Subject--let the writing pick one.

This is one of those days when so many thoughts are ricocheting in my head I can't single one out for my journaling. They're each screaming, thinking they are the cutest, and they want me to pick them to write about.

The thing is--I want to write about them all at once. I wish I had ten hands and I'd assigned each pair of hands a different topic. One pair of hands would write on the connection of the erotic to creativity, the second pair of hands would write about art--how cool it is, the third pair of hands would write about how I sometimes worry over what I say but when it's too late to take it back, the fourth pair of hands would write about the tons of dreams I have had about houses (had a new one last night), and the fifth pair of hands would write about how when I'm not writing my soul is a little down on the "if you're happy and you know it" meter.

I honestly believe I could be writing an essay to a tree (and I'm not putting down the importance of trees here, by all means) and I would be gleeful about tree essays. I mean if my audience happened to be trees, I wouldn't have to go far to look for them, they couldn't tell me they didn't like what I'd written, and I could always take those breezes that shake their limbs back and forth as the trees' nods of approval. My next question is--why have I been writing to people for so long?

Something about generating writing begins this gentle hum inside me. I truly believe it is addictive--this hum thing. The endorphins in there are having one rousing good time. Even though I can sense my heartbeat start to hurry to keep up with the words on the page, there is still a rhythm to the hurriedness, a rhythm that is soul soothing.

So why don't I do this writing thing for the entire day? Because there are budding freshman who I want to teach about the hum of writing, because there are bookstore customers who I want to put books into their hands that will start this hum inside them as they read the pages where someone else took time to tell a story. Because a lot of other reasons not nearly as lofty as those I just mentioned.

In the past, there have been days where I've written from the moment I wake through to suppertime. (Forget writing until bedtime; I'm never going to do that in my life.) I will stop for food, however. My muse gets word fatigue after about three to four hours of pen to page. It's unfortunate, but she doesn't experience the writing hum in the same way I do. She starts twisting this one strand of hair over and over on the back of her head, and I begin to worry that she's going to go bald, so I stop.

When I was writing my novel, I had many obligations at the time and figured there was no way I could get to Marjorie (my main character) as much as I wanted. And since I had set my goals to be a good writer and write long hours and long days and get done and prosper forever and ever amen, and since this goal was not obtainable, I let Marjorie's words slip into the background of my days instead of trying to negotiate a deal with her.

Well, when I had gone without the hum for long enough, I returned to the draft of the novel and dialogued with Marjorie about our predicament. Often as I wrote the novel I would dialogue with Marjorie as a way of processing what was going on with me, what was going on with the characters, what was going on with my muse and that hair-twisting thing. Marjorie was all wise and knowing. If you ever want a therapist who you don't have to pay but who is way smarter than you are, start a novel and dialogue with your main character. It will change your life and hair-twisting habit.

"I can't handle writing on this novel for periods of eight hours at a time." This was what I told Marjorie.

"Why?" She was alway curious like that. You couldn't get away with a simple answer and think it was going to get approval just because you had written it down.

"Well, I have two jobs, two children, three dogs, a husband, no housekeeper, no butler, and I'm not the Queen of Energy either."

"Hmmm." That meant she was thinking it over. You're always afraid that can't be good.
"How many pages do you think you can manage at one sitting?" she asked.

I thought about what she'd asked and the number seven popped in my head. "Seven."

"Okay, then. From now on I will only give you seven handwritten pages of my story at a time."

"Really?" I asked this like I had never considered the possibility of my character providing me a certain amount of her story for each writing session. Instantly, I felt delighted about writing again.

"It's a deal then." She wanted to make sure she had my promise. Sometimes she was kind of a baby like that. If we were in the room together as physical beings, she probably would have made us prick our fingers.

After that dialogue with Marjorie, she always gave me seven pages of handwirtten story each time I sat down to write--no more, no less. And I never felt overburdened by the time aspect of writing.

I guess what I'm saying is even a good hum can only last so long. Compare it, if you will, to any other good feelings you know and the length that they last. I enjoy the hum of writing whenever I get the chance. When there are ten hands' worth of subjects in my brain, I let the writing pick one and get on with the humming. It feels so good. You should try it.

ks
2005 Copyright Shelnutt

Eileen's Birthday

I NEED TO LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT EILEEN'S BIRTHDAY IS NOT ON SEPTEMBER 19 OR SEPTEMBER 21, BUT EILEEN'S BIRTHDAY IS ON SEPTEMBER 20. AND I LOVE EILEEN. SHE IS A GREAT FRIEND NO MATTER WHAT DAY SHE WAS BORN ON AND REGARDLESS OF THE FACT I TRY TO BIRTH HER ON THREE DAYS IN SEPTEMBER INSTEAD OF THE ONE SHE CAME TO THE EARTH ON.

EILEEN, YOU'RE THE BEST!

LOVE,

K

And Another One Bites the Dust

And another one's gone, and another one's gone, and another one bites the dust. Yep. You know it's going to happen, but you're not prepared for it. A certain amount of glee and pride come with starting a blog. It doesn't matter so much that the world is looking on as much as it matters that you have a place to tell the world your story whether they choose to look or not.

So when I set up my blog the other day, at first I hesitated to send a notice to my friends. I figured I would wait and adjust to blogging before I invited the world in. After a few postings, however, I sent some emails letting folks know I was here. What I wished for in return--I guess was little blog cheerleaders shaking their blogger pom-poms screaming, "Good job, Karen. Good blog. We like your blog. We like you."

Sounds like a note a second grader would write. But isn't that what we all want--blog or not--love and acceptance? And isn't that why we share with our closest friends our small blips of accomplishment along the way? And isn't it true that we need all the encouragement we can get, all the cheerleaders we can find because we live in a global world that is connected in so many ways but disconnected and disgruntled in so many others?

That's why I sent my friends my email about this blog. And they've been so supportive and cheerleaderish that you'd think they were part of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. And I've felt warm and loved. I want to say thank you to my friends for their love and support. Thank you to the tribe cheerleaders--specifically--Antoinette, Chris, Denise, Eileen, Erika, Joyce, Linda, and Sheila. You guys are the best of the best of the best!

Some folks don't want me to tell my truth in this blog. Those folks are going to have to bite the dust. And I don't mean that in a terse way. I mean that in a way that says: I've lived for 48 years, many of those years spent having to hide dark secrets in pockets of skin and bone. Once those secrets escaped, the global world had nairn a thought what it was in for.

And I've made some mistakes telling the truth. I've told too much truth sometimes. I've told the truth in front of the wrong people and hurt those I hold the most dear to my heart and I'm not proud about that. And I've learned there are ways to tell the truth and ways not to, but this is my blog, and I don't intend to hurt anyone here because I'm just happy as a goldfinch to be typing and writing and typing and writing. But I intend to be truthful, even sometimes if that seems like I might not be perfect and whole all the time. Hey, I'm not a loaf of bread. I'm not perfectly shaped or browned or textured or anything. I'm irregular. And I like that. And I like the truth.

So I made the decision, within my promise to be truthful to myself and harbor no more dark pockets with secrets in my body, that truth rules. I'll try to honor others, but what is true for me will be on this page.

For any persons who happen upon this blog and think the truth is too much or too vivid or too whatever, then those are the folks that I've decided I can't please anymore. They have to bite the dust. It's difficult for me to say this and yet freeing as well. Why? Because it is the truth. I wish those souls light and love and peace and I understand their feelings about truth. But I cannot be them or be in their place. I can only be me. And that's exciting. And that's the truth.

kss

Hurricane of Words

A gifted writer and former student sent me an email recently. Part of it reads:

"Oh my goodness. The most basic advice you gave, to just write, is the most difficult part for me. I have all the writer's fears, nothing to say, nothing to write, nobody wants to hear, blah, blah, blah. But I am getting to the point where if I don't get the words, and I don't know which words they are, whatever they may be, out of my head it's going to start spinning on my shoulders. When you started writing . . . did you have that problem?"

My reply:

Writing involves a huge amount of trust--trust that the words already know what they want to say and how to say them and when to say them. The story is already inside of us. We are the ones who get in the way. We demand to have Cheerios when the writing says it wants Cream of Wheat for breakfast. In other words, we go by our plan and sometimes our plan isn't the plan that the story, the journal entry, the essay, the novel have in mind.

One of the most difficult things for writers to learn to do (and I know because I have a great deal of practice trying to learn this) is to let go of any preconceived ideas about what ends up on the blank page.

Let the writing tell us. Become a stenographer for the words. Take dictation. Oftentimes if I don't know what to write, I will literally start my journal entry with, "So what do the words want to say today?" That way it has less to do with me. And it should have less to do with me. When we are thinking the process too much, the words get lost in our thoughts. They need a clear path to the page. The best we can offer them is a streamline of pen in hand and letting them (the words) be in charge.

Many times I don't "receive" the stellar journal entry I had planned out in my head, but one of the problems with my receiving that entry is the audacity I had to plan it ahead of time.

Writing sometimes makes us pay the price for not letting the words be in control. I have a lot of bad writing as proof; however, I'm not saying that bad writing is a bad thing. Every word that spills from our pen is useful to our creative learning. The way it is useful may be simply in accepting we can have "average" journal days and "complaining" journal days and "naughty" journal days and whatever we want.

There are no damn rules with writing except to let the words be in charge. They are the master creators. We are merely the scribble-the-words-on-paper person. As writers, this is something we come up against repeatedly. It is a lesson that seems equally as hard to learn the first time as the umpteenth time. But it is an important one.

Another suggestion about allowing words to come has to do with letting up on the pressure. I've been around a couple of pressure cookers that lost their black rubber stoppers and silver rocking knobs and have plastered kitchens with vegetable soup and chili and steam. We have to turn down the pressure sometimes. Be still.

I've gone on solo retreats and have used my journal only as a coaster until it was time to go--not a word written in it. Was that frustrating? Yes. But it was also the best thing for me--to be silent--to let the writing come back home.

I know I could go on and on about this topic and I know if you ask ten other writers what their thoughts are about this you'd get that many more answers and I know that is what I believe is so exciting about writing. Donald Murray says to "write about what makes you different." We are all so gloriously different in this quirky world; we might as well be able to get in our two-, four-, six- and eight-cents worth about it.

We must write about the marked differences that make us who we are. Sometimes I think of myself like a bad hair color I'd like to rinse out of my head, but for some reason, the color stays and stays and stays. I can't rinse out who I am. That is where we should write from. The things that won't rinse out.

My best advice to the writer is to trust their intuition. If they feel so many words spinning in their head that they fear it is about to rocket of their shoulders, then these word messages must be wanting to land somewhere. But they want to do it their way. Offer them a journal and a cup of tea. Take ten deep breaths and tell them, "Say whatever you want to say, and it doesn't even have to ever be good."

Don't ask them to write a novel if they are still a hurricane of words. That may mean their story is part of a huge storm churning inside--searching for the safest place to land.

kss
p.s. A great book about resistance and fear for writers and artists is The War of Art by
Stephen Pressfield, author of The Legend of Baggar Vance.
Copyright 2005 Shelnutt

The Nasty Pet/Critic Critter

This morning I've been looking at websites of artists who create altered books. Their websites are so creative; their art is so creative. Why does viewing other people's beautiful gifts make my gifts to the world look like the dull penny no one wants to pick up off hot asphalt?

I've always had this persistent voice in my head that reiterates the "not goodness" of whatever I do. This voice has selected the wrong person to reside inside. It wants perfect. I am more of a mess. It wants instant--instant weight loss, instant novel publishing, instant Ponder Design marketing. It wants instant and perfect. That makes me sigh and resign myself instead to never and not good enough.

I wonder whether during this lifetime I will be able to override this voice inside that comments on everything I do. I'm on constant alert of possible failure--of not teaching my class well enough last night, of not making everyone like me at the bookstore yesterday, of never turning out to be what I thought I'd be.

There's no way to live a life of freedom with a damn critic in your head. No way. There are not enough drugs in the world to drown out that nagging, penetrating chatter.

Why can't I have the voice of a fairy or a gypsy instead--voices that cheer all efforts, that believe magic is born with our first footfall from the bed each morning, the first breath our lungs take as we walk upright into a new day? Why can't I have those positive voices who pat me on the back, even when my back is covered with twenty pounds of extra fat?

Fairies and gypsies don't care how much fat is on someone's back. They care about someone's spirit--their pizazz inside. Why hasn't anyone ever noticed my inside pizazz? Whenever I show that around the pesty internal critic, he begins a soliloquy on why I don't have pizazz, have never had pizazz, and then points out all the specific times in my life when I didn't have pizazz. After that, I'm pretty sure I never had any pizazz too.

I'm sitting here at the computer wondering how to smush the vile critter in my brain, eradicate him. He is slowly depleting me of any gumption I had to carry on toward the prize. It's difficult to want to do anything when you know it won't be good enough for the critic critter inside your head. So I dread doing anything. Things I might normally love become something else to wish I didn't have to do--because what if someone finds out that I am no good just like the critic critter keeps saying--what if someone finds out I'm not qualified, or I don't know the definition of every word in Webster's dictionary, or where every comma is supposed to go on the page, or how to make it through the day without dragging the blanket of being wrong with me.

Some days I come close to warding off the critic, but then he returns pumped with venom and ready to have at me again. I stand at the mirror and try telling myself how much I love me, and I hear bounce back off the mirrored reflection, "No you don't. No you don't. No you don't."

Hey, and you might think I'm crazy because I have to deal with this offensive voice terrorizing me. It's like having bad body odor or something. I'm one person trying to live from day to day just like you. I'm one person trying to turn down the volume of the voices that violate my head. I'm one person putting one foot on the floor first thing in the morning just like you. The only difference is the voice tells me every time that I didn't do it right.

kss

plot (plot), n., v., plot-ted, plot-ting.

plot (plot), n., v., plot-ted, plot-ting.
n. 1. a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.
2. the main story of a literary or dramatic work.
3. a small piece of ground.
-v.t. 4. to plan secretly or conspiratorially.


I think about plot but I don't do any plotting. I look up the definition of plot in my Webster's and copy it into my journal. That doesn't make me feel more like writing about plot.

I light a candle where I can see its low lights flickering across the room and believe calling in the sacred will make me write about plot. It doesn't. I've started the pen's movement on the journal page, but my stomach is plotting a rebellion of sorts. It feels like there is an anvil inside me that is weighted with sadness.

Yuck. I hate this writing. I'm plotting this writing.

The first definition of plot reads--a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.

I sit here on my 20-year-old Herculon sofa with my white fluffy mutt by my side. He is as close to me as the fluff on him will allow. Sunny, that's his name, is terrified of thunder and it's thundering. We are best buds at the moment.

I'm plotting an essay that will make the room dance when it's read, that will bring all eyes to attention, that will stop everyone else's plot and make them listen to mine.

There, I've said it.

I need my plot to be specialer, to be crispier, crunchier, flakier, more full-bodied, more endowed, new and improved over what everyone else has plotted.

That's sick. There's no sacred spirit in that. Maybe that's the heavy anvil feeling inside me--guilt for wanting recognition, for writing to want recognition. That’s the first definition of plot in Webster's after all--a secret plan, usu. evil or unlawful.

"Hello, my name is Karen. I plot secretly to write better than anyone else." Oh God, there's no hope for someone like me.

2. The second definition of plot reads--the main story in a literary or dramatic work.

Well, I think often about the plot of my novel, Marjorie's Rules of Order. I think about her main story, about what she is driving toward. I hear, the answer--search of self. Then I hear, "No one is going to read a novel about search of self.”

I think about the plot, the main story of my own life. It's been the same as Marjorie's--search of self. Maybe her plot is a way to help me discover more about my own story, what brought me to writing, what to do with depression, recovered memories of abuse and the disbelief that joins itself to that.

Maybe Marjorie’s plot is a way to allow me to accept my own.

3. The third definition of plot is--a small piece of ground.

As in a burial plot, I wonder. As in, all I want is a wife and kids and little plot of land. As in a small piece of ground to call one's own.

A small piece of ground--kind of an earthy room of one's own.

How much I long for my small piece of ground where I can say--in this square space of ground I am fine--the way I cook is fine, the way I clean is fine, the way I procrastinate is fine, the way I eat is fine, the way I look is fine, the way I write is fine. It's a fine piece of ground I'm standing on. No need for everybody to try to change it or criticize it or take their passive-aggressive anger out on it.

The other day I was telling my husband how my mom had said I used to come home from college in the summer and clean house from top to bottom for her.

My husband looked at my college-age daughter and laughed. "Now, it's hard to believe that ever happened isn't it?"

My own piece of ground where they don't make fun of how I clean or how often. If they had lived in a body worn down by cycles of depression, if they knew how hard it's been to accept that I'm never going to be the normal person I used to be, they wouldn't laugh.

But I'm fine. My plot of ground is fine.

It may not be as Windexed and Pledge-shined as their plot, but mine has smells of incense and wine, candle wax dripping warm down long stems of light. There are books open everywhere. Cushions abound in the deep red shades of Persian rugs. There are pages and pages to be written on my plot of fine ground. Some dust on a blank page never kept me from writing the next word.

4. The fourth definition of plot reads--v.t. (verb transitive), plot as a verb-to plan secretly or conspiratorially.

I plan to escape. I plan to plot freedom, to say, "For one year I'm moving out to see if the self hidden under everyone's objections still exists. To see whether underneath the adult me, the little girl who was always okay, whose eyes always opened huge as chocolate Tootsie Roll lollipops, the little girl who loved grape snow cones cold on her teeth, cool grass against her bare feet, Bazooka bubble gum and princess telephones, can come out to play again."

She is--I am--a verb transitive. I am action. I want to be action--my own action that takes on a direct object--me. Me. The object of me—now there’s a plot for you.

The fifth definition of plot reads-- to mark on a map or chart, as the course of a ship.

If I could plot my own course, writing or otherwise, I would tell everyone to leave me alone,and that I'm fine as I am. It took me 48 years to see it, but fine is looking back and smiling at me in the mirror.

I'd wake each morning to a lighted candle and writing words. I'd write through the early shift of sun across my window. I'd stop for lunch, walk in the afternoon, run errands, read and relax in the evenings. I'd extinguish the flame at night upon rest. I'd anticipate the possibility of the coming of the new day, the lighting of the candle in a way it has never been lit before. I would honor the plot of simplicity threaded into each moment.

kss

Writing is the huge movie screen of your life.

Note to all--this journal entry was written in the classroom along with my English 1101 students.

I like writing when I can share with someone else how special it is, when I can let them know that reading their writing is like touching the smooth skin on their face.

I don't like what I'm writing here. Who am I trying to be? What am I trying to say?

I want people to know that words, written words, can do so much. They can heal us when we're trying to understand the devastating breakup. They can help us see how things didn't go so well while teaching English 1101 today, how sounding like a fool sometimes is okay.

Writing is like open arms of acceptance on paper. It never says--you are too dumb, you need to clean your room, you're too fat or too skinny, no one will ever love you.

Writing allows us to love ourselves even when it seems like no one else does--on the bad days when the dog dies or we have the horrific accident and our world tumbles over and over. Writing lets us have a space, a place for how that feels and how life can suck, how life can be beautiful, how sex last night was great or how I never want to talk to that guy/girl again.

Writing is the one place where we can look inside and whatever is showing on the screen is fine--if it is a horror movie of the times our parents screamed at us, then let it be that. If it is a musical of our favorite songs flitting across the page, then let them.

The words come to us for a reason.

Don't push them. Allow them a place. Allow them a voice. We need to tell ourselves that we are important enough to know how we felt throughout the day--not just give a reporting of what we ate or drank at Starbucks--whether we had venti or grande--but how we felt when our best friend lied to us, how we felt being in the classroom.

The page is the beginning of our stories. Aren't our stories worth the telling--the telling in written word? I think so.
------------------------
Copyright Shelnutt 2005

On leopard-print panties and word collapse . . .

Typing on this blank space and thinking that someone will read it (even if it is only shoppers I commandeer and pay one dollar to while browsing the Wal-Mart parking lot) causes me to "word collapse."

Word collapse is a simpler name for writer's block. Writer's block sounds so fatal that I like word collapse better. Plus, I made it up. I'm counting on the cute, made-up things I do to trap you and you and you into returning to a place where we can make up words and life and story and it will be so rich and true and real (how is that for a few abstracts in a row) that we will grow a huge community of us.

Right now, my definition of word collapse is as follows: All the words I know, all the words I have known, all the words I will know tumble into some center I call fear. Well, fear is too charged a topic to begin discussing on my first post. But you can bet that when "word collapse" happens to most writers, fear is standing behind the words (and sometimes the writer) pushing them over the edge.

When word collapse happens, I feel my toes cringe, my heart becomes arrhythmic (it believes this is a way to assure I will stop trying), and I smell the odor of every room where I blossomed as the fool. Those smells would include the greasy hamburger-and-fry smell of the Village Hut when I went on a date with Ken Hannah, my knight in shining Country Squire Station Wagon. JoAnn Ranck and I scurried to the bathroom which was about the size of the phone booth where Superman changes clothes. (Truly if he's Superman he should be able to get a better changing room in his contract.)

The two of us squished ourselves into this plywood potty room and checked in the mirror to make sure we matched, as closely as possible, those images of Cheryl Tiegs on the cover of Seventeen magazine.

Then, we urinated. That's the proper name for peeing as given to us by the beloved Mrs. Pasinger, our sixth-grade p.e. teacher, on one of those rainy days during the school year when you couldn't play kickball or badminton, but were stuck learning about menstrual flows and urination and having a talent show where girls took turns singing to a trapped dressing-room audience.

I always sang "Tammy's in Love," from the movie. I guess I finessed that song so much it became a regular request on rainy days when dressing rooms always got me down. Rhonda McMillan, who was a real gospel singer, who had a real album and who could really sing, would also tune up with a song that began, "I've been saved. I've been new born no-ow. All my life has been rearranged." Well, you get the idea. Rhonda had the best voice and musical prowess in all of Giles County maybe in all of middle Tennessee. I was jealous, but it didn't stop me from having my own mini-American Idol 35 years prior to that show's inception.

Oh my, I didn't want to ramble on this post. However, it is my posting so I can ramble if I want to. Isn't that what authenticity is about--that and finally telling the truth about my jealousy of Rhonda McMillan? I will ramble at will. I encourage you to do the same. There may be those fetid memories lurking from your sixth-grade-p.e.-dressing-room days that you've never shared. Send me your story. We could probably start a sixth-grade-p.e.-dressing-room anthology.

Now back to smells and fools. When JoAnn and I emerged from the restroom, I lounged on one of the twisting stools (not to be confused with "fools") at the counter while she and Jim, her boyfriend, and Ken stationed themselves in a booth. I was "feeling my oats" as my dad always reminded me, and was also "acting full of myself," as he always reminded me.

JoAnn's ivory-girl complexion, I noticed, turned redder and redder like she was a front burner on the stove that you just directed to high and then stared at it until the glowing coals were like a fiery bullseye.

I did not know what JoAnn was trying to tell me--maybe I was acting out too much even for her. So, I toned it down a bit. The color of her face remained turned to HIGH. She would also giggle and shake her head which perplexed me even more and she kept nodding to indicate something was wrong--maybe I had Bazooka Bubble gum stuck to my shoe.

I guess it was when I looked at my shoe for bubble gum verification that I saw my pants were unzipped and revealed my leopard-print nylon bikini panties to the Village Hut staff and patronage. Now every time I smell greasy burgers and fries, I think of the Village Hut and leopard-print panties and how I began an early pilgrimage into "acting the fool."

What you must notice here is that even though word collapse threatened this writing, I wrote anyway. Even though I remembered the greasy-hamburger smell of the location where girls go who don't zip up their panties on important dates, I wrote anyway. Even though I rambled, I wrote anyway. That's what makes my heart, right now, less arrhythmic and more smooth. Yes, the rhythm of my heart beating is smooth. I like that.

Honor the writer within, the fool within, the girl-who-forgot-to-zip-up-her-panties within, the dressing-room-singer-who-is-jealous-of-Rhonda-McMillen's-fame within. When you write past word collapse, or don't make word collapse win, you hear your favorite song in your ears cheering you to some level of writing victory. My song might be "Tammy." You know what song you'll hear.

Honor the word collapse within. It is sure to taunt you when you write. Honor it, but don't give into it. Tell it about the time you revealed your leopard-print nature to the teenage world at the Village Hut. Tell it a story. That always shuts it up. Word collapse is a sucker for a story.

kss

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Copyright 2005 Shelnutt