A few of you, including my teenage son who is participating in NaNoWriMo right along with me, will likely cringe when I sing the following chorus, “We’re all in this together.”

I know, I know, teenage movie musical songs aren’t what you want in your head right now, but somehow for me, it’s exactly the best medicine for that tight feeling in my chest and that nerve racking, “Oh dear god, I can’t even figure out what my first sentence is yet, let alone what the next 50,000 words are that come after it!”

But I will not give in to those nerves, and it is all because of you.

It’s amazing! Over 100,000 of you have committed to this moment in time to stick this writing process out right along with me. You have all committed to not only to your dedication to your writing passions, but you have also committed, just by virtue of signing up, to being there for the rest of us.

So just knowing over 100,000 of you are out there digging deep, crying, laughing, begging, ripping the words from your creative minds will help me (and everyone else) accomplish 50,000 words. You are my electric grid, my battery back up, my caffeine boost, my pseudo-chocolate fix of energy that I will need each day when that “Oh dear god…” feeling tries to grasp its dirty hands across my throat and strangle my creative process.

Listen, we may never see each other, we may never talk, we may never even read each other’s novel, but just remember, I’m out here too, sweat across my brow, pen clenched between my teeth, headphones blaring, tears falling all over my keyboard once that first sentence is written. I’m out here not only because I’m ready to write my novel, I’m out here because “we’re all in this together.”

Now get going! Evoke those Muses, slam those office and bedroom doors shut come Sunday morning, and write, write, write!

Go Team!

If you’re a writer and you  haven’t read @NathanBransford’s post today, “When is writing unhealthy?” (http://bit.ly/1o0oo), then you should. You may not come to the same reaction as I did, or you may not even care to respond, but it got me thinking that this idea that not everyone should write shouldn’t even be asked. But then I said to myself, yes, ask it, and then answer it for yourself and see exactly how you feel about it. 

Here’s how I feel about it. Here’s my response to Nathan Bransford’s probing and important question:

What, has writing become the next addiction? Writing doesn’t have to be about what is good or bad. It only gets labeled as such when it is connected to some monetary reward.

Can you imagine someone telling Gutenberg, “Hey, the Bible is a little lengthy, and it’s repetitive, so let’s not print it.”

It’s like this. Writing is an act of proving our existence, whether it’s good or bad doesn’t matter. In the spirit of Descartes, if you are a writer, hack or genius, you say, “I write therefore I am.” Writing leaves little pieces of your life, no, your soul, here on earth before you leave this god forsaken place.

So now go on you worried writers who are suddenly asking should I do it or should I not, go on, get out there and write! Good, bad, garbage, write until you bleed. Write because you can’t live without writing and be proud of it!

“One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one’s pen.” ~Leo Tolstoy

@StephtheWriter

Summer has slipped quietly away and crisp fall mornings now rule the start of day, and the clouds of winter loom just over the mountain tops. One might think a writer could get a little sad as the new season’s light starts to change its path across the desk. Not this writer. It’s been a productive few weeks. I have tackled nearly a 100 pages of work, reconsidered some pieces, compiled enormous lists of article ideas and leads, but there’s still work to be done.

Unending work to be done.

That’s the catch isn’t it? Having so much to do and never having enough time? Or is it that writer’s have so many ideas and not enough time to see them all to fruition? I nod my head to the latter. It may take weeks, months, years to complete something before you can get on with the next work, but isn’t that the point. Working toward completion is the goal, isn’t it? But it’s not that simple, nothing in a writer’s life is ever finished. Nothing is ever done, the work is unending. We’re constantly jotting notes, finding books, researching, dreaming, pleading with our muses to leave us alone about the next piece so we can please just finish the one we’re working on.

I’m not afraid of the time that’s passing. Let it come and go. I’m not afraid of my insistent muses either. Just don’t let the muses stop as if they suddenly see winter in the distance and want to begin some sudden hibernation. I say let them pressure, let them nag, let them inspire whenever their hearts desire as time passes from one season to the next, just as long as they never go away, and the work, published or not, is still unending.

It would seem to the casual passerby that I’m a neglectful blogger, especially since it was a day much like today, all the way back in June, that I happened to make my last blog post.

However, the truth of the matter is, I think of a topic everyday that I am interested in writing about on my blog, but my thoughts have, as of late, been steering those topic ideas into other directions. Blogging, though seemingly scarce by the lack of dates on the July calendar below, has actually become part of my creative process, yes, even when I do not do it. It may sound odd, but many times the writings that I have considered putting here, have actually taken me into new directions of research, reading, and writing, and whose roots will spring to life somewhere else, I hope, in the near future. It is a surprising, but nevertheless, a rewarding realization.

In fact, for the past few weeks I have not allowed myself to feel pressured to produce a blog post just for the sake of producing one. Instead, I have allowed moments of inspiration to lead me in whatever creative direction was the most rewarding for me personally, whether it was writing poetry, starting new research for future articles, or creating visual arts for the first time in many years. You might say, I have worked a lot and learned a lot by not blogging these past few weeks.

I have also realized that it is stifling to think that I should have to conform, or place myself into a mold or into the cookie cutter idea that to be a good writer you have to show the world what you have produced everyday, even if it is in the form of becoming a predictable blogger. Now that’s a pressure I refuse to accept. My goal in blogging here has never been to gain an extensive following, or rack up hit counts. My goal here is to document my inspirations, my frustrations, my ideas and feelings as I go along the process of being a writer. The last thing I have ever wanted to be is predictable. Reliable? Yes of course, but never predictable. For me the power of being a writer comes from unpredictability and it’s assurance that I will always continue to follow whatever path the “words” take me.

So Huzzah to July! You’ve been wonderfully unpredictable.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. ~Elias Canetti

Goodbye June, parting is such sweet sorrow, ’til it be July tomorrow, or something like that.

Wow, it has been an amazing month of cramming in every bit one can do in 30 days. Writing, rewrites, site updates (which I’m still working on), a blog redecoration, and even two new pages added in expectation of more content to come soon. Heck, even a few much deserved days of doing absolutely nothing at all.

However, don’t let me sound like I’m Mrs. Productive extraordinaire. No, it is once again one of those moments where I have so many ideas and so much to get on paper that I don’t have enough hours in the day to do it. I have even had a few dark days when I questioned my purpose, not just here in print, but in all aspects of my life, but it didn’t last. Each time it happened something came glaring out at me from the dark, slapped me on the back and said, “get over yourself girl and get on with it.” So I got on with it, and here I am, quickly making a June post before the midnight hour strikes.

So goodbye June, it was great while you were here, we laughed, we cried, we had fun in the sun even, but it’s time to be done with you and embrace July in all its fireworks and impending sunburns. Who knows what might spark once it arrives?

Here is an example of one of my freelance pieces in print this month. Read my article Investing Affordably in the Future with Art in Bride & Groom Magazine’s Spring 2009 Issue. http://www.bridegroommag.com/ 

Or you can view the article online, see page 27 at this link http://issuu.com/brideandgroom/docs/spring09

May is coming to a quick and somewhat quiet end here on my blog. Earlier this month I proclaimed I was going to revamp the blog and I hoped my website as well, but I haven’t done either because I have been circling in a pool of indecision.

Now some might read what I have just written and imagine that I have slipped off into the deep end and have gone under in that pool of indecision unable to find the surface. However, that’s not the case.

Actually, I have come to understand that having creative indecision about things that represent you as an individual is the best kind of indecision you can have. It forces you to not only weigh all your options and reconsider your choices, but it also forces you to ask the question, what is is about this thing, this word, or this image that makes me indecisive when I can’t make up my mind to use it, write it, or display it?

In fact, indecision takes you along a path of self discovery. Even in those times when you make no decision at all you at least know that what you left behind on the path are the things you were certain you did not want, and what you do want may soon appear just over the horizon past that shimmering water-like mirage in the distance.

I think Ms. Oliphant sums up indecision nicely when she wrote the following:

Perhaps, on the whole, embarrassment and perplexity are a kind of natural accompaniment to life and movement; and it is better to be driven out of your senses with thinking which of two things you ought to do than to do nothing whatever, and be utterly uninteresting to all the world.

~Margaret Oliphant~

The days and days of silence here is not due to a lack of things to write. I never have that problem. The problem I have is deciding on which thing to write about at which hour and on which day. It’s a curse in many ways to have so many ideas and not enough time to find a home for all of them, whether in an article, a poem, or a story.

No, what I have been doing is once again considering recreating my blog and my main site into something different. Some new reflection of myself I suppose you might say. I have come to realize that I need a break from words and instead need more visual creativity. I suppose that is why I have been exploring numerous genres of films lately, slipping back to my art history research, perusing photographs, and exploring lots of web sites.

So if you come across this way in the coming weeks and wonder what’s happening here, like why is there silence or why is there is a new layout. I’m delving into the art of recreating, and the words will have to wait for a little while. Just do what I do, blame the Muses.

I was determined to have at least 7 days of complete exile and forced seclusion in order to work on my current writing project. However, if any of you followed along on Twitter, you know that it turned out to be an impossibility. I refuse to say failure because it was not for lack of trying and it wasn’t that I didn’t write, I just could not keep my commitment to seclusion and I have spent the past few days trying to understand why?

It boils down to this. You have to learn to go with the flow, even when you think the flow is going against you. We may not see our lives in terms of nature, but it is just that. You can’t will a river to flow north when it is already flowing south and the same holds true with our daily lives. There are forces being exacted upon us at all times. Now, I don’t mean crazy evil movie-type forces that appear out of nowhere to destroy us. I mean the forces of just daily living, the life force of people around us, and the moments of change and perception that happen along our path that we can’t ignore. They don’t have to be negative things. They only become negative if we choose to label them as such.

I have realized that it is OK to swim along in the direction that the river is taking me. It’s all about perception. If we perceive of the river as a true resource and a life giver, then we can be secure in our ability to flow along without resistance. The moment we see the river as the flood of destruction, then in that moment we drown in our inability to open ourselves up to whatever possibility may reveal itself along the river’s edge as the current takes us farther down stream than we planned.

So in the future when I make plans, I will always make room for my plans to change. Like Picasso said, we shouldn’t put things into stone, we should leave lots of room for ambiguity.

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do,

but it should be a vague idea. 

~Pablo Picasso

Even a writer can’t live by their own words alone. It’s boring. It’s self-deprecating. It’s like a vampire sucking its own blood. I know I’m writing in a circle here, but I do have a point.

I am in the midst of  week’s worth of self induced seclusion to work. But even in seclusion you have moments when you are either forced by the world to come out from hiding or you come up for air because you need to.

At this moment, it is because I need to. You see, even during my writing hours, I’m forced to seek out the work of others. It’s a form of self medication. Dedicated writer’s don’t really need coffee, or food, or even their work published. What they need are words.  Beautiful, transporting, transforming words.

Here are the words that were the perfect prescription for this moment of air. You read Janice Macdonald’s amazing short story here, while I slip back into my seclusion.

Now that I’ve taken a breath. I may not come back up for a few days.