It seems people are boiling over with hatred these days. Sometimes it’s so bad you can almost feel it in the air. I read hateful comments and hear journalists (I’m using that term very loosely) spread hate even if they have to lie. I hear people speak with hatred dripping from their tongues. My heart breaks as people I’ve long respected - and even liked - spread hateful comments with less thought than they’d give washing their hands.
I’ve long believed hate is more detrimental than anything. Hate leads to violence against others. Hate creates intolerance toward others. Hate eats our hearts away until there’s nothing left but a shadow of what once was. Hate blinds us to the truth and taints every word spoken, action taken, and one’s view of the world.
I lived with hate in my heart for a long time. It tarnished everything I did and every relationship I had. And, this hate was, by comparison, a small hate. It was a hate toward someone who had hurt me. When I finally let go of that hate, I was able to move forward with my life. As I let go of hate, love moved into its place without hesitation and began to grow. Not that I love the person, but I no longer hate the person either. Some would say my feeling of indifference is worse than hate, but I disagree. Indifference allows me to stop protecting myself and focusing on the negative. It allows me to live without feeling burdened by the weight of hate.
When hate rules, problems don’t get solved. They become exacerbated. Only when we take hate out of the equation are we able to look at facts and find solutions. It astounds me that people can’t - or won’t - understand the damage hate creates. It infuriates me that people can’t see that hatred fuels lies and misinformation which in turn fuels hatred. It’s a neverending cycle. Only when we recognize hate and release it will we begin to see it doesn’t always have to be an “us against them” situation in life. We can solve so much more when we allow people to bring different points of view to the table for discussion. Disagreement doesn’t have to lead to hatred. Disagreement can fuel discussion and lead to answers that make everyone happy. It seems answers are the last thing on anyone’s mind when hatred gets involved.
Hatred demands it be protected from anything that doesn’t fuel it. When good happens to someone focused on hate, that person immediately begins to look for the negative or the hidden agenda. We lose our ability to accept people at face value when hate gets involved. Hate demands that we don’t allow anything to challenge it. Hate is smart in this way. It knows that any break in its hold will open the hater up to allowing love to reside in his/her heart. When love gets involved hate begins to erode, so hate holds on to anything that will allow it to survive.
I write a lot about emotion including love and hate. Hate in fiction provides conflict and drama just as it does in real life. In fiction though hate can be resolved much easier than in real life. We manipulate hate in fiction to achieve our desired results, so it’s a useful tool. In real life, while it sometimes fuels a catalyst for searching for change, real change requires love.
I challenge you to examine your own life for the hatred you feel, large and small. See if you can resolve it. Maybe letting it go will improve your life. Maybe you can crack its hard veneer and allow love to enter.
Writers, use hatred to fuel your work. See if you can resolve your own issues with hate or the societal issues that trouble you through your work. I think you’ll be happy you did.
May hate never find a permanent place in your life. May love always find a way to replace hate in your life.
In The Prosperous Writer, Christina talks about building a career on a foundation of happiness.
I believe it goes farther than that. I believe only a life built on a foundation of happiness can bring any sense of success and joy. For life to be sustainable, it must be built on a foundation of happiness. Happiness leads to positive thinking. Positive thinking leads to achievement. When a person drowns in negativity, it’s impossible to even see the lifeline happiness throws one’s way.
When I learned to embrace happiness, I learned to see things through different lenses. Obstacles became challenges. I began to recognize successes instead of always focusing on failures. My relationships with other people improved. I stopped looking for hidden motives and began to accept people just as they were. When I’m genuinely happy, I approach my writing day with enthusiasm and vigor, I shrug off rejections, and I focus on my words instead of other people’s reactions.
I blogged about happiness in November 2009. Because I don’t enjoy repeating myself too much, I suggest you read that post for my thoughts on happiness. It includes a poem. Enjoy!
So, I suggest you embrace happiness. When happiness flows through your life uninhibited, you’ll find life improves.
This year I set a goal to write a minimum of one poem each month. Earlier this week, I counted and discovered I’ve already written twelve poems this year. Some are better than others, but the number surprised me. I tend to write poetry only when inspired to do so. I don’t sit down and try to write poetry. I save it for my personal writing endeavours. I don’t write with an audience in mind. I edit with an audience in mind though. I don’t study poetry techniques and can’t rattle off the types of poems in existence. If I like the poem’s flow and it expresses what I want, that’s good enough for me.
I’ve also been letting down some barriers that I erected a while back to protect me from emotional tirades in life. I hadn’t realized how much that conscious decision had stifled my creativity. Without access to those memories and the emotions they created, my writing lost some of its dimension. My life found equilibrium. This wasn’t the first time I’d erected emotional barriers to protect myself, but when I did it before it was to keep people from getting too close - from knowing me very well. This time I had no problem people knowing the real me. I just wanted to no longer be defined by my past. So I set about creating a future that wasn’t dependent on holding on to past pain and unhappiness.
Opening myself up again is allowing my inspiration to flow freely. The problem is that it’s overwhelming me. I’m constantly bombarded with ideas, and I can’t hold them long enough to get them on paper. While I’m working on one idea, another one pops in my head. Then it’s gone before I can get it written down. This is a much better problem than having no ideas. At least I think it is.
I’m a bit scared that my inspiration seems to be coming from my past instead of my present. I keep wondering what that means. There’s a part of me that fears regressing to the person I was then, but I doubt that will actually happen. I’m older, more mature, and, dare I hope, a bit wiser than I was then.
So, I’m going to go with it. When inspiration hits one must grasp on to it and use it for all it’s worth. Past, present, or future - inspiration is inspiration.
So, who knows, maybe now that my goal of a minimum of twelve poems for 2010 is met, I’ll feel even freer to write double, triple, or quadruple that amount. Wherever my muse takes me, I’ll follow. That is a promise.
In The Prosperous Writer this week, Christina Katz talked about groundedness.
Groundedness to me is adhering to reality. As a writer it’s sometimes easy and tempting to live in those scenarios building in my head. I see the people. I hear their voices. I smell their sweat as they exert themselves and their soap as they shower. I feel their pain when they twist and ankle or get punched in the face. I taste the bitterness and the sweetness of their lives.
I find it easy to drift from those scenarios into imagining my own future. For the past few months, I’ve been spending too much time in my own imagination. Multiple story lines merging with memories and thoughts about my future pull me away from daily work of actually putting words on paper. There’s a point where mulling things over in my mind stops being productive - getting me toward writing something - and becomes a distraction. It’s a fine line because much of developing fiction revolves around the stories that come from the imagination. Yet without the act of putting the words on paper, there is no product. No product means nothing to sell. Nothing to sell means no income. No income means that all that ruminating is the equivalent of daydreaming. I’m only grounded when the balance between imagination and product is met.
Time to get grounded again.
I do yoga which forces me to focus on breathing the most essential thing for life. When I take the time to hold a pose, I must be in the moment. I must feel what I’m feeling. I must focus on what my body tells me. I must breath correctly. All this is very grounding.
When I’m feeling like I’m not grounded in reality, I pull out my cookbooks and find a recipe. Just any cooking won’t do though. I must bake. Baking requires exact measurements. It requires precision and focus to get it just right. It allows me to remember the basics of life like caring for loved ones and taking care of myself. Yesterday I baked bread and Mini Cheesecakes both from the South Beach Diet Cookbooks. My writing productivity increased. I finished a short story I’d been struggling with and I typed two poems that I’d jotted rough drafts of over the weekend.
My cats also help me stay grounded. They remind me to take a break and even to eat. When I take care of them, I remember to take care of me. Taking care of me helps me to balance the imagination and the product.
I can always count on my husband to remind me the Earth awaits when I get too wrapped up in my imagination. He firmly pulls me back to Earth with love and patience when I forget to come out of the clouds. He’s a person grounded in the logic and reason of things. He has no problem pointing out the reality in front of me even when I don’t want to see it. Forget about accept it.
Lastly, I stay grounded by performing the daily chores involved in writing. It’s not glamorous. It’s hard work. It requires putting yourself in front of the world and saying “Okay, judge me. You have my permission to criticize me, pick me apart, and reject me.” If that’s not humbling enough to keep one grounded, I’m not sure what is.
I had a thought. Where did it go?
Last week I started this very poetic blog post inspired by the bright pink blooms dancing on the branches of the ornamental cherry tree as the wind blew through them. I wrote a paragraph. Then my husband came home from work early and interrupted my train of thought. He took me out to dinner at Cloud 9, so I can’t really complain, but…
When I opened the post the next day to continue working on it. POOF! All my thoughts about where it was going were gone. Completely gone. I saved it for the second time and tried again yesterday. Still gone. I deleted the paragraph and sat staring at the screen for a while. Then I typed “I had a thought. Where did it go?”, saved the document, and walked away. Here I am this morning trying to find that thought again. I’m beginning to think maybe it just wasn’t all that important to me. Maybe, just maybe, I was trying to force it because it had been a while since I blogged anything substantial - or so it felt. If it was that important, it will come back to me. I know it will.
It had something to do with my dancing days, taking ballroom dance lessons, and wanting to go dancing… Still, no sparks to the memory.
Okay, letting it go…. Really, I am…. Here it goes…. But…. No, wait… Is that it? Maybe…. Sorry, not going to happen.
I know if I just let it go, it will either come back to me or a better idea around the same topic will emerge. Either way, the final product will be what I actually need to write. So it’s all good.
But, I will let it go… I really will.
So, I’m wondering, do you ever have an idea that you don’t get on paper when it strikes, and you lose it? If so, does it haunt you? Or do you shrug it off?
Still letting it go…
My appearance on Author’s Forum is now playing on in the Willamette Falls Television viewing area. Check the Willamette Falls Programming schedule to see when the show runs again if you live in the area. I’ve been told it will run at various times for approximately 4-6 weeks.
If you don’t live in the area, I’ll post the interview on the web soon. That is provided I’m happy with it. :) I’m waiting to receive the CD in the mail. I’ll post a notice when it’s ready for viewing.
This week Christina Katz talks about bravery in The Prosperous Writer. In particular she discusses the difference in bravery and bravado. As I read it, I kept thinking that sometimes people have to fake it until they find it because they don’t know what bravery feels like. If a person doesn’t know the difference in bravado and bravery, when they find bravery it’s a bit of a relief. When one is truly brave, one no longer needs to put up a brave front - bravado. Bravado takes a lot more energy than bravery.
I agree with her assessment that people who are truly brave are those who say “Yeah, it’s scary, but I’m doing it anyway.” This can come in any aspect of your life, so everyone has the opportunity to be brave. To me being truly brave is being who you are no matter who is sitting across the table from you. It’s embracing yourself with all your faults and never pretending you’re perfect. It’s looking in the mirror in the morning and asking yourself “How can I be a better me today?” It’s that moment when you look out at a crowd and you smile not because it’s expected but because you love where you’re standing. You love the energy you’re sharing with the crowd and you know that if you flub the speech, you can all laugh and move through it. True bravery is looking someone in the eye and telling them they mean the world to you or conversely looking someone in the eye and telling them in the nicest way possible they just aren’t bringing anything meaningful to your life. When you are brave enough to find, know, and accept yourself in all your glory, misery, and malaise, your authentic self can’t help but be brave and bravado disappears - or at least takes a nap. Bravery always starts with the self.
Christina asks “How did you find yours [bravery]?” In many ways, my bravery has waxed and waned my entire life. Periods of bravery lead me to pursue challenges and set goals. Periods of bravado forced me to put up a good front when my life was falling apart. Becoming reacquainted with my authentic self brought me full circle to bravery again. This hasn’t been a straight line process in any way. Sometimes bravery and bravado mixed together becoming indistinguishable from one another. Sometimes I felt brave only to realize later it was bravado. Sometimes bravado reminded me how to define bravery allowing me to be brave again. One of the bravest things I’ve ever done was to accept myself with all my complexities. That took more courage, in some ways, than allowing the world to see my authentic self because once I’d accepted myself - the good and the bad - I had no choice but to allow my authenticity to flow through my work and into the world. That’s when I realized that my writing often betrayed me by allowing slivers of my authentic self through to the world - the very me I was trying to convince the world didn’t exist. Those were the things that made me real and approachable. Those were the things that allowed me to love myself. Those were the things that made me unique in some ways but relatable in others. That’s a betrayal I can appreciate to the fullest.
So, am I brave? Today I feel brave. I don’t need your love in order to love myself. I don’t need your trust in order to know I’m trustworthy. I don’t need your acceptance in order to accept myself. I don’t need it, but I won’t turn it away. I can welcome love, trust and acceptance in my life. And, to me, that’s brave.
Tomorrow may be a different story, and I’ll be able to acknowledge that. And, that’s brave.
Bravery is authenticity and authenticity is bravery. So be authentic! Be brave!
Last month, a good friend wrote to me about her yearly “bad day”, the anniversary of a painful, life-changing event in her life. I also have an annual bad day created by an event that happened twenty years ago. I won’t say any more about hers except to say that our life-changing events were very different from one another but both involved betrayal. As my annual bad day approaches, I’m realizing I’m likely to spend it lounging on the couch. I’m having a minor knee surgery this week, so my activity will be restricted. It’s possible I’ll still be on painkillers. Maybe I’ll miss the day altogether in one of those days that don’t seem quite real due to a drugged out state.
I’ve managed to make my annual bad day more private over the years generally planning a way to spend the day either doing something that keeps me distracted all day or spending it alone. Planning a distracted day keeps bad memories at bay. Spending the day alone allows me to deal with anything that comes to the surface without the need to explain anything to anyone. Sometimes allowing memories and emotions to surface results in a new poem, essay, or short story, so it can be productive to a degree.
With time I’ve noticed the impact of my annual bad day has lessened. A few years I’ve even gotten by with just a general grumpiness or sadness that’s been largely unnoticed by the few people I’ve encountered. I swear every year I’m going to live it like any other day, but that never seems to happen. Some reminder crops up, and there is the memory taking over my mind, my body, my heart, and my soul.
I’ve heard of people who try to reclaim their annual bad day by doing something exciting or fun to change the memory. I tried this once, well maybe twice, but it didn’t change anything. And, it felt a little like celebrating something I didn’t want celebrated. So, I gave that idea up. Now, I just accept it for what it is - the anniversary of something painful.
I used to want to forget it entirely, but that desire has passed as well. This painful experience played a role in who I am today. If it hadn’t happened, would I have the compassion I have for others? Would I be someone entirely different? Would I have met the man who is now my husband? Would I have taken an entirely different path in life? On the other hand, would I have avoided hurting people I’ve hurt in my life? Would I have loved more freely and trusted more openly? Would I have been less fearful of letting people get close to me? Would that have been a better life? It doesn’t matter. This is the life I have, so I must embrace that it’s the experience life brought me. The best I can do is to try to learn from what hapened and use that experience to try to help other people.
What about you? Do you have an annual “bad” day? A day when you become so mired in a particularly painful and life-altering memory that you feel like you’ll smother before it’s over. If so, what do you do with that day? How do you survive it? How do you embrace it? How do you try to change it? Or do you fight it? Ignore it?
If you’re a writer, do you use the experience consciously, or even subconsciously, in your work? You might want to take a look at your work and see if you notice a pattern. This isn’t a bad thing. You may be using your experience to work through your issues or to try to help others or a combination of the two. I know my experience leaks into my work in many forms, and I’m okay with that.
So, as I see my annual bad day approaching, I wonder if this year perhaps I can make it a good day - or at least a little less bad than it has been in the past.
I vow to smile as many times as I possibly can on my bad day this year - genuine smiles. I will remember people who make me feel genuine happiness deep in my heart and soul. I will embrace the happy memories in my life. I will remember the little things that have touched my heart and soul in a positive way throughout my life. I will ask for hugs if I need them. I will take care of me. And, if a sad memory forces its way in, I’ll embrace it, hug it, and let it go with a smile. I will not beat myself up if I have a bad moment or two or three. This is my vow to love and accept myself in spite of my annual bad day and because of who I’ve become since the experience that created my annual bad day.
For those wishing I’d be more specific, sorry not this time. Maybe later.
And, maybe next year I’ll forget all about it… There’s always hope.
This week Christina wrote about experience in The Prosperous Writer.
She asked, “How did you get yours? How do you keep learning new things to expand and improve on what you already know?”
I’m going to approach this from a slightly different angle. Experience writing - aka practicing and polishing skill - is very important. That skill allows us take the life’s moments and use them to create the written works that inspire other people. That’s very important.
As writers though, we sometimes forget to experience life. We get so caught up in capturing the moment, reporting on it, and thinking how we can use it, we miss it. John Mayer has a line his song, Clarity that goes ”By the the time I recognize this moment, this moment will be gone…” Every time I hear this line it reminds me to stop thinking how I can use the moments of my life in my writing and just enjoy them. When I enjoy them fully, they are more memorable and in turn better inform my work.
Life experience is where all writing begins. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a letter to your best friend, writing a serial killer thriller, a coming of age novel, a poem, or simply updating your Facebook/My Space/Twitter or whatever status. Without life experience, there’s nothing to say. So when you get the chance to learn something new, take it. Don’t hesitate. You may fail at it or hate it, but if you don’t try, you’ll never have the experience.
A few years ago I took a motorcycle class at my husband’s insistence. He’d recently started riding and wouldn’t let me ride on the motorcycle with him until I took the class. I had no desire to learn to ride a motorcycle, but I figured if I got nothing else out of it, it might help me with my writing at some point. I took the class. The written part was a breeze. From the moment I sat on the bike, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t keep my mind on the process. I understood the techniques, but I was bored. I kept daydreaming. Focus is important when you’re on a motorcycle especially when you’re learning. At some point on the first morning I managed to “lay the bike down”. I received a few cuts and bruises but nothing serious. I insisted on getting right back on the motorcycle because I knew if I didn’t I never would. I finished the class, but I failed. The instructor said that while my scores on the final technique test would’ve barely passed me, the teaching team thought I demonstrated too much hesitancy after my accident. He encouraged me to retake the class saying he thought I’d pass it easily the second time through. I thanked him and even said maybe, but I knew I wouldn’t be back. I just didn’t enjoy it enough to concentrate on the techniques. I’m glad I took the class though. I learned how it felt. I learned I didn’t like it. And, I learned enough to write about a character riding a motorcycle in a short story.
Last year I learned how to make a glass paperweight. Granted it was a one project “class” and the instructor did much of the work, but I learned a lot, and I really enjoyed it. This year I hope to go back and experience the process of making a vase - that actually involves blowing the glass. I still don’t know how I’ll use the experience in my work, but I’ve learned to always take advantage of the opportunities to learn new things because I never know when they’ll be useful for a character.
I doubt I’ll ever go as far as writers like David Morrell, who actually took survival training to better inform his thrillers, but then again I don’t write that kind of book. There are many things I’d like to learn and/or experience hands-on, but there are many others I have no desire to know anything more than I can read about in a book.
Experience in life as well as experience with different types of writing are both important to keep writing fresh and alive. When people open themselves up to all the experiences before them, they’ll find life gives to them and inspiration comes almost without effort.
Experience life to its fullest, the good and the bad, because you never know what experience is going to inspire you to write the best thing you’ve ever written.
Experience is life and life is experience. Embrace it!
In Issue 13 of The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz discussed creativity and asked what creativity means to her readers.
What does creativity mean to me?
Okay, I thought this one would be easy, but I’ve drawn a complete blank every time I’ve started to write it the past few days. Now, that’s not very creative.
Creativity makes us stop and think. It gives us a different perspective on an old topic. It creates an image we can’t deny or replace. Artists are always creating new ways to present old ideas, and this is creativity. I think however creativity is much more than that. It’s that moment when the words, the image, the concept becomes so clear there’s no mistaking it for something else. And, one doesn’t have to be an artist to be creative. It can be as simple as a sentence in an email if we’re open to seeing it. Creativity comes in many forms and from everyone at some time or the other.
Sometimes I feel the most creative when I go to the kitchen and discover that we don’t have all the ingredients to make something. In that moment, looking through the pantry and the refrigerator to find alternatives sparks my creative juices. And, sometimes I discover putting things together that are seemingly incompatible can result in some wonderful flavors. Sometimes, it fails miserably, but that’s just part of the creative process.
As a fiction writer and a poet, I embrace creativity on a daily basis. Often stringing together the words to create the image in my mind doesn’t feel particularly creative. Maybe this comes from exercising those muscles so often I forget that creativity is involved. It becomes rote. And, that’s a way to kill creativity because I lose sight of what makes the work live in my reader’s imagination. As with cooking, sometimes writing works best when we bring together ideas and concepts we haven’t considered combining before. This brings a new approach and potentially new insight. And sometimes creativity fails, but one never knows without trying. So creativity is experimenting, is trying new combinations, is exploring new ideas.
Being creative for creativity’s sake in a work of fiction, or sometimes even poetry, makes the work flowery and sometimes stilted resulting in the work being beautifully written but not transformative.
As a writer I view creativity as playing with words to create just the right image and just the emotion at any given time. There’s a delicate balance between allowing creativity to flow and directing the flow in the right direction with skill.