We discussed her book in progress and when she asked me about my work I told her about all of the writing I’m doing and most of it is not for publication. I like writing. There are writing pieces in my computer that may never see the light of day but they have been fun to create. The last three writing days are an excellent example.

My creative focus has been on a piece to clear my mind of my last story. I may finish it and I may not-but it has been fun to work on. Publishing my work is important to me but that is still after loving the writing.

There is a rough draft on my computer of the next story in the series that the last two are a part of and most likely it will be my next focus. Writing a story to keep the momentum gives me the chance to explore new trails.

It has occurred to me that I have to do some formatting on the last story: Add page numbers; check spacing of the sentences; and things like that. I plan to do everything in my power to ignore any ideas of rewriting. All my fingers and toes are crossed on that one.

Sudbury Valley School is an alternative school that is rooted in the idea that the children/students know best what they need to learn. I remembered the story of a math teacher at the school who said he could teach the entire elementary to high school math curriculum in one year. Really? The proviso was that the students wanted to learn the material. Everyone was skeptical, including myself, when I read his declaration, and it wasn’t until some students decided they wanted to take the class that he got to prove his assertion. He taught them the material in one year. The key is that the students wanted to learn the math. They were committed because they wanted to do it.

Commitments must be made to a heart’s desire if we are to fulfill them. The problem is that our true desires are often buried under personal and social shoulds which keep us chasing the dreams of other people but never our own. It makes sense that it would be hard to find and express our heart’s desires: we spend a long time in the care of others because we are mammals with a long period of dependency which makes it easy to be led away from the call of our own hearts. The irony is that it takes far more energy, strength and commitment to live the dream of someone else for our life than to live our own.

It takes a lot of energy to put and keep our dreams on the shelf, because we must constantly suppress the calling of our heart which is broadcasting to us 24/7/365, i.e. all of the time. Commitment that is in alignment with this calling is strength, is power, is clarity, is well-being, is creative ideas and means beyond what we can imagine.

The journey to the fulfillment of every creative dream begins with the acceptance of that which is in our heart of heart’s and then making the commitment to live it today, at least in some small way. Listen to that heart, it is the best friend we will ever have.

The ending that feels good is complete. Endings that feel bad usually have a negative emotional residue on them and are not really finished. I thought of this idea when I caught myself smiling at the end of my reading of the story. “There is nothing else left to do here,” I thought.

Before, when I thought the story was finished, I didn’t feel this way. There was a feeling of flatness, a sense that energy was not moving. There were no edits or rewrites I could see, and that is why I believed the story was finished. The decision to take one more look at the story revealed that more rewriting needed to be done.

The story is finished – for real this time. I began this post and then reread the story aloud to see if it still felt good. It did. Writing this story has been an interesting journey because the piece describes a journey, a creative one. Want to talk with Stephan about adding some of his music to this story, also.

Looking forward to seeing what I will work on tonight. The next story in this series is a possibility and there are a bunch of other writing trails to start and finish. Let’s see what has the most pull. Will keep you posted as to what is happening with,
My Year of Writing.

The surge of clarity exposed a complexity in my writing. Most of the things that needed to be repaired were sentences that were too complex and unclear. The reasoning behind their complexity made sense and revealed something else which must now be mastered. The sentences were written to keep the work from becoming boring because of a uniformity in style. They were changed to make the structure of the sentences more diverse but they were confusing.

The paradox is that simplicity is more powerful than complexity, which can become confusing and unreadable, but there must be a diversity in the writing. Sentence wording, structure, length, rhythm must be varied. The mind becomes bored with uniformity and wanders. Diversity keeps the mind engaged.

A balancing act between diversity and coherence must be maintained. The strategy of throwing in everything plus the kitchen sink to keep the story interesting creates a confusing complexity. Another thing to keep in mind as I continue to learn about and practice writing.

The next day was the same. My bodily reactions kept me away from the story. The apprehension of the previous night grew. I wondered if I should continue with the next story in the series. I got a strong image of a scene for something new and followed its vibrancy to the page. The words flowed again, but for a shorter duration, and I fulfilled my daily writing commitment by using the remaining time to do rewrites on the story which was cause of this strange bodily behavior. The doubt lingered. What about tomorrow?

The third night: I sat at the computer and was able to go through the story without so much as a twitch. What was that about? Maybe I needed a break from the story in order to allow some other creative energies to flow. Maybe it was a lesson in letting go of writing routine protocol, relaxing a bit and having faith in the process. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe = I don’t know. “Nothing but the facts.” You have them, but I have no clue to what they equal.

I have been in a comedy of errors with my friend Stephen as we email, text and voice mail each other about the story + music project. Its like an episode of, I Love Lucy. We finally connected with each other, and everything is back on track or at least it is going in a way that makes sense to me.

His philosophy reminded me of a story I had read about a psychologist who was teaching his daughter to ride a bike. He couldn’t understand why she was having a hard time. He was getting more and more frustrated, and she was not learning. He was on the verge of giving up when his son went over to his sister and talked to her. She started pedaling and got the hang of it-she was riding. The father was excited and even more interested in knowing what his son had told her. The son explained that he told her to stop being afraid of falling.

The fear of falling, in whatever form we imagine that to be, is the line all of us must cross to fulfill our creative dreams. This fear is contracting, causing us to live in a small creative box. We feel safe and unfulfilled. If we worry too much about being safe and having security, we will never cross the boundary into living our creative dreams, will never experience the deliciousness of our creative dreams which are waiting to be fulfilled. We we be the astronomers of our own lives.

The idea that weak writing can be fixed by adding stuff or moving things around is a common first-thought-solution that rarely works. It’s the equivalent of a person who didn’t take a shower after a long workout putting on perfume; enough said.

I had to go back and ask myself, what do I really want to say. The question was enough to get me back on track but the words were not forthcoming to express what I heard. I started this post in the hope that taking my mind off of the problems in the paragraph would give me enough space in my head for the solution to appear. I need to get back to the story see if the plan has worked.

I went back to the story and the words to rebuild the foundation were not flowing. I wrote something to begin the process but already know that it needs to be rewritten. I took the most important step: accepting that there were problems with the foundation of the paragraph, now it’s rewriting until they are only a distant memory.

Finding the business card in my bag made me question if there are forces which make things appear and disappear at will or if it were some power in the card itself. The card had been missing for weeks. The author and I had run into each other in front of Starbucks and had a creative moment. We shared insights about creativity and what it takes to live our creative dreams. He got something, and I got something from it.

We were two people who ran into the one person we needed to meet in order to continue on our path, to stay the course, and not give in to the doubts on the periphery of our minds. At least that is how it was for me. He shared that some of what we were discussing is in his new, self-published book. I asked if I could interview him about the book, and he gave me his card which I put in a “safe” place where I wouldn’t lose it.

I was going through my bag to get some headphones to listen to the music and story Stephan had put together when I found the card. I know I had looked in that bag for the card, and it was not there. I thought of how one creative action, looking for the headphones, had led to another creative connection as if they were harmonics of one thing. I reasoned that if I had not taken the step of listening to the music project, I would not have found that business card. They were connected in some way and needed to be seen together, to appear at the same time.

There is a creative process at work in my life and projects. It requires many things from me: commitment; practice; surrender; determination. It doesn’t require control. There are parts of the process which I will never understand, like disappearing and reappearing business cards. The process is the process and the journey to get there – to the moment of manifestation – is as important as arriving, disappearing and reappearing business cards and all. It’s getting use to these strange aspects of the process is all, and I don’t expect I will.

Have not reached out to let him know about the Goldilocks changes for the last story. Procrastination? Fear? The cause is not clear but the effects are obvious: the project is still where it’s at now, like a refrigerator that stays empty until the shopping is done. Told myself that I would listen to the piece before uploading this post and then email him my comments. What needs to be done is clear and following the trail of reasons why I have not is unnecessary. I can keep moving, keep creating. Understanding why I have done something can be liberating and it can also be a way to delay taking action. Quoting Seth Godin, quoting Steve Jobs, “Real artists ship.” It’s time to ship.