Montrose bridges, yesterday, as we set off for walks and friend-visits mid-morning.
The schools are back today after a two week break so once again I have a few hours in the day to... well...work. I have a couple of little projects in what I suppose must be a pipeline but mostly just now I'm working... writing... thinking... in a fairly free and wandering way. I'm not getting a whole lot done... but I don't always mind that.
I'm still reading the book about writing that I mentioned a few posts back ("Writing down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg, publ. 1986). It is, I am sure, the kind of... hippy nonsense that would drive many poets (especially British ones...) to distraction but that's OK with me (I think I live in a different universe to many of them anyway - I've tried reading some of the books other poets recommend about writing and I never seem to get very far with them). Goldberg's book is mainly about making writing central in your life... about speaking from within... about digging really deep... whilst at the same time still noticing all that's around you. And whilst it's true that you could work that all out for yourself... and in a way many of us do... still, much of what she says is powerful and incisive. The book has sold many copies... and it is very readable (now, now... let's not get involved in the Booker prize readability debate) but mostly I am finding it pretty helpful and interesting at this odd stage of life (mother just gone, daughter on brink of adolescence, self a bit vague). I have also, in between reading the "Bones", read Goldberg's coming-to-zen book "Long Quiet Highway" (1993). A lot of it is her life story and that was interesting for many reasons - one of them being that she has spent a lot of time in Taos, New Mexico (and we were there too earlier this year - beautiful place). This book's subtitle is "Waking up in America" and I really enjoyed it. We can be calm. We can be good. It's nice to know.
Here's a quote from "Writing down the Bones":
"Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind that 'The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.' You need a large field in writing too. Don't pull in the reins too quickly. Give yourself tremendous space to wander in, to be utterly lost with no name, and then come back and speak."
See. Not bad. Now try this from earlier in the book:
"Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh. That is how writing is. Instead of freezing us, it frees us."
And now another photo:
I'm still reading the book about writing that I mentioned a few posts back ("Writing down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg, publ. 1986). It is, I am sure, the kind of... hippy nonsense that would drive many poets (especially British ones...) to distraction but that's OK with me (I think I live in a different universe to many of them anyway - I've tried reading some of the books other poets recommend about writing and I never seem to get very far with them). Goldberg's book is mainly about making writing central in your life... about speaking from within... about digging really deep... whilst at the same time still noticing all that's around you. And whilst it's true that you could work that all out for yourself... and in a way many of us do... still, much of what she says is powerful and incisive. The book has sold many copies... and it is very readable (now, now... let's not get involved in the Booker prize readability debate) but mostly I am finding it pretty helpful and interesting at this odd stage of life (mother just gone, daughter on brink of adolescence, self a bit vague). I have also, in between reading the "Bones", read Goldberg's coming-to-zen book "Long Quiet Highway" (1993). A lot of it is her life story and that was interesting for many reasons - one of them being that she has spent a lot of time in Taos, New Mexico (and we were there too earlier this year - beautiful place). This book's subtitle is "Waking up in America" and I really enjoyed it. We can be calm. We can be good. It's nice to know.
Here's a quote from "Writing down the Bones":
"Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind that 'The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.' You need a large field in writing too. Don't pull in the reins too quickly. Give yourself tremendous space to wander in, to be utterly lost with no name, and then come back and speak."
See. Not bad. Now try this from earlier in the book:
"Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and begin fresh. That is how writing is. Instead of freezing us, it frees us."
And now another photo:
Another Montrose bridge we passed yesterday (this time on the way home again in the evening). This one is the train viaduct by the Basin.
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13 comments:
I like that sentence about writing freeing us. I sometimes think when I write, I'm more truthful because I don't have to worry about disapproving stares or whatever.
Lovely bridges by the way! Have a good week.
Yes, though I suppose it can free us to be more untruthful too! And it depends on what you're writing whether that's what you want or not...
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There was an interesting little booklet in Saturday's Guardian which gave some ideas worth trying I thought Rachel. The trouble is Rachel that those of us who run families AND write find it very difficult to give the whole of our minds to the task in hand - I am marvellous at displacement therapy.
With me it's more often self-doubt and self-criticism, rather than family duties, that slow me down (though obviously family duties do take up time). And after all... the self-doubt may be right!
But the book is quite good on shutting all that out and just getting on with some writing work.
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I did a writing course about 10 years ago which used WDTB as a base for many of the exercises.
I found at that time when I was in a bit of a block some of the ideas gave me inspiration and ways of thinking about things in a different way. I sometimes find myself picking up the book from the shelf occasionally and randomly opening it just to see if a few words on the page jump start a poem.
But it is really how the reader takes the messages - it will work for some and not for others; and not necessarily the whole of the book.
Hi Gordon. Yes, WDTB does not need to be read all at once - I've been reading it in tiny snippets for a couple of months now. It is a bit repetitive... probably could be half the size (and I have a pocket copy!)... but still, I like it on the whole. Right now anyway. I think if I'd read it at another time I might have found it a bit hollow but at the moment it seems about right. I suppose it is more about philosophy and practice than technique but again that suits me.
Love the sign on that last bridge - that's all I need to write - no books, no advice, just some paper, pen, and a bit of something to think about.
Submitting, however - that's a whole different banana...
I think there's a tiny bit of me thinks that people put these How To books out to get the rest of us tangled in a fit of self-analysis instead of writing a better book than them...maybe I need therapy for that.....
Yes, I'm not usually one for how-to books (see here for a start) but I'm not sure this even is a how-to. Her zen buddhism permeates everything I've read of hers so far and whilst I don't imagine I'll ever be a buddhist a bit of prodding in the direction of work is helping me now that I seem to have lost my old habits a bit. Looking after my Mum was such a big part of my "what I do" (just making sure we had all the stuff she liked, cooking for her and so on) - it's like I'm rearranging my whole way of working. And the book is helping with that. Also she advised me a lot on the sly (my Mum) and I guess I'm kind of missing that too. Well, sometimes...
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Somebody else just linked to this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one
Some good ones. Roddy Doyle's "Do feel anxiety – it's the job." For starters...
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A snippet or two of 'hippy nonsense' is always fine by me, Rachel! (Perhaps you're a zen buddhist without knowing it?)
Like the two quotes.
Absolutely (to the hippy nonsense). And the buddhism... I'm not one much for organised anything... but I am finding myself calmer with age and time. Mind you, in other times I have been so manic/anxious that anything would be calmer than younger me!
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Life-shift in progress, my friend What's Your Name. A total stranger told me on the phone, the week my mother died, that for her, Mother's Death was a "life-shifting event." My inner response was something like "What the hell does that mean?" And here I am, shifting. There you are, the same. Pushed out of balance, locating center, slowly.
Yes, it really is strange. Not always bad, sometimes liberating... but still odd. So final.
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