Seedlings in Stone: July 2011

On, In, and Around Mondays: Always-a-Butterfly Writing

"It has been said that faith is a certain widening of the imagination," notes Luci Shaw.

I say that writing is a certain kind of faith that thrives on *releasing* the imagination.

You have felt the release, I'm sure: those moments when something inside you returns to the child-time of life, when your imagination could take you to a fisherman's boat on the Yangtze, as well as it could take you to worlds where girls in red capes conquered violence with a basket full of violets and gold-warm biscuits.

Must we wait for the feeling? The release? The return? Or can we urge it onto our souls?

The other morning, sitting with my Christmas Tea (yes, in July! :), I glanced up the unruly hill of my tiny back yard. Two years ago, I planted a purple Butterfly Bush near the hemlocks.

"There is always a butterfly," I thought, tea in hand. And indeed there was a yellow swallowtail clutching blooms.

"There are things we can do," I thought. "Things that make our creative life swell open. Things that will almost always guarantee a butterfly."

I am not one to recommend guarantees. Yet I suspect that sitting outside with Christmas Tea or picking one's way through the woods is a kind of guarantee. I have seen even small forays into nature transform writers again and again. It's as if the breeze pulls open shutters, or the morning unzips a raven. Or maybe a yellow swallowtail draws nectar up from places we'd long forgotten.

You could try it on faith, for a week, a month. A daily sojourn into morning air, or afternoon shadows, or moon-sung night. And let us know if you find the Yangtze, a red cape, or always-a-butterfly.

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Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: Breath for the Bones, Luci Shaw, writer's block, writing

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writer Asking for Much

When writing a book, an article, even a blog post, we must choose an angle. We must offer the reader something he or she wants. I know that. Still, I find it hard.

I find it hard, because I write for a questionable reason: the desire to connect. And when I choose an angle, I risk that connection. Somebody isn't going to want to hang around for a 12-week course, for instance. So the relationship I've been cultivating with a reader suddenly has a little hole in it.

I should not care about this, but I do. Every writer has her struggles.

Can I be honest? I wish that my readers would seek a body of work, not a particular angle. I wish that they would read the beginning of the story, even though it doesn't come with formulas. I wish that they would read the poetry, so they could see the small moments inside the larger ones. And I wish that the promise of a 12-week course wouldn't scare them away from the story of the yard itself. I wish to be understood as something of an oak tree, like the one that grew on Luci Shaw's front lawn— which had its many parts, visible and invisible, as it moved through seasons and even to its death.

I think what I really want is for readers to take the metaphorical view that Shaw speaks of, that "sees the world not as reducible to verbal proposition but as multi-leveled, complex, rich, its mystery capable only of being pierced and presented as imagery." Yes, I want my readers to forget about writing-angles and simply come for the stones, the yard, and (soon) the water.

This is idealistic, I know. It is asking readers to commit to a long-term relationship, the way I have committed to it as the writer who serves them. The Market does not promote this kind of relationship, nor does it necessarily focus on art, imagination, and spirit (breath for the bones).

I am asking for much. But maybe this is what makes me an artist— asking for connection that penetrates surfaces and tangles with earth... like Luci's oak tree.

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Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

_____

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: Breath for the Bones, Luci Shaw, writing life

The Space You Need for Writing

Today I had a sweet conversation with a writer friend. Among other things, we talked about Writer's Block.

After hanging up the phone, I moved on from the conversation, ate some Kettle Corn (which I love), made a cup of peach tea, and sat in the dining room.

The dining room is sunset yellow. I kept the lights off; the color of the room is enough to bring me light, as I hoped it would when I chose the color.

Sipping my tea, I glanced towards the living room. This morning, the floor had been completely empty. We'd moved the coffee table last night to have a dance party (just the girls and me). It took less than a day for this to appear...

And this brought me back to thoughts about Writer's Block. This, this filling of space by my girls. It always happens. A space, a filling.

If you are feeling a sense of Writer's Block today, maybe you need a space. I don't know what kind. Maybe it is a space of permission— to feel what you are feeling but have been trying to ignore. Maybe it is the space of time. Or the space of a piece of paper that you don't intend to fill with words but rather with water color dreams. Maybe what you need is to stop caring about trying to achieve something with your writing.

Writer's Block is an apt term. It says you have forgotten to make space and are now blocked from the possibility of words. What space do you need today?

Painting by Sara B. Floor covered with beads, by Sara and Sonia. :)

Labels: writer's block, writing

On, In, and Around Mondays: Breath on the Water

There are places we go that are undeniably artful. They give us what Luci Shaw calls "the sudden flash of understanding" that causes souls to cry out to other souls, "This is what I see and how I feel. Can you see it? Can you feel it too?"

Innisfree Garden is one of those places.

On Saturday, I went to Innisfree with a friend and my girls, and the day was like a peeling back. Look here, and here, and here. Can you see it? Can you feel it too?

The air saturated blue. Petals pink, folding and unfolding. Rocks that echo forever. New life on the path, trembling on baby legs. Water bubbling up or skating before the wind.

Shaw says it is the recognition of God's hand in nature that can inform our own art—mystery, glory, power... encountered. We see and respond.

Today, if our art feels devoid of response, perhaps we are in need of an encounter. Or someone beside us to whisper, "Yes, I feel it too..."

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Over at The High Calling, we're walking beside each other, discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?

_____

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: Breath for the Bones, Luci Shaw, On in and Around Mondays

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing in Other Puddles

I am late here today. You know that. And you also know how quiet I've been overall, here and at my other blogs. This is what happens when I go off to another writing puddle for a while. I just can't sustain words in too many places at once. Forgive me? Please?

See, last year I thought about writing a book on writing. Yet as the months went by, I thought more about NOT writing the book than I thought about writing it. In the meantime, some fun people kept nudging me, "When are you going to write again?" And I kept saying, "I'm tired. I have nothing to write about."

Then I went to a picnic this spring, where all that changed. I had woken up that day, not writing a book, but by evening I was. Sometimes this is how it goes. Someday maybe you can read about how it happened. It involved a request to my daughter, to get me something to drink.

I have learned from past experience that I can stall my writer-self if I share news of a big project too early in the process. I need the freedom to write without thinking I'll be letting anyone down if it doesn't work out. I need the freedom to play in the rain, so to speak.

I am almost finished writing, so I thought to come and tell you: Maybe I'll find more words here again. I'm not sure. Either way, know that your presence in my life is a big part of what sent me to another writing puddle. And for that, I thank you...

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: On in and Around Mondays, The Writing Life

On, In, and Around Mondays: Writing with Luci Shaw

I open my computer today and notice Friday’s red umbrella. It belongs to Luci Shaw.

I have Luci's umbrella, because I have her picture. I have her picture because I used it to create a background for her new Twitter account. She has a new Twitter account, because on Thursday she will be coming to a Twitter poetry party.

Just yesterday I listened to someone deride Twitter. There are those, I suppose, who make it something to deride. But even with talk of heavy rain or indigestion or lost keys, I believe that Twitter is a red umbrella— a tiny space in which to work, to express oneself on the way, to move through crowds in the crimson shadow of words.

Once I took a writing seminar with Kay Marshall Strom. The thing I remember most was her assertion that the good writer benefits from writing small. "Limit yourself to a few sentences," she said. That feels to me like red-umbrella talk.

If you are going to say something of worth in a few words, you will be forced to concentrate more carefully on details. If you don't concentrate on details, it will seem you have said nothing at all, except perhaps heavy rain, or indigestion, or lost keys. Details make the rain like needles or like a sky of white nectar. Details make the indigestion burn the esophagus, like an old woman with a kerosene lamp, winding her way back to the sea. Details remember that the keys were on the counter at the bakery, just when you were choosing to splurge on a chocolate-filled croissant.

On Friday, over the phone and online, a friend and I helped Luci open her red umbrella on Twitter. We wrote about fishermen and red bobbers, casting lines and car hats. She laughed and played and saw the possibilities. She found her keys.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: Luci Shaw, On in and Around Mondays, Twitter poetry