better, with even more subtlety and finesse).

  I encounter this myth about writing and writers enough to give it its own section here. I don’t know where it started. Maybe because much of a writer’s work is solitary the world at large doesn’t see us deleting half our life’s work, or pacing our bedroom floors, or staring out the window filled with debilitating self-doubt. The world at large doesn’t see the piles of rejection slips—the rejections from graduate schools, from editors and agents, from publishers, from magazines ranging from The New Yorker to Granny’s Knitting Quarterly. These things happen in solitude, so perhaps to the rest of the world, they don’t happen at all.

  We can look out our windows and see the young boy practicing free throws all day on the weekends. We can stop by the local theatre and watch the hours and hours of rehearsals the actors go through. We can hear the early painful refrains of the young girl learning to play the flute. But our writing that doesn’t work is invisible and silent. It doesn’t echo through our parents’ homes while they’re trying to have a conversation. It doesn’t create rooms and rooms of failed paintings. Failed writing doesn’t take up space at all, except in the writer’s psyche; though, if we’re paying attention, we know these failed writings are the most valuable of all because each failing taught us something about not just the craft of writing, but about our relationship with writing. Didn’t work this time? OK, maybe I’ll try it this way. That publication said no? OK, let’s revisit the work and then resubmit it someplace else. Those decisions are made alone.

  If you are courageous enough to call yourself a writer, the first question out of the stranger-across-the-aisle’s mouth will be, “What have you published?” In our society, we’re judged on what we’ve produced, what we’ve “done.” If we dare to call ourselves writers, we may have produced reams and reams of work that hasn’t quite worked, but if we haven’t sold something, then it’s deemed that we’ve not really done anything at all. This false assumption trickles down into the psyches of hopeful writers and turns us against not only ourselves but against the very process necessary to actually writ
e something that could sell one day.

  The effects of this myth are most poignant for me when I encounter a student such as this beautiful woman, who had enough courage to sign up for the class, enough courage to come to class, but then, when faced with what every single writer in the universe is faced with, freaked out and fell into the trap so many people do: believing she’s the only one who doesn’t have entrance to this secret club of Writers, so she’s not worthy of being in their company. She didn’t stay in the chair long enough to learn to both do battle with her own mind and see that every other student in the room is facing a similar battle. I beg you: stay in the chair.

  Later on in the same class, an older gentleman asked, “Do even good writers revise?” We were two weeks from the end of the semester, and I was practically punch drunk by that point. His question was so innocent and so absurd (though he had no idea it was absurd) that I almost didn’t know what to say in response. His question spoke more to the depths of the misunderstandings about writing than anything else.

  “Only good writers revise,” I said, and was then able to move into a discussion about what revision actually is and that writing a story isn’t, contrary to popular belief, like riding a bike. Once you get one down, you haven’t in any way assured yourself of getting the next one down, or the next, or the next. Every time you sit in the chair to write, something different occurs. Some new problem, some deeper question about the work or the characters arises. His question spoke so deeply to the self-doubt writers feel when they hold themselves up against the illusion of the Writer. There is no Writer. There is only you and your work. Be proud of the files and files of work you’ve created that may not have found a home. Nurture the relationship you have with your writing practice and your stories. Don’t set your work aside because you can’t write the perfect sentence today. Perfect sentences rarely arrive fully formed. They take numerous incarnations to show up on the page in their perfection.

  How many hours of practice and broken toes and pulled hamstrings did we not see Baryshnikov endure before his moments of perfection on stage with the New York City Ballet? He practiced, and fell down, and sweated, and jumped his cue so the moment would come when he didn’t fall down or enter the stage too soon. His innate talent and drive pointed him in the direction of practice. Practice gave him the discipline and the stamina to keep dancing whether particular performances were brilliant or not. Practice instilled in him a relationship between dancing and himself that was sacred. Practice provided a foundation for him as he pushed the edges of his art.

  Practice will do this for you, too. You must first acquaint yourself with your writing and, perhaps more elusively, with yourself as a writer. You need to find ways of working within the machinations of your own mind, and this will become easier for you as you let go of the Illusion of What a Writer Is. Take this advice from the prolific John Updike: “More than half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.”

  No one is drawn to writing for the exact same reason. Some of us are songwriters. Some love the length and breadth of the novel. Still others try to see the world in the rhythm of a poem. Some people want to publish. Some want to leave something of themselves behind for their families. Some want to use writing as a way of deepening their spiritual path or their relationship with themselves, and some enjoy playing with words on a page, seeing what combinations and sounds and meanings they can come up with. No one has cleared your path for you. Don’t be fooled into thinking you don’t have what it takes. There’s no formula for that journey.

  Try this: quit writing. Give it up like you’d give up alcohol if you were an alcoholic. Just quit cold turkey and watch yourself. How long can you go before that tug on your soul toward language and stories begins to materialize? How long can you go before the voices and stories that you hear become so loud you can’t hear anything else? How long can you keep yourself from doing what is within you to do? Try it. Then write about the experience. What brought you back? What did you miss about it? What is at the root of the pull back to your work? Post these answers somewhere near your writing area so you can return to them and remember why it matters. Remember, also, every writer at some point wonders why it matters. You may need a little help from time to time to remind yourself that it does. You don’t have to know why.

  A writer opens her heart, even when it is so bloody the exposure to oxygen makes her scream. A writer pries the fingers of the ghosts from her shoulders with the care of a parent. She places them in front of her and looks them in the eye.

  “You,” she says, pointing to one with a curved back and crossed eyes. “I can work with you today.” The ghost smiles, inches closer to her.

  “You. I can’t work with you now.” The dark one with the missing spleen vanishes. She knows it will be back.

  “You. Maybe.” The red one shakes, afraid to hope.

  The ghost with the curved back and crossed eyes strokes the writer’s hand.

  “What is the first word?” the writer asks.

  “Who,” says the ghost.

  Who, the writer writes.

  “Am,” says the ghost.

  Am, the writer writes.

  “I,” says the ghost.

  I.

  The writer exhales, waits, and listens. The ghost with the curved back and crossed eyes waits, inhales, and begins to speak.

  CHAPTER 12

  Illusion of Identification

  First, rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the words;

  Second, rely on the teachings, not on the personality of the teacher;

  Third, rely on real wisdom, not superficial interpretation;

  And fourth, rely on the essence of your pure Wisdom Mind, not on judgmental perceptions.

  —The Four Reliances, Buddhist teaching

  So, you’re a human being. This “being human” thing sure has a pesky nature about it. You’re walking along, happily munching on a Balance Bar, focusing on all the things you do well and wondering how you can incorporate more of the things you do well into your life, and then bam! You run headfirst into a tree, nearly choking on your snack. Hopefully, this head-banging is just a gentle tap from the universe, rather than the pull-no-punches wake-up-and-pay-attention thunks that will happen later on if you don’t heed the first calls.

  What happened? You toppled over because you were out of balance. You placed all your energy into things that come easily for you. You became really strong in certain areas (plot development, maybe, or dialogue construction). You received praise for these things, so you worked on them even more. (And let’s be honest, it wasn’t that much work; it came easily.) And so while you were tilling the soil of plot development and dialogue, weeds of the thorny variety sprung up in the fields of characterization and sentence structure. And what’s the nature of weeds? They spread. They create clutter. They infiltrate. Divide and conquer. Trick you sometimes with pretty yellow or white flowers. The longer you ignore them, the stronger and fiercer they become. The longer you ignore them, the harder it can be to ever venture into those fields again. After all, you’ve grown so strong in other areas; how could you admit, after all this time, that you’ve neglected half of your craft? Way too embarrassing. You’re way too old to start over. It’s way too risky for someone to pull back the proverbial curtain of Oz.

  You’re going to keep running into trees, though. Eventually, the untended parts of your garden are going to slither across the field and snag you on the ankles. It’s human to play to your strengths. But don’t give them all your attention. Don’t identify with them. Notice what you don’t want to do. (Gee, I don’t want to revise my story! Come on, I don’t really need to pay any attention to that plot hole. The ending is so perfect! I don’t need to do any research about seventeenth-century Eastern European medical practices, even though my protagonist is a seventeenth-century Eastern European doctor; after all,
it’s fiction, right?) Fill in your own “but I don’t wanna” and laugh at yourself.

  You may have heard “the exercise you hate to do is the one you need to do the most” as it relates to physical exercise. The same is true for writing. If you cultivate only those craft components that grow easily for you, you’ll quickly be out of sync; even if you write the best dialogue in the universe, your piece won’t be balanced. Consciously seek out areas in your artistic development that make you uncomfortable. Don’t always read the same types of books from the same types of authors. Don’t start all of your stories in the same way. Try writing from the point of view of the opposite gender, or of someone vastly different from you in age or belief system. If you’re twenty-five, write from the perspective of an eighty-year-old. If you’re a Democrat, see what the world looks like through Republican eyes. Be ever vigilant in challenging yourself to push farther with your craft. It’s up to you. No teacher can push you as far as you can push yourself, because only you know your own soul. Only you know when you’re hiding in the bushes and avoiding something uncomfortable, or when you’re truly out there scrambling for footing. It’s in the scrambling that you’re most open to the work. It’s in the moments when you sway from side to side—when you’re not sure, when you don’t know—that your work has a microsecond to sneak in and surprise you.