Looking for That Toy Radio

My wife sent me to the basement last week with a specific mission: find the Fischer-Price musical radio that plays “Picnic Time for Teddy Bears” that both of our children listened to when they were young. Yes, she was trying to find it for the grandson.

I descended into a chamber piled with almost a quarter-century of stuff. I eventually found the radio in a box on a shelf in an area lined with storage shelves and boxes (and no, I didn’t find it in the first box; I found it in the ninth box). But before I tackled the storage shelves, I thought I would find it where virtually all of the toys from our two sons’ childhoods are kept – under the basement stairs.

It was an area that had not been disturbed for 12 years or more. I didn’t find dust bunnies; I found dust Godzillas.

Going through the boxes of old toys was fun, and a lot of the toys, particularly the Fischer-Price play sets, are in really good condition. (“Stop playing with the Fischer-Price farm and find that radio.” “I’m not playing with the Fischer-Price farm; I’m playing with the Fischer-Price airport.”)

Stacked with the boxes of old toys was an unmarked box. I looked inside, and found two side-by-side stacks of documents – speeches and articles I had written up to the mid-1980s, back in those pre-historic days before desktop computers. Speeches typed on a typewriter. Some of the very first speeches I had written when we lived in Houston. Speeches about oil and issues and United Way campaigns and chemicals and education and agriculture.

Each speech tells two stories: the story of the speech itself and the audience it was given to, and the story of the creation of the speech. For some, I could only remember having written them. For others, however, I could remember all the details – sitting with the speaker, research, working with executive secretaries, drafting outlines, fighting with the Law or HR department over sections and wording, what happened when the speech was given, problems I had writing them and rewriting them, the times the speaker was a joy to work with and the times when the speaker wasn’t.

Looking through those speeches was looking through a window to the time when I was 25 to 35 years old. It’s like looking at old family photographs.

And I was reminded of why I write.

I write to earn a living. Or at least writing contributes to my earning a living.

I write to preserve memory, even if the memory will last no longer than my own lifetime.

I write to make sense of the world, and the world desperately needs much making sense of, even if it’s only for me.

I write to connect to others, to use the words to create relationships and build community.

I write to express the emotion I often cannot express though speech and tears and laughter.

I write to tell a story, to help others see what I see, to see what others see.

I write because writing is an act of creation, and it moves me closer to the Creator because every story has an “in the beginning.”

I write to encourage, because it is the gift I’m expected to give.

I write to understand, because reading alone is not sufficient to achieve understanding.

I write as a kind of prayer, and I write as a kind of worship.

I write to make myself vulnerable, and never am I weaker than when I allow others to read my writing.

I write because it is what has been put into my heart.


We’ve come to the final chapters and the grand finale of the discussion of Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. Laura Boggess has been leading the discussion over at The High Calling Blogs. Cameron’s book has been a good read, and it’s been a good way – a disciplined way – to think about why I write. And I’ve concluded that writing is less of a right – and much more of a privilege and a responsibility.

Related:

What I Should Be Writing by L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone.

Choices and Voices by Nancy Kourmoulis at Treasures of Darkness.

A Different Story by Lyla Lindquist at Inside Out.

A Contract for a Life of Writing Bliss by Erin at Filling My Patch of Sky.

High Stakes by Cassandra Frear at The Moonboat Cafe.

I Don't Believe in ESP, But...

Actually, there’s no “but.” I don’t believe in ESP. Period.

In The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, Julia Cameron has a chapter on ESP, and includes a number of other concepts as well, like reincarnation, psychic phenomena and something called “the Akashic Records.” She wasn’t advocating for any of these things; but there was more than a little head nod that something like these things can happen to writers.

I suppose I’m talking about something similar when I say imagination and inspiration.

For me, ideas for writing come from everywhere. Perhaps a better way to say that is that ideas come from everything. I once watched a PBS documentary, and went on to write a speech that changed the course of a company (it was a speech for someone else). I mentioned last week about how a song whose words I couldn’t translate (I don’t speak Italian) started a chain of ideas that ended up as two manuscripts. I drafted a blog post just this past week that started because I mentally focused on a corner of the building I work in (it wasn’t the corner, but the collection of offices that had been in that corner).

But it’s more than ideas, and I think I understand what Cameron is talking about when she talks about ESP. It’s not so much some psychic power as it is seeing the connections – the “connectedness” of things. I can look at a group of what seems to be totally different and unrelated things – and piece together how their connected. And my mind often works faster than my mouth can articulate the connections. That’s especially true for ideas and events. I look at ideas and read and see things on TV or at the movies and skim a story in the Wall Street Journal and then a blog post and see two interesting Twitter links and an interesting line in a novel and then – wham – something happens.

I don’t know why I think this way, but I do. It’s not ESP. It simply may be how something seen leads to something imagined and then creativity goes to work.


Over at The High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess has been leading a discussion of Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. Last week’s discussion was about sound, “writing but” and driving. This week’s discussion is about roots, ESP and cheap tricks.

Related:

On the Table Where I Write by L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone.

ESP? by Nancy Kourmoulis at Treasures of Darkness.

Writing Rooted in Life by Charity Singleton at Wide Open Spaces.

Cheap Tricks by Cassandra Frear at Moonboat Cafe.

Writing, Music and Airplanes to San Francisco

I was on a plane from St. Louis to San Francisco, to attend a conference. It was a Friday, if I recall correctly, in mid-October of 2002. I checked the in-flight music listings, and was skimming through the selections when I heard a voice that stopped me cold. The voice belonged to Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis, and it was unbelievably beautiful.

I was staying in downtown San Francisco, and on my way to Kan’s Chinese restaurant in Chinatown (yes, I’d eaten there before) I stopped at a Border’s on the off-chance they might have the CD I had listened to on the plane. The CD section was on the top floor, and as the escalator deposited me there I was immediately confronted with a store display for – I am not making this up – the very same CD by Mario Frangoulis I had listened to on the plane. (Since then, my wife and I have gotten to hear him live in concert at the Sheldon Theater in St. Louis – and he is just as good live as he is recorded.)

The CD, entitled “Sometimes I Dream,” includes “Nights in White Satin” (sung with Justin Hayward) and “Buongiorno Principessa,” the film score for the movie “Life is Beautiful” which won an Academy Award a few years back for best foreign language film. (I wouldn’t see it when it was first released because it was about the Holocaust, but my wife made me watch it at home one night and I cried like a baby at the wonder of it.)

Another song on the CD is called “Luna Rossa,” and it is a lively, Latin-beat kind of song sung in Italian so I can’t tell you what it’s about except I would guess it’s a love song. But when I first heard it on that airplane ride (and every time I’ve heard it since), for some weird reason it put an image in my head – the image of a priest dancing on a beach at night. The more closely I examined the image, I realized that it was an Episcopal priest who was dancing (how I determined that I’ll never know). And the priest was leading a conga line – on the beach. And a young woman was part of that dancing line.

I didn’t do anything with that image, but it came back every time I listened to the CD. Late one night, lying in bed and unable to sleep, I began to frame a story about the image. Over the next two years, the story grew and changed and morphed and the dancing-on-the-beach bit disappeared and so did Italy. But the story stayed in my head for two full years, until one day I decided to put a small piece of it on paper or, more precisely, on the computer screen. I listened to the CD as I wrote. One day, I looked up, and I had a manuscript. In the meantime, I had bought another of his CDs, and yes, you guessed it, one manuscript had become two, with six very extended “treatments” for related manuscripts behind it.

I’ve alluded to a different manuscript from time to time and even posted a small piece of it on this blog. I’m not using Mario Frangoulis for this one; instead, I’ve been listening to Jim Brickman’s “From the Heart.” Brickman’s music and the words I’ve written have become forever connected in my head, to the point where I can’t think of one without the other. Earlier this year, my wife and I heard Brickman in concert, and when he played the song “Bittersweet” from that CD, I knew exactly which scene it was in my manuscript.

Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, would not be surprised by any of this. “The conscious use of sound in our writing – like a great sound track in a film – cues the unconscious,” she says. “It brings a host of associations that are more subtly and acutely felt than visual images alone. Sound makes our writing ‘sound’ in the many senses of the word.”

I think I’ve joined the conga line with that priest.


Over at The High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess has been leading Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. Last week, the discussion was about making it, honesty and vulnerability. Last week’s discussion was about footwork, practice and containment. This week’s discussion is about sound, “writing but” and driving.

Related:

Dancing on Spec by L.L. Barkat at Love Notes to Yahweh.
Writing and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever by Deidra at Jumping Tandem.

Music Everywhere by Nancy Kourmoulis at Treasures of Darkness.

The Real Reason for Highway Rest Stops by Marilyn at As Good A Day As Any.

Sound by Cassandra Frear at Moonboat Cafe.

The Practice of Writing

I live a life that’s saturated in words.

At work, a large part of what I do is to write. I write articles, posts for the company blog, posts for the employee blog, presentations, plans, speeches.

Words.

Outside of work, I have this blog, occasional guests posts on other blogs, a regularly scheduled feature over at Christian Manifesto, scheduled posts for The High Calling Blogs, the co-editing of TweetSpeak Poetry’s jams on Twitter, and comments on others’ blogs.

Words.

And then there’s the “novel project” or I should say “novel projects” because there are approximately three going on in my head – interior conversations, scenes, plots and somehow I’m keeping them separate. I hope.

Lots of words.

And I haven’t even started on the reading of words.

I love all of this. Every bit.

What all this writing of words has forced me to do is be disciplined. I have deadlines at work and self-imposed deadlines for the writing outside of work.

One particular piece of writing has also allowed me to see what I do in a different way. The editing of the “Twitter poems” at TweetSpeak Poetry is among the most difficult things I’ve done. You assemble 400 or 500 tweets, sometimes more, depending upon the number of participants. You then arrange them by where they “touch” each other – where one tweeted line is a response or amplification or transition from another. Participants add their lines in different ways – some jump right in with an almost stream of consciousness/word association approach and others take time to ponder and shape. And sometimes participants do both.

So the words and lines have to be teased and coaxed and studied and understood and associated. Sometimes the fit is automatically perfect; sometimes the fit has to be “edited.” And sometimes I have to add lines and words to bring some coherence to a poem.

It’s a fascinating exercise. It is also a kind of practice with words, ideas and themes.

In The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, Julia Cameron says that writing rewards practice – and I would add that practice rewards writing. “”Writing rewards attention,” she says. “Writing…remains a gateway to greater mystery, a way to touch something greater than ourself. Writing is an act of cherishing. It is an act of love.”

That’s it, exactly.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about making it, honesty and vulnerability. This week‘s discussion is about footwork, practice and containment.

Related:

Julia Found Words for Me by L.L. Barkat.

Savoring Life by Nancy Kourmoulis.

Cassandra Frear’s Like Water on a Stone.

Sweeping by Marilyn.

Voice: Get Over It

“A writing voice is not a collection of ticks and tricks,” says Julia Cameron in The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. “A writing voice is a vehicle for communication. The individuality of a voice emerges not by falling in love with your own facility but by learning to move past it. Too much cleverness gets in the way of real writing and real thought.”

There it is. Voice.

And some good advice to get over it.

“Voice” has become something of a holy grail for writers, much like “platform” has become a holy grail for publishers. Writers have to have a distinct voice, an individual voice and (above all else) a marketable voice. And we don’t really know how to define it. Is it style? Is it verve? Is it like Hemingway or Steinbeck or Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor? The answer is yes, but that’s not very helpful. And while we can’t really define it, we “know it when we see it.”

When it comes to my own writing, I don’t pay attention to voice. Perhaps I should. But I don’t. I’ve never paid much attention to voice. I’ve heard about it, of course, and a lot. I’ve been told about it. People have even told me what mine is.

In college, all history courses required to use “blue books,” light blue paper booklets for writing answers to essay questions. My first essay test in U.S. history came back from the grader with this note: “Nice essay.” I remember my exact reaction. I didn’t immediately analyze what it was that had prompted her remark. No, I thought something far more mundane. “She’s so relieved that there’s an occasional essay that’s legible and coherent that she’ll say nice things and go easy with the grade.” OK, so I was a bit mercenary (look, I was a college student who needed to pass this required course).

My first Introduction to News Reporting assignment came back with “not bad for a cub” scrawled across the top. That was the first and only time this particular teacher made a comment like that on one of my assignments. No explanation; the grade, if I recall, was a B+. But I was thrilled that he liked it – he was one tough grader and would drive 70 percent of the class to drop the course before mid-term.

The next (and one of the last) comments like this I can recall happened in 1983. I had been in a new job at work for several months when my boss unexpectedly said one day, “I like your writing style.” And then he went on to describe it. I was surprised and – naturally – flattered. But I hadn’t really thought it before then. And I didn’t think much about it after that. I nodded and went on.

I don’t think voice is something that can be taught or learned. It’s something you’re born with, and something that’s shaped by your life experiences. That means that, for each of us, it’s different. We can teach and study the mechanics of writing, but no one can teach “voice.”

For writers, that’s like someone trying to teach us “soul.” Voice, like soul, belongs to each of us, and for each of us, it’s different. Julia Cameron’s right: just move past it.


Over at The High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess has been leading Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. Last week, the discussion was about making it, honesty and vulnerability. This week’s discussion is about dailiness, voice and form versus formula.

Related:

Stuck by Nancy Kourmoulis.

An Accidental Post While Watering the Garden by L.L. Barkat.

Cassandra Frear's Dailiness.

Finding Your Writing Voice on Twitter by L.L. Barkat for The High Calling Blogs.

Telling It True

Once, many years ago, I was asked by a reporter if I had ever lied for the company I then worked for. Most of my career has been spent in public affairs or public relations, and given what many think of as public relations, the question was understandable.

I could truthfully answer no. I had not then, nor have I ever, lied for a company I worked for or a client I’ve represented. First, my faith says it’s not an option. Second are the general ethical considerations. And third, the fact is that your credibility and reputation are all you have when you’re in PR. Blow that once, and you’ve blown it forever. And the field is littered with examples.

What the reporter didn’t ask, however, was if I had ever been asked to lie. Now that would have been an interesting, and complicated, answer. No one has ever asked me to "Please lie about this." But I have heard "Don't bring that up," "There's a problem there," "Tell them not to ask that question," or some other variation. I've never been directly asked to lie, but I have been asked not to tell the story -- the whole story.

This week, I was reminded of that reporter’s question so many years ago when I was reading Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. She has a chapter on honesty in writing, and while she never mentions public relations, the same principles apply.

“The emotional courage of an artist counts for a lot with me,” she writes. “I can live with the rough edges, with an occasional wince as something cuts too close to the bone. What I do not want to live with is writing that is false, slick, or processed like the faux marble that is used to tone up nouveau riche hotels.

“There is something about the truth – like something about a great plain pine table – that has a beauty and clarity that shine for me beyond the frequent artifice of High Art.”

When I write – no matter if it’s for work or for myself – I’m mostly concerned with telling the story. Readers (or listeners, if it’s a speech) can usually tell whether a story is true or not – and I mean “true” in the sense of resonating with human experience. People may or may not know if a story is factually correct, but they usually know if it’s true to what they know and understand.

A good example of this is the stories told by Billy Coffey. I read his stories, and I can’t tell you they are factually correct, because I don’t personally know the people he writes about. But I can tell you that his stories are profoundly true, because I recognize them from what I know and understand about people. Billy doesn’t write like “faux marble;” he writes like that great plain pine table, straight from the heart.

That, to me, is what honesty is writing is about. It’s not only the story you’re trying to tell. It’s also telling it true, from the heart, allowing it to tell itself.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about credibility, place and happiness. This week’s discussion is about making it, honesty and vulnerability.

Related:

No Matter What by Nancy Kourmoulis.

Cassandra Frear's The Edge of Glory.

Sandal-Walls by Monica Sharman.

Jessica McGuire's Pink Elephant.

Writing in Place, Writing to Place

Julia Cameron, in The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, talks about the importance of “placing” a piece of writing in its context, that “placing” is one of the things that makes a piece of writing real to a reader.

One of the writing exercises in the book is to list every place you have ever lived, and then to select one and write as if you are there in the present tense. For me, developing the list turned out to be surprisingly easy, and rather than list all 16 places I’ve lived, I’ve grouped them by city:

New Orleans, Louisiana (four in 18 years)
Jacksonville, Florida (one in 15 months)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana (four in four years)
Beaumont, Texas (two in nine months)
Houston, Texas (three in four years)
St. Louis, Missouri (three in 31 years)

Two places on that list have had the most impact on me as a person and a writer. It’s no surprise – they are the two places I lived the longest – the house in suburban New Orleans where I lived from age 4 to almost 18, and the house I’ve lived in St. Louis since 1986. Not counting the three earliest homes (age 4 and under), I have been writing in all of the other 13 places, not to mention various hotel rooms, beaches, airplanes, airport gate waiting areas, parking lots, restaurants and just about everywhere else I might have access to computer or pen and paper.

The place I chose to “be” and write in the present tense is my college freshman dorm room, the day I arrived at college.

It is Sept. 14, 1969, and I have just turned 18. I drive from my home in the western suburbs of New Orleans to LSU in Baton Rouge. I am driving my graduation present – a 1970 candy-apple-red Ford Maverick (the 1970 models were out in mid-1969). It is packed with everything important for me to have in college – clothes, books, sheets and pillows, personal stuff, and a black-and-white portable television. I arrive at my dorm, check in to get the key to room 114, and unload my car.

The room is at the end of a hallway, with a 14-foot ceiling and pale green walls. With two closets, two metal-frame beds and two metal desks, the room is a mirror image of itself. With no roommate yet in evidence, I choose a side and plop my stuff on the bed. I stick my head in the bathroom down the hall, with its six stalls and six shower heads in a communal shower. I finish unloading the car and park in the designated area for students.

In my room, I’m unpacking when I’m visited by an upperclassman who urges me to sign up for fraternity rush. I decide not to, but this meeting will turn out to be a crucial event – in a few months I will pledge this fraternity and my life will change dramatically. He leaves; I glance at my watch and realize I have to run to make an advanced placement test in math, followed by one in how to use the library (“Books and Libraries,” which students shortened to “Books and Berries”).

I finish the tests, check my room (still no roommate) and then walk to the student union to eat dinner. I’ve been in the union building many times before – any time I visit LSU I go to the union and the bookstore. I notice a lot of other solitary freshmen doing the same thing I am – eating by themselves and looking rather overwhelmed. Returning to my room, I find my roommate and his parents have arrived and are unpacking. He has a lot more stuff than I do.

I turn out to be fortunate indeed – my roommate is a great guy, a walk-on for the freshman football team (so he’s big). He belies the stereotyped football player image because he’s smart, too.

We talk late into the night. Sharing our backgrounds and family information, what we’ll be studying, what we like and don’t like. Even though he’s from a small town and I’m from the big city, he turns out to be far more worldly and sophisticated than I am.

We will get to be very good friends this year. Many months from now, he will hand me a glass of cheap wine to drink while I’m struggling to write a paper on Gothic architecture in France, and I will ace the paper.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about connection, being an open channel and integrating. This week’s discussion is about credibility, place and happiness.

Related:

L.L. Barkat's Happiness Beyond Writing.

Nancy Kourmoulis' Makin' A List.

What Were We Waiting For? by Marilyn Yocum.

Melo's Missed the Boat.

Cassandra Frear's A Page at a Time.

Because It Matters

Grant’s Trail, a biking-walking-jogging-rollerblading trail in St. Louis some eight miles long, begins about a mile-and-a-half from my house. It’s a converted railroad track bed, and I’ve been biking it for years now. Counting the round trip and an occasional side meander, it’s a good 20-mile ride.

Just before the trail begins, there’s a brick apartment complex of some 40 to 50 units in five or six buildings. Rather nondescript, it’s neither at the luxury end of residential living nor the housing-of-last-resort end. Nondescript, and rather anonymous, sufficiently describes it.

Each time I’d go to Grant’s Trail, I’d bike past the complex, barely giving it a thought except to watch for doors suddenly opening from cars parked on the street (bikers have to watch for these things). But it wasn’t the kind of building or complex that you’d pay much attention to.

Until January of 2007.

One cold, icy day (I remember because we eventually lost power from the ice coating the trees), police made a startling discovery. Inside one of the apartments was a 13-year-old boy, kidnapped a few days before as he rode his bike home from school in rural Franklin County, near St. Louis. And with him was a 15-year old boy, Shawn Hornbeck, kidnapped when he was 11. The good news was that both boys had been found alive. The bad news was what they had endured, one during a short few days and the other for several years. Police arrested Michael Devlin, 41 at the time. He later pleaded guilty and is now in prison.

The story became international news. During the next few weeks, news media from all over the United States and several other countries converged on the complex, the local pizza parlor where Devlin worked, his family’s home in neighboring Webster Groves, the police department and everywhere else in our suburban St. Louis municipality of Kirkwood.

The news cycle eventually turned and went on to other things. But I can’t ride or drive by that apartment complex now without thinking about Michael Devlin and those two boys. What happened there horrified all of us who live in Kirkwood and anyone who read or learned about the story.

For me, the horror went deeper. I don’t really understand why it did – there’s nothing repressed or anything that happened to me when I was young that would trigger such a reaction. But I was profoundly affected.

Many people asked why or how. Why didn’t the older boy try to escape when he had so many opportunities? How did neighbors ignore screams coming from the apartment? Why did the police ignore tips? Why didn’t Devlin’s family question some of his odd behaviors?

I didn’t ask how or why. I understood. I knew the answers to all the questions. Instead, I focused on the shock, the fear, the horror, the desolation, the pain, the hopelessness, the desire to survive that became part of these boys’ experiences.

I finally knew what I had to do to deal with it. I wrote it out. More than 44,000 words poured out of me until I knew it was time to stop. I wrote it as fiction, far removed from Kirkwood and the events of February 2007. Anyone reading this manuscript wouldn’t recognize anything of what actually happened.

In The Right to Write, author Julia Cameron says that “when we commit our thoughts to paper, we send a strong and clear message that what we are writing about and whom we are writing to matters.”

In my head and in my heart, I became a conduit, what Cameron refers to as “become a channel.” I don’t understand why this happened, but it did. I’ve shown the manuscript to no one. No one else has read it, and it’s likely no one ever will.

But it mattered.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about loneliness, writing as witness and where a writer writes. This week's discussion is about connection, being an open channel, and integrating.

Related:

L.L. Barkat's Excuse Me, I'm WRITE-ing.

How a Life Makes Sense by Nancy Kourmoulis.

Melo's The Little Things.

Cassandra Frear's The River.

Julia Says by Nancy Rosback.

Monica Sharman's Writing, Prayer, Confession.

The Writing Heart Is Not a Lonely Hunter

In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron talks about loneliness, and the common perception that writing is an inherently lonely occupation. And yet, she says, this is not her own experience, and she feels like something of a heretic: “So much has been written about the loneliness of the writer’s lot that it feels like heresy to report the truth as I know it: in my experience, not writing is a lonely business. The minute I let myself write, everything falls into balance.”

She could be describing my own experience as well.

It doesn’t matter what I write. It could a short story, a poem, a speech, a blog post, a letter, work on a novel, or a news story, it really doesn’t matter. I never write alone. And it’s been that way as long as I can remember.

There may not be another person in the room, but that doesn’t mean I’m alone. And that’s because when I’m writing, I’m inside a character’s head or the middle of a scene; between the lines of a poem pulling out what will be coming; thinking about the people who may be reading a blog post or article; or, if I’m writing a speech for someone, that person is figuratively sitting on my shoulder so I can hear the voice, how it sounds, what it says well and what it mispronounces, and what will communicate with listeners.

I have interior conversations with all of these people and scenes. I play with words and silently yell at them when they don’t work or don’t string together like they should. I puzzle of where a new character suddenly erupted from. I watch a scene in a story unfold, and I don’t think of myself as the director but more as one of the actors in the scene.

I didn’t say it wasn’t weird; all I said was that I don’t feel lonely.

Frustrated, out of sorts, short-tempered when I can’t write? Absolutely. And also lonely.

But lonely when I write? Never. For a writer, it's not writing that's one of the heights of loneliness.

(And yes, my apologies to Carson McCullers for adapting the title of her novel for this blog post.)

Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about going deeper in your writing. This week’s discussion is about loneliness, writing as witness and where a writer writes.

Related:

Love.Letters by Nancy at Poems and Prayers.

Out of Sorts by Nancy Kourmoulis.

Lyla Lindquist's A Little Help from Mr. Fusion.

Day 21: Right Day, Right Time by Melo.

Erin Straza's Let's Be Brave.

Morning Pages by Cassandra Frear.

Witness by Laura Boggess.

An Artist's Date

Cars need gasoline and cell phones need charging. Writers need fuel, too.

In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron makes the case for what she calls “The Artist’s Date,” a once-a-week “solitary expedition to something festive that interests us.” It could be anything – a museum, a walk in the woods, a festival in a park, a play, a concert, literally anything that you find interesting that will provide a good dose of “writerly upkeep.” (And you’re supposed to do this alone.)

I have three typical venues for an “Artist’s Date,” but only one of them is at least weekly.

The first is the art museum. St. Louis has a nice one, and actually one that has a larger and deeper collection than you might expect, the result of the city’s late 19th and early 20th century heyday and the various bequests of wealthy individuals and companies over the years. My favorites are the 19th century and 20th century American rooms, with the “democracy series” by George Caleb Bingham and the Winslow Homers and Thomas Hart Bentons. I love to stand and study the Bingham paintings; I actually have a framed print of “Stump Speaking” in my office. But when I go to the art museum, my wife is with me, and we explore the place together.

Once a year, when we’re making our pilgrimages to Chicago, we almost always find our way to the Art Institute. I can get lost in the gift shop, much less the collection. But whether it’s the smaller museum in St. Louis or the colossus in Chicago, the art is a definite stimulant, rich fuel and extensive “writerly upkeep” for me.

So art is one kind of “Artist Dates” for me. Another is the Shaw Nature Reserve, what we St. Louisans will always call the Arboretum, 40 or so miles west of St. Louis. It’s 800 acres of woods, trails, prairies and gardens. When my sons were little, they often accompanied me on hikes. Now, it’s usually just me, although my oldest (now 30) did come with me the last time I went. I’ll usually hike to the Meramec River, and then just sit, listening to the water current and the distant cows on the bluffs on the other side. It’s an emptying out for me, becoming a speck in the geography and just listening.


The third “Artist’s Date” for me is biking. My typical ride is either a 20-mile ride on Grant’s Trail in south and southwest St. Louis, or a 30-mile ride that involves riding east through inner suburbs and the city to the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. (I’ve done longer rides, but these are my usual ones.) You have to concentrate on automobile traffic (and drivers using their cell phones are oblivious to everything), but there are stretches of paved trails and dedicated bike lanes where it’s easier. And then the view from the bluff – you can see for miles up river, down river and across to Illinois.

Biking clears my head and, oddly, opens my heart. And I find I do some of my best “writing” on a bicycle.

Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about going deeper in your writing. This week's discussion is on artists' dates.

Related:

Nancy Rosback’s “The right to write and buying work.”

Monica Sharman's "Sketching."

"Enter the Body" by Nancy Kourmoulis.

Cassandra Frear's "Walking and Writing."

Marilyn's "You Never Take Me Anywhere Anymore."

Melissa's "Slip, Slipping Away."

L.L. Barkat's "Finding Your Words."


Painting: Stump Speaking (1853-1854) by George Caleb Bingham; St. Louis Art Museum.

Writing and Reading as Private Acts

I’ve been blogging here for more than a year, and I'm still often surprised to see what posts or articles resonate with people, and what don’t. There have been poems that evoked a major response, and ones that didn’t. There have been posts that received all kinds of comments, and those that didn’t. With very few exceptions, I still can’t predict which will be which.

One exception: if I post a photo of my new grandson, I’ll get a lot of comments. My wife says this is a cheap way to drive traffic, and I should be ashamed. (I’m not.)

But if I look at the posts with the most comments, they do have one thing in common – they tend to lean to the specific and the personal. This isn’t true only for my posts, and there’s a reason why.

In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron says that “it is a great paradox that the more personal, focused and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.” Cameron doesn’t go into great detail as to why, but I think we all know it anyway: the more personal and specific, the more the writer increases his or her own vulnerability – and it’s that sense of vulnerability that strikes a chord deep within us. In truly great writing, the pretense is gone, the public face has disappeared, and what we see is the exposed human being.

And in that exposed human being, we see ourselves.

We typically read in an intensely private way, regardless of where we’re doing the reading. We connect to the written word in a private way, and we can laugh, cry, cheer, cringe and be offended without anyone around us knowing our feelings. And this works regardless of the form in which we’re reading – ebook, hardback or paperback book, magazine newspaper, brochure – it’s doesn’t really matter.

The written word communicates in a very private and personal way, and the more private and personal the writing (the skill itself is assumed here), the more the words speak to us as if they were our own, reflecting our own experience.

Explanatory Note on 2 Poems

I posted two poems last week – “The Silence Beneath the Trees” and “Country Store” – that prompted some comments on the blog posts and even a few emails. The main question was – what are these a part of? What’s the back story?

The simple answer is that I’m using poetry to help frame a novel. The first draft of the novel is done, and I’m going through a major rewrite, using poetry to help me do that. I didn’t intend to confuse or tease (and I think I did that in some cases). I’ll be talking more about this in future weeks, and posting some additional poems related to the story, with more background provided. But thank you for the comments – they’ve been especially helpful, including the ones that talked about being “chilled” to read "The Silence Beneath the Trees."

Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about “nurturing our writer.” This week's discussion is about "going deeper."

Related:

Monica Sharman's "Details, Details."

Nancy Rosback's "Just Write" at Poems and Prayers.

"The Poetry That Surrounds Us"

In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron describes writing as a conversation, one that “offers a different and more engaging way to look at things.” She then quotes poet James Nove, who says all of us have this “poetic vision” if we would just “give ourselves permission to see the poetry that surrounds us.”

The question I ask, even if Nove and Cameron don’t, is what is this poetry that surrounds us? Or asked another way, could God speak in poetry? I don’t mean “could God speak through the poetry that people write or have written in the past.” I do mean something else: is there a poetry that is intrinsic to creation, a rhyme, a meter, a narrative that speaks to all of us, whether we hear it or not (or choose to hear it or not)?

And if the answer to that question is yes, could what we know as poetry be a reflection of that “divine poetry,” even if a pale and fragile one?

The first poetry I can remember reading or having read to me was children’s rhymes. The first poetry I can recall reading and writing about in school was Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. I can remember having to discover Masters on my own; my teacher for American literature believed Jacqueline Susann had written the great American novel with The Valley of the Dolls, published the summer before my junior-level course.

In college, two basic literature courses were required for everyone during the sophomore year, English 55 and 56, which was mostly American literature. How many millions of students had to write papers on “Young Goodman Brown” and “Barn Burning?” How many times did I have to proof papers written on those two stories for fraternity brothers? English majors, however, didn’t take English 55 and 56; they took 51 and 52, the literature of Britain. For those students boneheaded enough, they could substitute 51 and 52 for 55 and 56. Nobody did, especially not journalism majors who had to contend with a professor for introductory journalism (taken the same time as the English courses) who handed out automatic Fs like peppermints.

Only one person I knew actually chose to take British literature.

Me.

So instead of “Barn Burning,” I met Beowulf and Chaucer; Shakespeare and Milton; the great essayists of the 18th century; Wordsworth, Keats Shelley and Coleridge; Tennyson; Hardy and Housman; and Eliot. It’s only now that I realize that the lion’s share of what I learned in those two courses was poetry. And I still have the textbooks we used – the two-volume set of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.

More than a decade later, I started reading the American poets, because I was on the speechwriting team at work and it was actually something smart to do – read and study poetry so that you could apply and adapt the rhythm, meter and flow to speeches. (No one does this anymore.) (That’s why so few speeches today are memorable.)

And then, last year, I started writing poetry. I’m not sure why; I’d been reading contemporary poets for some time. I think it has something to do with growing older, at least for me. Some of what I’ve done is bad, and some is – not bad. But I’m learning how to be better at it, and I’m learning some other things, too.

To write poetry is to believe in the symphony of life, life individual and life collective.

To write poetry is to believe in the underlying order of all creation, and to believe that the order can be understood.

To write poetry is an affirmation of faith.

To write poetry is, as Julia Cameron says, to listen with the heart.

And to listen to the poetry that surrounds us.

Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about the time lie (as in, you never can find the time to write). This week's discussion is about inviting the muse to tea.

Related:

In February, I wrote a post here called “In Defense of Poetry.”

L.L. Barkat's "Julia Cameron Meets ProBLogger."

Cassandra Frear's "Living With My Writer."

"Mood Altering" by Nancy Russell Kourmoulis.

Nancy Rosback's "Thoughts and Dreams."

"Playtime: are you doing what you love?" by Tess at Anchors and Masts.

Monica Sharman's "The Sincerity of Pretense."

The Right to Write: Laying Track

Julia Cameron in The Right to Write talks of “laying track” – getting the words, and getting them all out, before going back to edit and revise. (In May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, short story writer and soon-to-be-published novelist Benjamin Percy has a good article entitled “Home Improvement,” about how revision can also and often does function as major renovation; alas, the article is available only in the print edition.)

I like the idea of getting it all out, and then going back to revise. Revising during the original drafting process is often futile, and it’s been my experience that most writing – a story, a poem, an article, an essay – benefits more from getting the words out first, followed by editing and revising.

And then there are speeches. Or at least the way I write speeches.

I have generally written speeches in the same way since I started writing them, which was, well, let’s just say I was writing speeches before we had desktop computers or laptops and word processing software.

But early on I fell into a pattern, and once I began to recognize it, I formalized it. And it went (and it still goes) something like this.

First, I type the speech draft on my computer. I let it pour out, assuming the words are pouring (sometimes they trickle, and sometimes I have to call the plumber in to unclog the faucet). But assume they’re pouring. I let the whole thing just cascade onto the computer screen. At this point, I avoid editing at all costs, because editing will only bog me down. Julia Cameron would be proud.

Next, the first Big Edit. I engage in what I call SWBWA – speech writing by walking around. I print a copy of the prose torrent, and then I walk around, reading it. There’s nothing magic about the walking; it’s just what I do, most likely out of nervous habit. As I walk, I will often will read it out loud, to listen to how it sounds (well, it is a speech, after all, meant to be heard as opposed to read). I have a pen with me, and often stop to make notes, change a word or phrase, or strike a sentence or paragraph. Back at my desk, I start the second Big Edit –and edit the typed draft by hand. Then I’ll type the changes.

Finally, and especially for those speeches requiring emotional writing or the use of empathy or compassion, I will write those sections by hand, and often over and over again. I can’t explain it, but I write emotional sections of speeches by hand, and it always comes out better than trying to write it on the computer or a typewriter. After I’ve got it where I want it, then I type it into the draft.

It’s probably no coincidence that I write poems like step three of writing speeches – always by hand. But that’s another story.


Over at the High Calling Blogs, Laura Boggess is leading a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Take a look and see what others are saying, commenting and posting. Last week’s discussion was about writing where you are. This week's is on the "time lie."

Related:

Nancy Rosback at Poems and Prayers talks about making time and bad writing.

Nancy's "Just A Minute" at Treasures of Darkness.

L.L. Barkat's "Writing Theft" at Seedlings in Stone.

"If" by Marilyn as As Good A Day As Any.

"Flight" by ELL at Red or Gray.

Monica Sharman's "The Right to Write."

Maureen Doallas' "Creative Rituals for the Writing Life."


"Blacktracks," photograph by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.

The Right to Write – Beginnings

There was a time when I wasn’t a writer, but I think it was before I was eight or nine years old. Something must have been obvious to my parents, for it was about that time my printing-business-owner father brought home a paperbound blank-page book that he had assembled for me to write my own mystery story.

But even then, writing remained something I did in school. In high school, I had a tendency to turn to creative writing, “creative” in terms of parody and satire. But I never thought of writing as a possible career. I was going to be the doctor my father had wanted to be until the Great Depression cut short that dream.

Two semesters of college chemistry, and the prospect of 13 more hours in chemistry for the pre-med curriculum, convinced me that practicing medicine was not my future. I also had this bent toward English, literature and history, especially literature, but they didn’t seem to offer much in the way of a career, at least as my father saw it. “Look,” he said, “at least do something practical. If all else fails, try journalism.”

All else didn’t necessarily fail, but journalism offered the practical training my father was looking for and a huge number of free electives, which allowed me to add whatever looked interesting in the way of history and literature courses.

A life pivots on such a simple statement from a father. My dream wasn’t to be a reporter or editor, but journalism would allow me to use words and possibly even be paid for it. By the end of my freshman year in college, I was learning that I enjoyed using words more than anything else I could think of.

As Julia Cameron says in The Right to Write, “The act of writing, the aiming at getting it right, is pure thrill, pure process, as exciting as drawing back a bow…I love it when I write well, but I love it when I write, period.”


Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re starting a discussion of Cameron’s The Right to Write. Laura Boggess is leading with her introductory post, "On Forgetting Myself." Take a look Monday and see what others are saying, commenting and posting.

Related Posts:

L.L. Barkat's "Let Yourself Write" at Seedlings in Stone.

"Let's Write" by Nancy Kourmoulis at Treasures of Darkness.

Monica Sharman's "Book Club: The Right to Write" at My Big Three.

Louise Gallagher's "An automatic response" at Recover Your Joy.

Nancy Rosback's "Ready Set Go" at Poems and Prayers.

"Just Writing" by Erin Kilmer at Together for Good.

Cassandra Frear's "In the Quiet" at Moonboat Cafe.