Writing: This Writer's Life

Happy New Year's

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:52:00 +0000

So a year ago I started this blog and produced a book for writers out of it. I will be publishing that book in the upcoming months and you can purchase it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and yes on my website which will be up in the next couple of months as well. This new year is filled with possibilities. All that holds me back is me.

This year--well today actually, I am starting another year of blogging and seeing what book is produced from my constant vigilence. I have no idea what I am going to be blogging about, but I do know that for me to write is to live and to not write is to die.

Happy New Year everyone. 2012 will be what we make a decision for it to be--your life is your attitude--glass half full or half empty. My glass runs over today and I am grateful.

It feels good to be back.

Writing: This Writer's Life: And oh yes…..writing.

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:07:00 +0000

Writing: This Writer's Life: And oh yes…..writing.: "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, 'Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.' As we write, edit and self-prom..."

And oh yes…..writing.

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:05:00 +0000

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think." As we write, edit and self-promote we wait for the phone to ring, a letter to come through the mail or an email to be sent asking us to allow someone else into our writing life. As children many of us have dreamed of being on the New York Times Best Seller List and as Oprah gained clout in the publishing world some of us dreamed of the her reading our book and wanting to enter into our writing life. The goal for many of us started out as seeking success and fame. We dreamed of it at night, driving down the road, at our jobs. If you are like me you chased movies thinking all the while "I can write that." But the time comes in every writer's life when the fame doesn't come and success takes on a new meaning.

As I have matured as a person I have matured as a writer. As I have learned how to say "No" as a complete sentence I have become more responsible to my own goals and aspirations. As I have become more loyal and responsible to myself I have become less easily distracted. Getting side-tracked from our own lives is human nature. The length of time we allow ourselves to be side-tracked is what separates successful famous writers from “want to be” writers. I no longer get side-tracked for long periods of time. As I have learned to say "No" as a complete sentence my awareness of what distracts me has become more apparent. I am no longer a slave to distraction I become aware of it, I accept the minimal amount of time living life with others will keep me distracted and then I do what I can to still keep the progress of my writing life moving forward.

Being a writer is more than just writing. I am an editor, a publicist, an IT person and I am a researcher. I must always being wearing one of these many hats even when I am being distracted by life. An author friend in her blog a while back mentioned this very same concept of a writing life being more than just writing. In the past I made the mistake of thinking I had only one project going on and that project was going to make or break me as a writer. I was setting myself up to fail before I even started. I have had a psyche change when it comes to a single project and single developmental stage of a project. I must always be moving. I have discovered constant movement is the key to being disciplined. I may not have a blog entry for a few weeks, but I am editing and researching and self-promoting on a daily bases.

I often think of all the time I wasted not realizing a writing life is more than just writing. Mary McLeod Bethune said, "Forgiving is not forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt." I can choose to dwell on the past and how I wasted time setting myself up for failure before I even started my writing project or I can forgive myself for not knowing what I didn't know. I must never forget what I have learned of my past mistakes, but I need not paralyze myself with regret either. I mentioned above that I have had a psyche change in my writing life. I no longer have one project my writing is broken up into many projects that are all concurrent and require the same amount of discipline, responsibility and attention.

When I forgive myself for not knowing what I didn't know then my attitude changes in regards to how I think about myself. When I am unforgiving of myself I am resentful and angry. Resentment and anger clog up my creativity causing me to talk myself out of writing or editing a word that day. I am not moving when I am not open to my creativity and the discipline this writing life asks of me. I was hurting myself more than I am helping. To not know is one thing and easily forgivable. Being aware and still not writing is unforgiveable.

My daily writing life productivity is contingent upon my view of myself. If I am accepting of who I am, I am comfortable enough with myself to say "No" as a complete sentence. A successful writing life is one where balance prevails. All things in moderation are a must for this writer's life. It has taken years for me to find a balance in my life. There must be 8 hours of work, 8 hours of play and 8 hours of rest. Of course this is the ideal and not realistically attainable for this writer, but it is does lay a path for a way of living that allows me to juggle a multitude of balls in the air without feeling guilty over what I think I should be doing.

The 8 hour ideal tells me when to change gears in my day and helps me not give in to my own irresponsibility. Part of being comfortable in my own skin is not letting emotions rule my rational thoughts. To be all consumed with one thing is to let other things just as important fall to the wayside. There is no balance in this type of living. The psyche change that has occurred in this writer's writing life is the need for moderation in all my affairs has melded somehow to my ability to plan out a day or a week simply by saying "No."

Teachers appear in your life at the most unexpected times. The lessons we learn from these teachers we can either incorporate in our lives or ignore continuing to repeat our behavior until the pain brings us to our knees. Unfortunately for this writer I had to repeat a few lessons before I learn how to move forward in my writing life. I finally came to believe writing in isolation does not mean my writing life is one of isolation. The key to my finding balance in my writing life comes from my outreach to other writers and theirs to me. I talk about what I am doing and how I am doing it and I listen to how others have had success, success I want and am aspiring to attain.

I chose to accept my own unacceptable writing behavior because I had no one else to compare it to. Now that I have other writers in my life I am accountable not only to myself, but to live up to what I write of writing. Other writers are reading about how I am finding success so I must live up to what I write. I am responsible and I must be accountable on a daily bases by keeping my writing life moving forward on some project level.

Today I refuse to carry with me resentments I had directed at myself. I have changed my attitude to one of gratitude for the gifts I have been given. I see the world just a little bit differently than other people and that vision and the ability to articulate what it is I see are unmerited gifts I no longer am choosing to waste. I can learn from the past, but I no longer have to repeat it. I am free in this writing life today and every day I continue to move forward on one of my writing projects of editing, researching, self-promoting and oh yes…..writing.

Life is never more than I can write about............

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:50:00 +0000

Francis Bacon wrote, "By far the best proof is experience." How do I get experience as a writer if I do not go out and live life? One gift of aging is I have acquired experience. I have developed a bit of character and self-respect. I have convictions, beliefs, knowledge and awareness. I am comfortable in my own skin and I prove it when I click publish. With each experience I write and share with readers I gain trust in myself and skills.

My writing has never let me down; only I let me down when I write it is never the words. I have come to trust in what I write. I share parts of me that have been challenged and that have rejoiced in victory. Having this trust in my writing doesn’t mean I am prolific every day. I still wake up and have to have enough coffee to jolt my courage into waking up with me.

Since every day is about getting to the other side of my fear the best way to start the day is quiet so I can hear the pounding of my fear in my chest and head. It is in the silence I am forced to listen to my own voice. I use to always have background noise on so I couldn’t hear my own voice. I was unhappy and didn't want to hear myself tell me just how unhappy I was.

I write about life-changing lessons. Some lessons I have had to repeat; in fact, if I am honest all life-changing lessons I have had to repeat. I didn't realize it though until I started writing them. As I write the feelings and experiences of my life into my characters I view my life as one filled with challenges and opportunities. My life is never more than I can write about. Wendell Berry said, "The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles . . . only by a spiritual journey . . . by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home."

The circumstance of my fear is enveloped in the help and guidance I need to be a writer who writes. I find comfort when I write. I am ill-at-ease, irritable and discontented when I am not writing. Today I write so I have found a way to break through my fear. My own writing experience has taught me that the more I write the less my fear owns me. Today no one or nothing owns me. I am free to write, to click publish, to be the writer I was always meant to be and to live the life I was always meant to live.

I live one writing day at a time.........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sun, 29 May 2011 13:16:00 +0000

Louisa May Alcott said, "I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." My life is the ship I am learning to sail. It is through my writing that I learn about myself and the path(s) my life can take. Just like a ship sailing the ocean it has a course and a destination and so does my writing life. Each time I sit at the blank screen and begin to type I am plotting a course to reach my destiny. What that destiny is I don't know. The choices I make, the people I become involved with, how many words I choose to write each day all steer me down various paths to my destiny.

I may never reach my destiny because of the choices I make in my life that keep me away from my writing life. How many people die with regret because they know they didn't fulfill their destiny? I don't know if I will reach my destiny before I die, but I do know that I am making better choices when it comes to how important my writing is to my destiny. I use to put writing off until tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. I didn't have the courage to say "No" I want to be alone with me and write today. I was so dependent on other people to feel alive I couldn't sit still and write how alive I felt because it wasn’t my life I was feeling it was theirs. Today I can say "No" because I have found moderation in my life and my writing life. I live two separate lives.

When I didn't have the courage to say, "No I need to write today" I lived in a world of worry and fear. These worries and fears made me lose all perspective on what my reality actually was. My life was a nightmare. I was drowning in the love, want and need of and for others. It is a strange place to be to have all that love, want and need become so consuming you can't breathe. There is nowhere for you to run because their love and your need for love follow you wherever you go. In the state of suffering and suffocation I could not write.

My suffering was about the future and what I would gain or what I would lose if I said "No." As I have learned to live my life in the present in the very moment I am breathing in fear and worries of the past have slipped away. I live one writing day at a time and I make the most out of that day. My courage to write my truth and my reality is hinged on my ability to remove fear from my mind by just staying in the moment. I just have to do something for my writing life today. I don't have to worry about yesterday and what I did and I don't have to think about what it is I need to do tomorrow because tomorrow never comes.

Preparing for a future that may never come about is a way of protecting myself from exposure. If I predict an outcome then I plot a course to make my own prediction come true. If I say I am going to write tomorrow then I am predicting I am not going to write today and that is exactly what happens. I don't write a single word today.

Fellowship with other writers has kept me honest about my writing and non-writing. When I communicate with a group of writers who write as much as they can in a single day then my day reflects theirs and I write as much as I can in a single day. Like-minded people lift each other up. People not of my like mind don't understand the need for me to empty my head, to write and explore what I feel and have experienced and felt in my past. I write who I am and I discover who I am by writing what I remember of my history.

As I reflect back on my worries and fears that kept me from writing I realize that most of them never came to pass and those that did materialize my best preparation would not have been enough to prevent the episode or situation from happening. As I have grown into my writing self [through writing I can't stress that enough] my faith in my destiny has enhanced. My self-esteem and self-trust has soared. I am not talking about false pride look at me. I am talking about internal satisfaction, comfortable in my own skin, happy to be living this writer's life. I have become capable of doing for myself what I have always looked for others to do for me. I have developed a belief that I can and am achieving my destiny. All I do each day is take the appropriate action in my writing life and the pages just fill up.

I am no longer afraid to say "No" to people or to myself for that matter. There are times when it is necessary to say "No" to myself because I am imperfectly human and want to side step the discipline it takes to be a writer writing this writer's life, but the more I write the more I am learning how to steer my ship to my finally destiny. The goal is to arrive without regret. Louis L. Hay wrote, “I now choose to rise above my personality problems to recognize the magnificence of my being. I am totally willing to learn to love myself.” So here I go trudging the Road of Happy Destiny……..some of you will know where that belief comes from J

Writing restores me to sanity........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sat, 28 May 2011 19:31:00 +0000

Maltbie D. Babcock wrote, "Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves." The more I write the more I begin to notice the separation between who I use to be and who I am now as I write. Writing restores me. It brings me to a place within I have always wanted to dwell. In this mecca within me I am restored to sanity. I know of my own restoration because I am able to make comparisons between the mind I use to use and the one I use now.

I remember twenty years ago when I was unable to sit still long enough to write more than a vignette of a character. My mind was so full of chaos, drama and connecting my life to others that to write with a full mind was impossible. As I have grown in myself so has my writing grown. The more I have come to rely on myself and stopped looking for others to support me, love me, want me and care about my writing as much I do the more I have been able to give support, love and want to myself and care for my own writing.

Helen Keller said “To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” The only person who can defeat me is me. History is made up of memories of people repeating the same mistakes of their ancestors. In our own lives we make history by repeating the same mistakes. Writing gives us the opportunity to change our history though. Through my writing I can avoid making the same mistakes. I can change my behaviors so that my history doesn’t repeat itself.

I change my behavior by writing about them until I understand why I behave the way I do. Creating characters is writing myself, my experiences, my thoughts, my feelings. I learn about myself from writing about myself. Writing myself is not planning or creating a future; it is writing so I move forward not backwards. If I write to plan my future I limit my ability to reflect and write what I know which is my past. When I stifle my creativity by limiting my thinking I must remind myself to always remain teachable and open-minded.

As I write I change through my own self-discovery. I continually let go of my past behaviors and old ideas because to repeat the past is to create barriers to my writing. If I don’t let go of my past as I write it my approach to life is one of clinging rather than freedom. Top write is freedom to not write is to be imprisoned. If I get too attached to one form of thinking, being or feeling then I limit my approach to my writing. Writing in this writer’s life is adjusting to the changes within my own mind. When I am versatile as a writer I write without suffering.

Writing is practice being myself. The self I know I can be. The self I aspire to be that has always lived within me. I cross paths with the mind I used in the past, but my new mind is so flexible such moments are merely fleeting ones. As a writer I do not see and write the world as it is. I see and write the world as I am in the moment I am writing it.

As I grow in my writing I learn and unlearn what is me and was me. I replace my old ideas with new ones as long as I remain teachable. I seek and claim new ideas. I welcome change because through change a flow of writing material surfaces. With each change in my life and my thinking I nourish and replenish my vast library of writing material. As I keep my face towards change I nourish and replenish my belief. The belief that I am writing this writer’s life so others can identify and write their writing lives.

Writing is a personal inventory.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 24 May 2011 00:58:00 +0000

Samuel Butler wrote, "I care about the truth not for truth's sake but for my own." When I write I write my truth, my vision, my experience, my memories, feelings, thoughts, ideas. When I am writing at my best I am admitting I am human, I have flaws, I fail, I struggle, and at times I don't succeed. When I write I am acknowledging I am not perfect, I am human. In my imperfection I am filled with mistakes.

Writing is a series of mini confessions made to readers. Admitting my humanness isn't easy. Having the courage to reveal the imperfections in myself through my writing is trudging the road of self-discovery. When I write of the people in my life I am writing them through my eyes. I write how my mistakes affect them and how their humanness affects me.

Pretending is something non-writers do. Non-writers pretend they know what another feels, thinks and experiences because it is easier. Pretending is easier to write; it takes no courage. Pretending we feel something we never experienced is easier than writing what we truly have experienced. When non-writers pretend they justify, rationalize and ultimately lie. To lie is inviting because it demands nothing of us and that nothingness is reflected on the page. The price a non-writer pays for not taking the risk of writing their own experience is that they never become the writer they truly are.

Writers face who they are head on. We dig deep into the recesses of our lives and dig for material readers will identify with. Writers write of feelings, experiences and thoughts. We face our guilt, shame, we deal with our remorse and we write through our fears. Non-writers drag these feelings around with them like a duffel bag. Writers seek an alternative to such dragging every time they sit at the laptop to write.

Writing is a personal inventory of how we have lived in our life outside of writing. In writing writers admit they are human and use their human condition to create epics, sagas and classics. Writers free themselves of the bondage of self. Non-writers hold onto the bondage of self because they are afraid they won't exist without the pain. Writers get beyond the pain by writing our fears and taking responsibility for the actions and in-actions in our lives. Writers free themselves of their secrets, we accept our imperfections, and we love ourselves because others find us so difficult to love. In order to be the writer I truly am I must accept the person in me who makes mistakes and who is imperfectly human.

Writing takes courage. Cowards call themselves writers when they aren't writing of themselves. When as writers we admit to our errors; we begin to make amends to ourselves and to those who try to love us. The risk I take as a writer to face myself and write what I fear, my secrets, I achieve the personal writing success I have always craved, yearned for. As a writer I write the truth. When I was a non-writer I didn't have the courage to write the truth.

Writers are truly alive........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Sidney Lovett wrote, "Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands--a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world." There have been times in my life I was so filled with self-doubt that my writing life had no air to breathe. There were many times when I doubted my talent and how I view the world. It is easier to doubt than it is to achieve. Believing in yourself is difficult.

There have always been people in my life to guide me closer to a place of self-discovery and away from a path of self-discovery. Ultimately the choice of my path is mine. Others can guide me only if I let them. If I remain teachable then teachers appear. If I remain closed off and isolated then I attract people who don't want me to learn and self-discover.

When I think my writing life is over and I feel desperate due to the loss of self a teacher always appears. It is only through being as desperate to write, as the dying can be that I finally muster the courage to sit at the empty screen and write. My writing is a reflection of feelings and experiences that flow like music from my mind. There are so many times my fingers can't keep up with the flow of words that stream in thought.

When the courage to write finally comes my attitude about life changes; I know that it would have been easier to give up and not write at all, but I also know that that is a lie. To give up who you are out of fear and misguided direction is not easier. It is suffering. I do not have to suffer today because I can have the courage to write who I am.

My writing encourages me to be honest with myself first and with others second. I have the courage to write what I am afraid to say aloud. The more I write the more I feel and the more I feel the more I am honest and unafraid. Deep down within every non-writer is a writer wanting to be released. A writer that pushes at us from the inside out poking us to find peace, direction, happiness and to become the writer we were meant to be. Writing in a writer’s life is discovering wholeness. Not writing in a writer’s life is to remain fragmented.

As writers we are isolated not only physically from a world that buzzes around us outside of closed doors, but we are isolated in our minds. We view the world in minute details others overlook. We see and feel the slightest changes in breeze, in motion, in sound. We feel like no other human does. We seek the small while the world is focused on the huge.

In the world I feel far away. I have to listen carefully to the world in order to be a part of her. I have to listen for the words of my teacher who can be anywhere at any time in my day. I seek wisdom where others see none. I hear doors open where others hear nothing. I never know where my newest story, idea, sentence or word will come from, but I must always be open to receive the message.

I sit in my empty apartment quiet listening to the traffic roll by; I hear the breathing of my cats, the bubbling of the water in my goldfish tank. I feel the presence of life around me because I sit still long enough to feel life. A writer who writes is right sized. A non-writer who isn’t writing is wrong-sized. Nature is a place for writers to go to understand the gift they have been given. To feel one amongst grains of sand at the ocean, to feel the thunderous power of waves crashing and to witness the stars lighting up a blackened sky is to become right sized. It is only then that I can embrace my gift of writing expressively what I think, feel and experience. It is only when I am right sized that I am truly alive and writing.

Writing is to get yourself back......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 17 May 2011 21:26:00 +0000

James Michener wrote, "If a man happens to find himself . . . he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life." It is in writing that I learn about the me I never know until I write her. Each time I sit down to write the question I answer is "Who am I?" Answering this three word question is why so many non-writers never become writers. It takes courage to sit in front of a blank screen and self-discover. The fear is over-whelming when our writing calls us to dig within ourselves to create suffering characters with a problem to resolve.

The human condition is man's greatest gift as well as man's greatest curse. It only takes the next experience to out-date the knowledge we think we have gained about ourselves. We gain self-knowledge through writing the secrets we commit to ourselves never to tell anyone. Non-writers remain non-writers because they write all that isn't close to them. They write of other people's lives they have not experienced. They write of another's dislikes, feelings and thoughts not their own. When we write what we think another person is thinking, feeling, experiencing we are not writing about who we are or about what we know. Writers who write about others don't become great writers simply because they never do the writing work required to end their own personal suffering.

Each day we sit down to write we honor our commitment to self to rediscover who we are. Every situation, circumstance, human interaction changes who we are. We search in others what has always been in ourselves. We search to end our fear for living. Editing is the helpful tool of writing that establishes trust between the writing self and the suffering self. The writer will never write more than the suffering self can handle. It is impossible because to do so would be to self-destruct.

When we edit as writers we listen to what we have honestly written about the “us” we are discovering. It is only in editing our self that we learn how to lessen our suffering. As a writer I write of experiences, thoughts, feelings in the lives of characters I create that I identify with. It is only through writing what I know, what I feel and what I think that I gain insight into my own suffering self and find a way to relieve my human suffering.

Much of my writing life has been non-writing because I only knew what I didn't want. I became a writer when I began writing about the suffering inside me I know, feel and experience. It was when I came to accept who I truly am that I began to accept and write what I want to be. To accept myself as I truly am is to become the writer I was truly meant to be.

I must write what others are too afraid to live.....

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:03:00 +0000

Confucius said, "You cannot create a statue by smashing the marble with a hammer, and you cannot by force of arms release the spirit or soul of man." The more I write and self-analyze in my writing the more awareness I have of self and the flaws of self. Notice I said flaws and not good qualities of self. It is my writing nature to focus on what is wrong in all I do instead of what is good.

When in my writing I notice a change in my thinking, a change in my perceptions and a change in my level of honesty it is because I have stopped focusing on what I believe doesn't shine in me. I have formulated a new, deeper, more honest awareness of who I am as a writer. I am able to express my feelings more honestly simply because I am able to attach some good to them.

It is dishonest of me to think of only the negative of any experience or to express my feelings about a circumstance as all bad. Even if the only positive I bring away from an experience is that I’ve learned more about myself then there was some good in it, something to be grateful for in that situation. It is only in hindsight though that the positive and the good becomes available to me in my thinking process.

In the moment of an experience that isn't how I want it to be I feel and only see the negative. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison wrote, “. . . to have a crisis, and act upon it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.” It is as I become able to write of the experience honestly that I am able to see it as not all hurtful, or sad, or negative. It is only in hindsight I see the changes in myself that have occurred and the change is always positive. With each rehashing of an experience in my writing my feelings and my part become clearer. As I am able to see more than the hurtful side of things I am able to write a more well-rounded account of the experience that is honest and not skewed.

To replace the negative thoughts in my writing with an honest perspective of nothing is all bad and no one person all wrong is a freedom of expression I get as a writer that I chase. When I write of an experience I accept it as it is and for what it was meant to teach me. With each character, each story within that character’s life I am reaching into the essence of me. I am resurrecting experiences and feeling that have brought me to the very moment I am sitting in at the laptop.

Today as I reflect on experiences and write of my feelings and the parts I played and others played in those experiences I am going to pay close attention to the truth I am telling of myself and others in the story. The truth must reflect good and bad, positive and negative. I must reflect and write long enough that I combine my all-negative emotions with positive truths in order to create a realistic balance in my story.

To create a story and characters a reader will identify with I must write all sides not just the side I am comfortable with or that has affected me. As a writer what I teach myself in my writing is up to me and no one else. Writing is a growing process for this writer. I must embrace the process of self-discovery that my writing brings to me. I must have patience. I must feel the discomfort during my reflection on circumstances, experiences and feelings that altered my life and my psyche whether I wanted them to or not.

I cannot fix all that is wrong with my story in a single day. Sometimes the best fix is to accept that right now the story or character cannot be fixed at all because I am not ready to face the solution. When I struggle with a character or a story it is because I am unwilling to be honest about my experience and feelings I am writing. I must step away from the laptop and reach out to my like-minded fellows. I must dig deep into my consciousness to reveal the truth of the matter. What my part was in the experience and what the other people’s part was.

Writing requires me to always do an honest self-appraisal of how I am feeling and why I am feeling that way. I must turn what I don’t like into something that is productive in my writing. By turning what I am uncomfortable with into something productive in my writing I create a story and characters my readers identify with. I can give a reader the freedom to feel the despair they are too afraid to feel by writing a character that is able to act out the reader’s own suicidal fantasies. I can write out the calculated murder of a rapist and a rape victim becomes free to live out the same fantasy by identifying with my character.

Matthew Arnold wrote, “Resolve to be thyself and know that he who finds himself loses his misery.” In order for me to write so others identify I must turn my own discomfort into something useful and productive in my writing life. I must take risks, leap blindly and delve into my inner consciousness with complete abandon if I am to create a manuscript readers identify with. I must give my readers the opportunity to live out their fantasies through my characters. I must live, as others are too afraid to live.

To write is to live free.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:00:00 +0000

H. G. Wells said, "The past is but the beginning of a beginning." With each new day comes a new set of choices. I have struggled so far in the month of April to find balance between my writing for short-term pay and my writing for long-term opportunities. I keep telling myself April only has thirty days my following for this blog will still be there, but fear rears its ugly head and I worry. I couldn't hold off another day from writing this blog entry. And I now feel complete again as I type.

My struggle this month is that I am bogged down in dealing with old restitutions I need to make in order to continue to be free to write when I want, how I want and what I want. In dealing with these old restitutions I have discovered some realizations about myself and the people around me. I must always surround myself with people I aspire to be like. If I don't then I am too easily pulled back into the selfish, self-centered, self-seeking person I strive today not to be. There are only two types of people in the world givers and takers. Each day I have a choice to make about who I want to be. The writer in me is the giver. The non-writer is the taker.

I must never forget my writing journey is forward and either people are with me or not with me. I gain great insight into myself and others when I reflect and write of past circumstances and experiences. It is easy to write in a non-judgmental frame of mind when all that is required for good writing is to accept that people do the best they can with the knowledge of self they have in the moment. When I bring this accepting attitude into my daily writing I am able to change the lives of my characters most times for the better, but nothing is absolute. Characters tend to have a mind of their own when it comes to learning life lessons.

As writers we cannot afford to live as others do. We cannot deny, distort or lose touch with the pain of our past lives. In order to write we must face the truth of our past, critically tear ourselves apart until we recognize our feeling are not unique, our actions have been repeated by others and finally we forgive ourselves for being human in the first place. When I can forgive myself for being human I become able to use what I understand as my authentic self and the best source of writing material I will ever discover.

I need always remember when I revisit the past I must also leave it when I am finished researching how circumstances and experiences made me feel. The past is always over and it is what I do now in the present that effects my writing today. I may be powerless over what has happened in the past, but I am not powerless over how I use it to create a prolific writing future for myself. My writing will rarely be an amends to anyone from my past. I have learned from reading Pat Conroy, Raymond Carver, A. R. Gurney and Peter Taylor that to write of what I know brings out the same anxiety in those around me that I experience. The difference between “the others” in my life and me is I found the courage to face my fears in spite of the judgment of those around me. They are still trapped and through my writing and publishing I grow more and more free.

I am not responsible for how others feel about my writing. I am only responsible for working through my own feelings through my writing. I cannot change the choices others make of how they choose to live their lives. I can only change the way I live and express the changes through developing characters that live a life readers identify with. There are only two choices a writer ever really has. One choice is to continue on the path I am on filled with fear and not writing. The second choice is to make changes in my attitude of self-worth that will bring me personal growth and a deeper understanding of self. Non writers are too afraid to write their experience and feelings. I am a writer and all I write is a reflection of my experiences and feelings growth.

I spent years as a non-writer denying my feelings in order to protect myself from the judgment of others. I separated my writing self from my life and hid her in a closet. If I couldn't see her, hear her or feel her pain of loneliness then I wouldn't have to deal with my fear of being judged by others. I lived this way until not writing became easy for me. I lived a life of indifference; I became detached from the part of me I loved the most my writing self.

I lived in fear of being judged and that fear brought me to a place where I didn't feel good enough in comparison to others. I became less than the person I knew I was. Fear and anxiety ruled me until a teacher appeared and the lesson of no one is less than anyone else was finally felt inside of me. The shift in attitude came from understanding that "The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them." This line comes from the play The Devil's Disciple written by George Bernard Shaw in 1901.

When I realized to be a part of a fellowship of like-minded people was to stop separating myself from them I became free to write whatever I felt without fear. In order to be a writer and a working part of a fellowship of writers I must find within the courage to walk through my fear. I must write on a daily basis and write whatever is in me to say and then click publish.

I have come to a place in my life where I am safe within myself to feel my feelings and write of them without feeling a responsibility to those involved in my experiences and feelings. I do not have to live a life of shutting out my writing self by locking her away in a closet. With every word I write and every click of publish I grow a deeper love of self, greater self-worth and a deeper sense of freedom from within.

As a writer I have the ability to write of past experiences and feelings with truthful respect and in proper perspective. I can still love those around me and myself and write of what makes us all imperfectly human. I have forgiven myself for my humanness and I am not responsible for the feelings of others who have not forgiven themselves. Graham Greene said, “Isn’t disloyalty as much the writer’s virtue as loyalty is the soldier’s?” Writing of what is real and not distorted will feel like disloyalty to those who fear their feelings will be exposed in my writing.

As a writer I am loyal to my need and desire to reflect, experience and to write what feel, have felt and do feel through my relationships with other people. As a non-writer I am loyal to the needs of others and I express my loyalty by not writing. I do not write of my experiences, circumstances and feelings which are always entwined with the lives and feelings of others. Each day I make a conscious choice to be a writer loyal to myself or a non-writer loyal to others. I am a writer today loyal in my writing only to myself. I am free.

Editing is part of writing the truth.....

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 15:31:00 +0000

I have taken this week off to do some needed research and to try and figure out a writing schedule that would allow me to earn a comfortable living and to continue with the amount of material I have come accustomed to writing for this blog. What I have found is there isn't enough hours in the day (no surprise) so every other day will be a blog and every day will be work! That is moderation to the best of my ability and on the off days I have time for the writing of my novel on my other blog http://uncherishedastory.blogspot.com/ so here we go with the new material and schedule!!

Faith Baldwin said, "Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations." I don't know about you, but editing is not my favorite part of writing. I missed the lesson in editing class where we were taught that editing is to dig deeper and learn more than we do when writing. As I go through my chapters line by line experiencing the feelings over and over again until I get to the truth of what it is I wanted to say all along I am editing. Editing hasn't always been about the truth for me; editing use to be a way for me to cover up the truth in my writing because I was still in that place of worry and fear of what other people might think.

Albert Einstein wrote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." When I go back to edit now I am not rewriting to cover up the truth of what I think or how I feel. I am rewriting to make sure the emotion, the sentiment, the experience is raw and filled with feeling. I write because I have an agenda. An agenda to be as honest and truthful as I can about me so others can peek out from behind the curtain and be truthful and honest about whom they are. I write for fellowship, for identification with others. I do not compare for comparison paralyzes.

When I write knowing I am in unison with others not able yet to write with freedom I embrace editing instead of hating it. Writers and non-writers alike walk parallel paths and our writing whether in our minds or on paper is enhanced by the movements of sifting through words to get to the truth. For the non-writer every word of truth written brings you closer to a whole sentence, a paragraph, a chapter and a completed novel. For every writer the truth brings new acceptance and freedom once experienced can never be forgotten and becomes all we seek in future writing sessions.

The writer’s greatest demon is perfectionism. If we edit for technical perfection we can lose the truth we started out with. Every writer starts with a blank page. If we forget where we start we will never be able to reach the end. It is only because I feel I am no different than Atwood, Fitzgerald, King, White, Austen, Woolf and all the other greats that I am able to assemble the courage required to write the truth of my life as I feel it.

To edit is to willingly acknowledge our writing is not a perfect tour de force in terms of technique. Every writer knows the true tour de force is really the rawness of imperfection in writing our experience and feelings as they pour out on to the blank page. By acknowledging error in technique we are not saying there is any error in our feelings or perceptions of our world, our reality as it forms around us. From editing I derive gratitude today simply because I view editing as an opportunity to clarify what I feel as I reflect on the experience I have written.

Writing is a process. As I edit I learn, I grow, I share myself at a deeper level without fear. I restructure words and sentences so readers may identify with clarity and value the art of writing. I pour out my soul in my writing and in order to sift through the pain of living I must edit and clarify my technique allowing the real truth to be revealed. Writing is letting time have her way with my writing making alterations of my perceptions. Going back to a piece of writing after some time has passed brings clarity. Clarity allows me to make necessary changes in my own self-discovery that reaches far beyond the technical task at hand many writers including myself view editing to be.

Published writers are not always the most gifted, but they are the most courageous. What separates writers and non-writers is determination. The three Bronte sisters we read were more determined and courageous than their brother who we have never read. Branwell Bronte believed to be the most talented writer in the Bronte family never sent his writing to a publisher simply because he lacked the courage and determination of his sisters.

John Berryman believed 20% of writing was talent and the rest was persistence. This week I was asked how do I continue to write as much as I do. First, I write because I like to eat and my persistence to earn a living off the written word has provided me a life of feast or famine and I prefer feast. Second, I write this blog and pulled out the manuscript from the drawer because to live with regret is one thing, but to die with regret is another and to live as if I have died with regret is yet another thing altogether.

It wasn't until I had a teacher appear in my life who was chronically ill that I was able to feel the difference between living with regret, dying with regret and living filled with regret as if I were dying. Three very different feelings I experienced through my teacher, my once upon a time friend.

Fear is a leach attached to our dreams, desires and hopes. Fear sucks up the very breath our life depends on. When I was in the mental and emotional state of being afraid of the truth I was living in a state of regret. It wasn't until my fear identified with my teacher’s fear that I was able to feel by living with regret I was actually living a dying person's life. I had become the very thing I wanted to write about.

I will always be grateful for my experience with my friend, my teacher for it gave me the courage to be the writer I always wanted to be, but was too afraid to become. From finding the courage to face my fears of clicking publish I have developed my own sense of will, determination and persistence. I write as I feel, as I reflect and as I interpret my experience regardless of what the ramifications are for those still afraid to tell the truth about their own lives. I wish them well, but I must leave them behind without looking back. To look back would be to turn into a pillar of salt like Lot's wife in the Book of Genesis. I determinedly write for a future derived from the past.

Writers and non-writers alike......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 02:02:00 +0000

Aristotle wrote, "It is impossible that anything should be produced if there were nothing existing before." Everything written has come from someone's experience and reflection of that experience. From memories and remembered feelings life is replicated in short stories, poems, novellas and novels. The planets align, jungles flourish, gardens bloom, farms produce and the seas overflow with life. People are reading your work and you are in every word.

Each person has a story to tell. A story of possibilities some fulfilled and some decaying within us. Everything we do comes from within. We interpret the world as we feel it. If the world is aligning to hurt us we feel life circumstances from a position of pain. If the world has lined up to make us laugh then we feel the wealth of those in our life with joy. All of us, writers and non-writers alike, feel the greatness of our lives and the lives of those around us. Whether or not we allow ourselves the capacity to feel the great goodness or the despair of selfishness or the darkness of hurting another soul unnecessarily we all have the same capacity to make choices.

Ingrid Bengis wrote ". . . the absence of love in our lives is what makes them seem raw and unfinished." "Them" in Bengis' quote is feelings without feelings in our lives we go unfinished as writers. The writer writes to finish, play out, fulfill feelings. The writer cannot endure raw and unfinished love, despair, fear, anger, joy, happiness or loneliness. We can only mull over feelings for so long before they have to come out. We write what is naturally bothering us in the day.

Every time we feel the urge to write we have choices. The choice is always ours whether or not to write in our day. The choice of what we write about is also a choice we have. As we live and collect experience from days of mundane happy and painful living we create a formidable repertoire of circumstances, experiences and feelings to use as material for our writing day.

Every writer has a pattern of responses that keep them away from the laptop or bring them to it day after day. We are comfortable in our patterns, we wallow in our ability to commit or not commit to writing those feelings and experiences hidden deep within us we are afraid to share. Whatever the habitual pattern is we have developed it saves us from the fear of sharing ourselves with total strangers. The discomfort of opening ourselves up and sharing our feelings is a risk we may or may not make, but the choice is ours.

Orinda said, ". . . my grief was too deeply rooted to be cured with words." As writers what do we get back from taking the risk of sharing our feelings and our lives with strangers; especially those strangers who call us son, daughter, aunt and friend. When we give up comfort to write how we feel we give up the distraction of spontaneity in our lives. We become disciplined in our actions, our routines, our thoughts of what to write consume us until we become so filled with the feeling of an experience we have to empty ourselves of it in order to move on to the next feeling and experience.

Our habits of how we write has no room for spontaneity our life becomes planned. If I do this today then I have to make up for it tomorrow. What the world considers usual behavior is far removed from a writer's life. Writers navigate their writing moments to fit into the world of others. There is no automatic pilot for us we dictate our whole life either by avoiding writing or writing all the time.

Writing requires forgiveness....

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:43:00 +0000

John Stevens wrote, "When I trust and respect myself enough to be myself honestly, others respond with trust and respect." To be the writer I want to be is to honestly accept the person I truly am. I must greet my writing with ease and have a commitment to write founded in integrity: Integrity because I honor my own promise to myself to write. When I began this blog I made a commitment to myself to be honest about how I feel. I made a commitment to write my feelings in hopes of creating a place where other writers identify with my struggles of fighting off distractions, having patience to develop the habit of sitting still and writing and in overcoming the fear that has prevented me in the past from clicking publish.

When I write with honesty I eliminate the uncertainty of how others will respond to what I have written. What others think after I click publish means nothing to me because I have been honest about what I think and how I feel. My motives are not clouded when I am honest in my writing. I am not confused by the inconsistencies of my story. If I am writing honestly there are no inconsistencies.

In my writing the more honest I am about my feelings the more I am inviting the reader to identify with me and the experiences of my life. A writer who writes honestly has self-respect after they click publish. They can go about their day or crawl into bed with a clear conscious knowing they were honest in their expression of themselves and that is the only requirement of this writer in this writing life.

When I have self-respect as a writer I encourage respectful commentary from my readers. Honesty is like a boomerang it returns what has been thrown out. When I write I am always teaching. I am teaching my readers a possible way to resolve a conflict, I am teaching that it is ok to be afraid and what really is important is what you do with your fear not that you have it and I teach how to take the risk to be honest and build your own self-respect by having the courage to click publish.

When I write I am teaching others how to treat me. I teach them to identify and not compare. With every word I write I take an action in speaking to others about my personhood. My personhood is what makes me human it is what my readers identify with. I set the tone for what I want my reader's experience to be. The underlying foundation of all my writing is my honest behavior of expressing self. It is in my expression of self honestly that I become all-powerful in my writing. With every click of publish I gain self-respect which is empowering.

Jane Jacobs wrote, "Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems." I write of what it feels like to be human. I write of the experiences in my life that connect me to others who forgive themselves for being human and some who never find forgiveness. When I write I must step back from the feeling so I can express the feeling. I cannot write of despair in the throes of despair. The vocabulary doesn't come because there are no words to express the deep anguish of despair. The language we use is limited, but it is all we have to communicate with each other at the highest level possible.

The conflicts I write come about because it is forgotten how difficult it is to be human. In my stories I write of life where we have impossibly high standards of behavior for each other and for ourselves. Writing conflict is simply writing how a character, a person, has failed in living up to the perfect standard of behavior we have set for them. As marvelous a creature as humans are we thwart our own happiness by never being satisfied and accepting who we are or who others are. The writing experience of this writer's life is that acceptance of self, the development of honest appraisal and a true foundation of self-respect where approval from another person is no longer sought has provided courage, freedom, trust that there is a plan and by doing the action of writing the plan is unfolding.

Being human is difficult, but writing of being human is even more difficult. In order to write of being human I must detach myself from a human experience and the feelings about the experience allowing myself the space in my mind to reflect. If I am all consumed then there is no space in my mind for anything else to exist. Walking is a way for me to make room in my mind for reflection to exist.

In reflection I can write of feelings that cover me like a pall. I have learned to live with these feelings and accept them because they don't ever leave me for long. Pat Conroy in his writing about his abusive father said, "The scene upset me badly. I had created a boy named Ben Meecham and had given him my story. His loneliness, his unbearable solitude, almost killed me as I wrote about him." Writing non-fiction is an easier calling for writers it is tactical and pragmatic. Fiction writing is psychologically soul wrenching, heart ripping, yet fiction is what most writers want to write. Those of us who dare to write manuscript after manuscript about our feelings overcome, accept and forgive ourselves for being human. Forgiveness separates the writer from the non-writer.

A writer's inner consciousness.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:04:00 +0000

Albert Einstein wrote, "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why." How many times have I discovered the answer to a writing problem in my sleep, on a walk or sitting by the ocean? The answer to every problem always lies within me. There is a consciousness that lives in each of use that if we tap into will bring us to a place where we can be more than we ever dreamed we could be. That consciousness is what I tap into every time I sit at the laptop to write.

Yesterday I started a new blog: http://uncherishedastory.blogspot.com/

In this blog I am going to write my book. I am going to write of feelings and post my work because I find this blog keeps me honest about my self-made commitment to be a writer who writes. I have tapped into my consciousness that Einstein talks about. I did not discover this inner consciousness alone, but once discovered I am alone to tap into it each day to write.

I've experienced the full spectrum of emotions over the past few months and I am raw with feeling. That rawness with feeling has given me freedom and a wealth of material in the moment to write. I can reflect on the experiences of my life and use them to write the feelings of a woman in our American history. I have been trying to write the feelings of this woman for 15 years and I didn't have the courage to feel what I needed to feel to write her. I am free today. I have been inspired and motivated. I have been given the opportunity to feel the full spectrum of emotions that we all have as humans, but that we pick and choose to actually feel on any given day.

Pablo Picasso said, "It takes a long time to become young." And young is how I feel. I am reborn with a renewed opportunity to be the person I was always meant to be, but was too hurt and afraid to become. There is within each of us the person we were meant to become. Writers tap into the consciousness that lost person on a daily bases. As writers we ready our lives for a creative experience by putting on a business suit like John Cheever, going to a room in the basement to do his daily work of writing and taking off his suit, hanging it up and writing for the day in his underwear. I get up, make my coffee and go to my living room and work in my pajamas without a shower until my mind becomes distracted by thoughts I am not showered or dressed. I finish up the project I am working on then go take care of myself and ready myself for the world if I want to go out and then I start a new writing project.

What we do as writers to tap into our consciousness and try to fend off the ". . . ten thousand things that need doing . . ." according to Jessamyn West is anything and everything. Distraction is a writer’s worst enemy. The mind is the writer's best friend or worst enemy and we never know which mind we are going to wake up to on any given day. It is for these reasons that discipline provides the only reprieve from non-writing for any writer. I must create for myself a foundation in bedrock that allows me without fail to sit down at the laptop and begin typing words. My mind can be filled with so many loud voices I can't hear myself think, but I must sit still anyway. The key to any writer's success is their ability to sit still in the midst of unwanted voices and chaos.

To sit still is the hardest task for any writer and the very task separating non-writers from writers. We can't write if we can't sit still long enough to write. It doesn't matter what we wear or what we don't wear. What matters is the rationale that gets to the physical position of sitting still. Sitting still takes nerve. When I sit still at the laptop I am staring at nothingness with the expectation I will replace nothingness with something of worth. Filling a page with words is more about fear than intellect.

Kingsley Amis wrote of his work day, "I linger over breakfast reading papers, telling myself hypocritically that I've got to keep up with what's going on, but really staving off that dreadful time when I have to go to the typewriter." Amis struggled with the fear of sitting still and writing. In order to be the writer I want and meant to be I must overcome the person I am. I must learn to accept myself for being human and I can only do so if I identify with other people like me. If I compare Cheever and his business suit to me in my pajamas I will not feel connected, but if I identify with Amis' procrastination and his struggle with his feelings of not wanting to sit still to write then I become a part of something greater than myself within myself. Connection with our inner consciousness comes from identifying not comparing ourselves to other writers.

As children we are taught to be independent, to go it alone, to be a self-made man, yet for writers who write in isolation we find the pathway to our inner consciousness through identifying with other writers. We are taught that to be successful is to be independent, but true success comes from being identified with and identifying with others like ourselves which develops interdependence not independence. Since I have tapped into my inner consciousness I find I am more interdependent with people in my life, less independent and no longer dependent. I have found a freedom in writing. I have found a freedom in writing respectfully of my fears. I have found freedom having the courage to start writing and to click publish when I am finished.

If I have learned anything over the past few months of tapping my inner consciousness I have learned like Alberto Moravia who was so in love he wondered the streets of Rome wishing a car would strike him down that, "That was in the afternoon, of course, in the morning I work." I must always write no matter what chaos, drama or pain goes on around me. If I am to be the writer I really want to be I must accept the person I truly am. I am a writer first and then I am whatever others want me to be.

Writing dreams are more than whims.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:56:00 +0000

Sue Atchley Ebaugh said, "Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities." As a writer I have to be careful to not live solely in my dreams. How easy it would be to go through life being a permanent guest of my own dreams. Dreams and aspirations do serve a purpose in life, but to spend too much time in the reality I create in my head versus the reality of life with others is a dangerous place to live. Such a place lives beyond any realistic goals I might set for myself as a writer and as a responsible person involved in the lives of others.

Dreams are more than whims they are fancies. Dreams call to me in my sleep, in my day dreaming, in my conversations with others. My dreams call me to search for opportunities to have them fulfilled. My dreams require me to tap into my talent, my gifts, freely and have them honed and ready when the opportunity arises to use them. Dreams encourage me and tempt me with new aspirations and adventures.

When I write I invite the present into my dreams. I join the past, present and future into a mosaic of dreams I then capture to the best of my ability in words. The trick is to understand as I write the dream I am losing the dream state.

No writer can write the dream they have imagined. The language we use is limited as is our memories of experiences and our ability to relay feelings in a language that falls short of true self-expressed emotion. The depth of my writing on any given day is linked to the richness of my dreams. To have my dreams fulfilled is a different writing day then to have my dreams unfulfilled.

Dr. George Weinberg wrote, "Every outlook, desirable or undesirable, remains possible for anyone, no matter what his present outlook is." I rarely write of joy and excitement, but I feel joy and excitement when I write. Writing for this writer is about getting the hurt out. The pain of living has to be extracted so I might go out and live my life with friends and loved ones.

It is far easier to laugh and to write of laughing then it is too sit still and feel fear, sorrow and the pain of not having your dreams fulfilled. With writing joy and excitement we easily write with anticipation. When we write of grief, abandonment and loss we dredge and pound spikes into our being to pick at the wounds of who we are as people.

It is writing the pain of living readers like. To read someone else's feelings allows me to feel better about my feelings. The goal of attracting readers is to have them identify and feel empathy for the character. The reader wants to push the bar and feel those locked away feelings, but not feel too much. If the reader could feel the full impact of their emotions then they would write them and not read about someone else's. This simple difference is what separates the writer from the non-writer.

There are also physical things that separate the writer from the non-writer. Hope Dahke Jordan wrote in her blue bathrobe with the ends of the belt tied around each arm of her chair, "That is the only way to get a book finished. For as long as I stay in my blue bathrobe I stay at my typewriter." The attitude to commit to writing that novel, that poem or short story is a physical commitment of forcing yourself to sit still long enough for the fear and anxiety to leave and if not leave then lessen enough so you can hear your own voice. Writers must get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Many writers write in the morning when their head is clear from a fresh night's sleep. I like to write in the morning. The mind is clear in the morning because the chatter of the world has been turned off for a substantial amount of time. Sleep for this writer is essential. Power naps are this writer's best friend. I have learned how to sit still at the laptop. I no longer need to tie myself into the chair to sit still. I am free to get up from the laptop, set the alarm on my cell phone for 30 minutes, close my eyes on the couch and free my brain from the clutter that has collected from thinking of other people and conversing with people up to that point in the day.

Quieting then mind though is a whole other self-discipline. Attitude can only take a writer so far. Approaching the mind like it was no different than any other muscle in the body has helped my writing immensely. There are times when the body is fine, but the mind is cluttered. A nap doesn't help my mind clear in this situation. I am a walker and exercise clears my mind allowing me to start my writing day over again at any moment. I walk 6 miles when I need to clear my head from the clutter which is almost daily. It takes 3 miles for me to figure out which thoughts I need to let go so I can write for the day and then another 3 miles back to allow my head to clear. The faster my walking pace the easier it is to clear my head.

Today I am free because I have discovered ways to overcome my worst enemy. I am my own worst enemy. Today, because I have learned how to take care of myself physically, emotionally and spiritually as a person I can also practice self-care in my writing life. I am free to choose today whether or not I stare out the window. Two Sundays ago I was still staring out the window unable to overcome my own demons. Today I am free to respond to my writing self. I can choose a response that builds me up instead of tears me down. Writing this writer’s life has given me choices, purpose and self-understanding.

To those of you who comment I identify thank you. For those of you comparing yourself to my experience thank you. And for the person who inspires me to keep on writing I thank you.

A writer's crazy week.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:46:00 +0000

Albert Schweitzer said, "The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve." Exhausted at the end of this week from helping myself shift some emotional, physical and spiritual spaces and exhausted from helping others--I didn't forget--haven't broken the habit just am tired from serving others and myself this anniversary week. With all that said I chose the quote from Schweitzer because I have been relatively happy all week--it's been so long I am exhausted from the high!!! It's a good tired--tomorrow is another day. Thank God. Good night.

To write is to live.....

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Elie Wiesel wrote, "Writing is so personal, so profoundly and terribly personal. Your entire personality goes into every word." Writing life is to live life. As we write we live and as we live we write. Wallace Stevens use to write poetry as he walked to work at an insurance company. Stephen King shut himself in the furnace room of his trailer and wrote in notebooks throughout the night grabbing only a few hours’ sleep before he got up to go to work the next day. If we want to find time to write we will.

To have patience with ourselves as writers we must develop patience with ourselves as people. It isn’t every day I can be prolific enough to write thousands of words. Some days to write a page is all I can handle. There have been days when I stare out the window and to write at all is a chore.

I write because it isn't work. Like teaching writing is who I am. I use to describe teaching as breathing. I knew the material, the lessons and the tone I wanted to set in class because they were all me. I am the same in my writing. I know what I want to say, have always known what I want to say. The difference is now I am not afraid to say it. I am free to be me. I am free to breathe, to click publish, free to write another day. People only own me if I give them myself to own. All writers come to an understanding with themself that when they approach the blank page they approach freely.

The isolation I work in I wouldn't have any other way. The silence has sound. People who don't work alone don't hear the sound of silence. At the end of the day, not every day, but most days I leave the house just to hear a voice. Not because I miss voices, but because I know I need them. If I completely isolate myself in the hours I am not writing I am not living my life. I cannot discover experiences or feel feelings to write unless I live a life outside of my head.

What of living outside of my head? What routines and self-discipline tactics do I employee. The purpose of any tactic is to reduce my anxiety enough so I can write a word, a sentence, a story. If I cannot overcome my anxiety then there will be no writing that day. That is what I discovered staring out the window.

The anxiety owned me because I didn't know anymore how not to let it own me. Hour after hour, day after day I sat disciplined at the laptop staring out the window unable to write a word that wasn't about my loss. I sat for hours from daylight to dark staring out the window afraid to leave the desk, the window, afraid if I got up and walked away I might never come back to the part of me I love the most. I love the writer in me.

William Gass believed that "Writers have certain compulsions, certain ordering habits, which are part of the book only in the sense that they make its writing possible." And that is exactly why I couldn't stop staring out the window. I was in a psychological/emotional crisis and I needed to play the game of "who is the writer now" with myself. If I didn't sit disciplined at the desk I would be a non-writer that day. I would have filled my day with television, walking, sleeping, the hours would have dwindled away without a single word or thought of a word written. But by sitting at the laptop staring out the window I kept my writing composure; I kept my discipline intact.

I have a ritual in place for every morning I get up to write. My behavior is automatic and always the same. Writing in my mind is dangerous work. How much more dangerous can work be then to write your inner most feelings, thoughts and let other people read them. John Edgar Wideman wrote that ". . . each writer knows his or her version of the preparatory ritual must be exactly duplicated if writing is to begin, prosper." Derek Walcott wrote that "Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic."

Sitting down to write is like crossing over a threshold into the parts of yourself other's feel and think is too dangerous to tread within themselves. For years in order to write a single word I had to have a whole package of freshly sharpened pencils, the whitest paper I could find and a clean desk. In those years I readied all my ritualistic totems and then couldn't sit down at the desk to write. I was intimidated by the freshness, the smell of the shaved wood, the clean scent of the pristine white paper, my desk was too clean to sit and think at. Now I don't care about any of that stuff. I can write anywhere, on anything, in any environment. I live to write because I finally realized to write for me is to live......

Good night everyone--thank you for listening to me today. God Bless....

I write for me.........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 16:43:00 +0000

Dory Previn wrote, "What most of us want is to be heard, to communicate." As writers we have a deep need to know we count, what we say matters, how we view life is intriguing. As a writer and person I need to know my presence is noticed, I matter, I count.

My connectedness to others has come over time. Learning to live with people has been a process, but learning to live with myself has been a challenge. My writing life is a series of failures and fumbles that pretty much mirror my real life. What is wonderful about a writing life is I don't have to hold all that experience in, cling to the unworthiness I sometimes feel.

I can write until I understand the meaning of my failures and fumbles. I can write until I find acceptance of myself and of others. From my writing I grow into something unconditional, without expectations, without rules or fears of failure and fumbles. As long as I write I grow toward instead of away from.

People have come into my life that make me want to be more than I think I am or can be. They make me feel all in life is possible. One person even made me feel cherished. Some people make me feel like I won't be abandoned my greatest fear of all. When I write I must use fear of abandonment to produce a story, a character, a conflict. I must always use what I fear as a means of getting to a place I want to go.

As I write this blog I gain greater awareness each day that others feel as I do, live as I do, need to be acknowledged as I do. I am becoming more aware that others share similar experiences in their day. The more I write the less I use the term "those people." The more I write the less I believe no one feels, thinks or acts like I do. The more I write the more I am finding people just like me with the same needs and insecurities.

As a writer I write because I want to be heard; as a person I communicate because I need to feel I am not alone. Every person has a life filled with bumps where they have bruises, cuts and scrapes. It is not how you get beaten up by life that is important it is how you heal that is important. I have learned that I heal faster and healthier when I communicate, when I share, when I let others identify with my pain.

I write to provide a comfort to others that they are not alone. I write because I need acknowledgement that I am not alone. It is only when I am abandoned by others that I feel I can't handle the healing of the bumps in my life. In the company of others with whom I am not referring to or talking about as "those people" I am able to heal, I am able to handle the discomfort of my greatest fear abandonment.

Today my writing has a purpose. I must always remember that in writing I demonstrate willingness, I provide comfort, I am listened to, I listen and respond to the needs and willingness of others to step into the world of us rather than remain isolated in the world of "those people."

As soon as I make the judgment I am not like someone I separate myself from my purpose. I separate myself from all humanity simply by separating myself from just one single person. We are all the same feeling creatures. Our experiences are different in terms of how we get to and arrive at our feelings, but the feelings are all the same.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, "There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." How cruel the human condition is if Shaw is right. What is desire? What are my desires? Have I ever gotten my heart's desire? How long does desire last?

In my younger years my heart's desire was focused on material things. If everything looked pretty and prosperous on the outside then it was that way on the inside. As I have grown and become comfortable with myself material things have little value to me, my desire has changed.

Today I desire intangibles. I desire to be acknowledged; to feel safe amongst people, to feel cherished which is deeper than loved. Today I can write of glimpses of each of my desires. I have had them in fleeting moments and I know more moments will come. With different people, but they will still come.

As I write of my experiences and the feelings I have attached to my circumstances I somehow find peace in having my desires unfulfilled. There comes a time when writing brings clarity. Clarity comes from being able to detach from the outcome of my desires. To live and write peacefully of my unfulfilled heart's desires I must detach from myself with love rather than anger.

The direction of my desire is directly linked to how my readers will identify with my feelings of the experience. Right now I am writing a woman who very much like me continually fails to have her desires fulfilled. As the writer of this woman I must try and figure out why her desires remain unfulfilled. I must examine her, be honest about who she is and accept her fumbling so I can guide her in a direction that will allow her to have some understanding of where she fails in getting her desires fulfilled.

As a writer of her what I am doing is examining me. That is the fear, the anxiety that the blank screen on the laptop has waiting for me every day. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, "A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down." The questions in this writer's life use to be: Can I pull this off? Am I any good? The question today is: Will my writing be laugh at as my pathetic effort to understand myself and the world a little bit more? And before I hear myself ask the question completely I answer: It doesn't matter what they think you are writing for you and no one else. Just you!

The writer I become........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 04:52:00 +0000

Dorothy McCall said, "One cannot have wisdom without living life." McCall seems to have summed up this writer's writing life. In order to write what I know I must understand the circumstances that make up my life. In order to put my reflection into words I must have willingness to learn the lessons each moment of my life provides.

As a writer I must be willing to participate in my own life to the fullest. I must give each person in my life my full participation and my full attendance as well. It is only through suiting up and showing up willingly in my life I am able to do so in other people’s lives. It is in participating fully and attending fully when requested and even when not requested in another person's life I find any clarity as to what my purpose in life really is. I must immerse myself in the moments I share with people, but balance those moments with quiet alone time to reflect on the meaning and the purpose of those experiences. I must always reflect on how I felt during the experience and after.

My writing life is all about my attitude just like in my other lives. Happiness, wisdom, understanding, acceptance, tolerance all hinge upon my attitude. My writing life is easier as are my other lives when my attitude is to help not to take. In my writing if I write with purpose then I am giving not taking; in that simple sentence lays the wisdom of knowing why I just started writing daily this year. I never had a purpose before other than fame, fortune and notoriety. Superficial purposes like those are not sustainable, but last year a sustainable purpose entered my life. Life became simple, I began to hear my inner voice, I stopped being afraid to feel, to experience and to share. I became able to write.

I found wisdom through reflection. I stopped being afraid. As I reflect on my life not a single second has been wasted, not a single minute lost. Always there was the willingness to live, to experience, to learn. Always there was the patience for the right moment to come when I would find the wisdom to tell the truth of why I didn't write.

Today I reflect on my patience to just keep living, putting one foot in front of the other, until the wisdom came. All that is left is to reap the benefits as I continue to write. The benefits have changed though; they are no longer fame, fortune and notoriety, The rewards are looking at myself in the mirror eye to eye, looking at others with my head up comfortable in my own skin and not caring what anyone thinks about me or what I write when I click publish.

My true authentic self is the writer person I am no longer ashamed to be. I am becoming the writer who receives enough rejection letters to wallpaper a room; a writer who can put her feelings into a character and bringing them to life. A writer who can sit at the laptop shaking so deep within she believes her anxieties are causing a nervous breakdown. John Steinbeck wrote of himself, "I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one." The terrors didn't stop Steinbeck or a thousand other writers like him.

Terror only stops non-writers. I am no longer a non-writer. Non-writers become paralyzed with fear, they crawl back into bed after being up for a while, they drink, they smoke, they take prescription drugs. They do whatever they can not to feel the terror. They are non-writers because they are unwilling to feel. If we don’t feel then we can't live life. We can go through the actions of doing what life has in store, but living is feeling connected, identifying with other people’s emotions. Living is being free to be yourself, to write yourself as you live your life. Writers don't care what other's think!! Non-writers do care!!

Margaret Atwood wrote, “Blank pages inspire me with terror.” Each day I wake up I have to make a decision. Am I going to be a writer or a non-writer today? Am I going to crawl back in bed or go lie on the couch and sleep away my creative hours? Am I going to be so selfish I block myself off from the feelings of those who love me? Am I going to be an Atwood, a White or a Steinbeck and identify with their feelings? Or am I going to compare and wallow in my fear of having nothing to say, nothing to offer, no discipline, no confidence because I am clinging to what I know.

I know how to be afraid and how not to write. I’m learning how to get my fear to work with me and for me instead of against me. The more I write the farther away I am from being a non-writer. The more I feel the farther away I am from being a non-writer. The more I laugh, the more I live, the more I experience the farther away I am from being a non-writer. The more I write the more of a writer I become…..

Writer's write.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:28:00 +0000

William L. O'Neill wrote, "All great reforms require one to dare a lot to win a little." There is no second chance, no guarantee in life. Life is simply a series of moments; what we do with those moments defines our value as people in this life. Writer's write what they want, use their best energies to write an outcome they can live with and all this living is done without a guarantee of ever getting what they started out wanting, an audience.

Some of the happiest times in this writer's life have been at the beginning of a project. At the moment of committing, of completely devoting, of embracing the feelings of an experience whatever they may be. I am the happiest in my writing life when I concede to the courageous event of committing with absolute belief I can produce, I can write, I can bring to life the person I was meant to be. When I can write me on paper and accept the idea of me, the dream of me I write is not the me who sits down at the laptop to write I am my happiest. No one is as we dream ourselves to be.

What if my efforts are limited? What if I fail? What if the outcome isn't all I want it to be? What if I never put a word on paper? “What if” never makes me feel alive. “What if” never makes me happy. In order to write as my gift to write demands I must let go of the outcome of what will happen to my writing. I must always write for me and no one else. My cause must be to gain a deeper relationship with self through my writing. Writing my life experience is the final stage of accepting my life as just that, my life no one else’s.

Writing is a process of self-discovery. The joy is in the process, the struggle; the quicker I embrace the struggle the quicker I begin to embrace me as the writer of my own life. In order to be me I must let go of the outcome of me. The more I let go and write the more my life falls into place.

Living life is risky business. If living was easy there wouldn't be an escalation of illnesses brought on by stress, there wouldn't be addiction, there wouldn't be abandonment, there wouldn't be struggle. But life isn't easy. Living life is hard; writing life is even harder. The value of my achievement today as a writer is in my dedication to write the feelings that own me. The more revealing I am of my feelings during an experience the more liberated as a writer and person I become.

Arthur Miller, brilliant playwright that he is wrote, “The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.” The most compelling topics for me to write about are the feelings that bring me to my knees, the feelings others find mortifying to share, the feelings that challenge me, that make readers quiver with identification.

I am a wealth of rich material just waiting to be tapped. When I am looking outside myself for material to write I am taking the easier way. I am cheating myself and my reader. I am being a coward. To risk sharing how I feel is to share the poignancy of my being. My honest authentic self is what I must always write. I must seek courage not cowardice in everything I think, everything I do and in everything I write. I must always write this writer’s life.

Writing is reflection.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 04:50:00 +0000

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus said, "Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear." Writing is a reflection. We write of our successes and failures in living. We write of our inability and ability to cope with life. We write of our strengths while focusing on our weaknesses.

From a young age we are taught to doubt, to be afraid, to be on guard, we are taught how to be anxious. Calmness is an adult struggle. What child have you ever heard say "I am so calm today" or “I need to calm down.” We are filled with living when we are children. We embrace risk, chance, excitement, anxiousness; we seek situations that make us feel alive. We test the waters to see how far we can go, we are constantly moving forward innocently as children.

Somewhere in adulthood we begin to seek calm. We focus intently on changing our excitement for life into something that is quiet, without risk, doesn't make us anxious or even excited to wake up in the morning. As I share myself and write a deeper side of me I am heightened by my perceptions of self. I turn tragedies into stories, tears into scenes, laughter into settings, feelings into characters.

Writing is like the grieving process. We reflect on an experience that triggers a pain. As we write the experience we feel and share our perceptions and ultimately we strive for acceptance of the experience and how it has changed us. With every character, every story we relive our experiences attempting to heighten our perceptions of who we are. Through writing we teach ourselves that conflict is the problem and writing is the solution.

As I sit at the laptop and imagine the day ahead I have choices. There isn’t an experience that can’t be dealt with or a feeling that can't be handled. As a writer I cannot become paralyzed by reflection. I have a fellowship to share my anxieties. I have places to go to quiet my mind. I have a life I am able to live. This all sounds wonderful, rational and easily doable until the day comes when I am staring out the window with voices screaming in my head. What do I do then?

I have to do what I always do. I have to be the person I am. I have to get up in the morning, turn the water on for coffee, go to the bathroom and walk to the laptop just like any other day. If I break my routine I am not me. I can have moments in the day I escape. I can go to the store, go for a walk, talk on the phone or make myself lunch. But after all that it is just me, the laptop and the world outside the window.

I must have learned how to sit still and feel. I must have learned how to relive, replay, rethink conversations, events, thoughts, moments, feelings in my life that are forcing me to stare out the window because the voices are so loud I cannot hear my own voice. If I have not learned how to sit still I will heighten my distraction. I will pick up a distraction. I will not sit still until I can write again. And I must sit still until I can write again. The only way to get rid of the voices is to write them away. I write and write and edit and reword and write. I cry, pull my hair, bow my head and go back to staring out the window, but in between I write. The only way to empty my head is to write. The only way to remain me is to write.

I was blessed with the opportunity to talk to Jane Hamilton when she was on tour for her first novel The Book of Ruth. Two things I never forgot from our conversation. First she asked me what my passion was and of course I told her writing. She said that was nice, but don't stop what I was doing to write most people don't make it. I felt she was discouraging me and I didn't understand why, but I do now. It is far easier to talk about the life we want to have, the things we want to do and the books we want to write than it is to actually live, venture out and write. She was right not many people make it. The courage it takes to write yourself every day few people have. Writers are unique, we go to any lengths, we never give up and we are constantly disappointed. And most important non-writers can’t sit still.

The second part of our conversation was about her fear of only having one book in her. With the advance from her first book she added a kitchen to her farm house, did some other practical spending and here she sat afraid like me. I didn’t get the value of fellowship for a writer. I didn’t get the importance of fellowship in this writer’s life. I do now.

I have followed Jane Hamilton's career and I watch the pace in which she turns out her novels. There are years between manuscripts, between publishings, between book tours. The only pressure a writer has is the pressure we put on ourselves. We are our harshest critics. We beat ourselves up so we can write ourselves out of the pain. We turn our lives into stories to share and be picked apart by our readers. Writers, we are the most sensitive people I know, yet somehow we deal, we cope, we live with rejection every day.

In a community of writers I belong to a young woman asked "How many rejection letters are enough before I begin to question my writing path?" Only non-writers allow themselves to ask such questions. Only non-writers who wallow in the conflict, who think rather than write, who talk about writing rather than sitting still and writing.

Only non-writers can afford such luxuries as asking “when do I begin to question my writing path.” I have no questions about my writing path I never have. Writing is how I think, how I look at the world. Writing is breathing, it is laughing, it is crying, writing is being. Jane Hamilton when wondering if she had a second book wasn’t asking if she should continue on her writing path. Jane Hamilton was living her path talking about her anxiety. Hamilton turned her fear into something productive and wrote her second novel The Short History of a Prince.

I have no questions about who I am. I have no far-fetched ideations of what my life is. I have no reason to ever stop being me. I have gotten distracted and still do from time to time. At time feelings block my mind from being free of the many voices that keep me from hearing and listening to my writing voice.

I have come to accept the intensity in which I live. I would not be me if I was not intense. In writing this writer's life I am turning my anxieties into something workable and manageable. I must always be productive and never destructive. I must never take pleasure in the questions non-writers ask. I must shun self-doubt and fear as if it were the plague. If I can’t sit still with myself how can I ever write the reflections of my experiences and how they made me feel?

Exercise #9

Not tonight it’s time for ice cream!!

Writers need to make changes........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:26:00 +0000

Galway Kinnell wrote, "Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness . . . until it flowers again from within . . ." As I write I need to make changes in myself. I must change my attitudes. I must change my thinking. I must change my faith. The biggest change for me comes in the form of reaching out and developing fellowship. The more I reach out the deeper I go within to write. I find this paradoxical. The more I talk about how I feel the deeper the level of my writing.

To not be surrounded by people I aspire to be like is to not aspire to be anything myself. I must always be reaching and moving forward. I read a blog from a fellow writer this morning about writing reviews. She bluntly stated reviews aren't for her the writer they are for the reader.

As writers our strong driven personalities serve a purpose when it comes to our work, but in the world others can be critical of our seriousness, our melancholy, our confidence when we know a puzzle piece just fits. As we write we live. I am one in the same. I can’t and don’t want to be anyone else.

A beautiful woman in my life from years ago wrote to me that to become the woman I really want to be is to accept the woman I truly am. I didn't understand what she was saying at the time, but today I do. In always thinking I can write it so I create anxiety and fear where there need be none. My mind has collected voices for weeks because I am focusing on why I can't write instead of why I can.

Sitting in a car with a friend last night I learned I intuitively know what to do about things these days. I learned I am accepting of myself as long as reviewers are accepting of me. In thinking this way I have created anxiety within myself where there needs be none. In order to write my mind must be free. In order for my mind to be free I must be at peace within me. If I am focusing on the negative review I am not at peace within me. I am at peace when I surrounded by people I aspire to be like, who aspire to be more like me. I am free when I am moving through the solution not wallowing in the conflict.

Today I woke up finished with being attracted to the negative review of me. Today I woke up with wanting to be surrounded by love, acceptance, tolerance and people living in the solution. I want to be drawn to the positive reviews. But I must be careful because all reviews are not for me. If I focus too much attention on the positive reviews I can easily dwell on the opposite of wallowing, pride. I can become too great creating another set of anxieties that stop me from being free and being me. I must always remember reviews, all reviews, are not for me the writer; reviews are for the reader.

It is time to let go and move on from the negative review and I must never pick it up again. I got an email in the middle of the night a friend's father who had been ill passed away. Whenever I am in the muck, at my lowest, death comes to remind me I only have one shot at this writer's life.

I have wasted so much time, but not really I just took a different path. My agendas were different: education, career, raising a family, helping others. A friend reminded me last week to not take the ability to accomplish those agendas for granted; not everyone is able to fulfill those accomplishments. And so my point is my time wasn't wasted I just chose a different path. I have gained different experiences.

My father use to tell me people without children have no concept of real, true, unconditional love. I never understood what he meant, but now I do. People without children experience love differently than those of us with children. I look for a different type of love, a deeper, accepting, unconditional love that I have experienced as a parent and I won’t settle for less. And there it is the answer to every conflict I have. I won’t settle for less! Some days I think I can, but settling isn’t in this writer’s life. To settle is to not be me it is to be you and I can’t do that. I can’t write that, I can’t live that.

Writers aren’t followers they are achievers. Writers forge their way. If they don’t like their writing life they don’t accept it they go down another path. There is no settling for less. There is no settling at all. This is not to say we don’t try to settle because we do.

Those writers who could not live with settling and could not continue to develop courage day after day to keep trudging the road not taken die. They tell us they are dead and we keep reading them as if we can will them to remain alive. But we can’t will anyone to feel alive. If a writer believes they are dead then they are. Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, Hart Crane, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath the list can go on and on were all dead before they died and they told us so in their writing, but they finally made us believe it with their actions.

Robert Frost influenced the type of life I would have when I read his poem Road Not Taken in middle school. The poem has been the driving force of my life since. I have always chosen the road less taken. Sometimes it is the harder path, sometimes it is the easier softer road. But neither matters because in this writer's life I must always take the road less traveled by. That is who I am. I must always go that extra mile. I must always push a little harder than everyone else. I must accept that I feel a little deeper because I am willing to go a little farther. I must never stop knowing what I know. I must never stop figuring my life out in affirmation. No matter how much I am attracted to degradation I must step over those reviews. I must not pick up anxiety that isn’t mine.

Today I will leave you with my favorite poem. Frost reminds me I have no other choice, but to not seek out reviews of me. A writer’s life is just to forge ahead on the path other’s fear to take.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

...Robert Frost

Exercise #8

The past exercises have been excerpts from a manuscript I pulled from a drawer about a female spy in 1945. Each exercise was a step on the path less traveled by. Many non-writers proclaim their desire to write. Writers make know claim they just write. The hours in my day have gotten longer as I have added writing to them. My work, my blog, my book every day that’s the exercise for today….

What makes a great writer.........

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 03:37:00 +0000

Joan Baez sang, " . . . you don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now." The responsibility for living my writing life is mine and no one else’s. I can't blame anyone for not writing. I can't blame anyone for the days when my head is filled with so many voices I can't hear myself think. I can't blame anyone, but me for sitting at the laptop staring out the window for days on end instead of working. I am responsible for my writing life. I am responsible for my mental health. I am responsible for my happiness. Others can trigger anxiety or happiness in me at will and that is what people do. What I do with those feelings though is my responsibility.

My writing life is a series of wasted-time moments where I was so busy not writing I couldn't even sit still long enough to stare out the window like I have been doing for weeks. I thought there would always be a tomorrow. I could write tomorrow! I had no sense of urgency just a few short weeks ago, but now I am filled with urgency. This blog along with the circumstances of how my writing life began is based on and filled with urgency. I'm filled with anxiety about not writing every day. I'm filled with anxiety about missing out on spending time and talking to people I care about. I'm filled with anxiety about making a wrong decision and heading down a wrong path. I’m filled with anxiety that if I don’t write this blog entry every day I won’t keep the habit going of writing.

What makes a writer great is his ability to own up to his anxieties. To put all that he is and all he feels he is not, out there for the world to see in his writing. But the courage comes from being able to feel safe amongst people in his life to put it all out there. There must be a rehearsal with them first. It is through acceptance from others acceptance comes for ourselves. People in our lives are mirrors. They are reflections of the deepest parts of us. It is only by surrounding myself with people who can accept me at my most vulnerable that I begin to turn my fears and anxieties into something productive.

That is how this blog started; an intimate moment where I felt safe to be vulnerable. If I let myself I can feel that moment again all I have to do is close my eyes, but I can't let myself because I wasn't safe to be vulnerable. I wasn't safe at all. I can't have regret though because here I sit almost 2 months later and I have written every day; a habit I haven't been able to master for over three decades. As much as I wasn't safe it was the right time for my rehearsal and here I sit tonight unable to have a day off from writing because I am afraid to break the habit I have developed.

What is so wonderful about life is I can learn how to make my anxieties work for me instead of against me. I want to have my readers take to me because they feel the same anxieties as I do. I want them to identify with the feeling not the experience. I want them to feel the courage it takes to click publish and to believe they can have that kind of courage too.

E.B. White said, "I am not inclined to apologize for my anxieties because I have lived with them long enough to respect them." A few weeks ago I wouldn't have understood what White was saying, but today I do. There are certain anxieties I struggle as a writer to make work for me. This blog is where I learn to respect my anxieties. Learning to respect what prevents me from writing doesn't only come with writing it comes from talking about how I feel.

I must have a fellowship of people who can accept me with all my fears just as I am which is some days out of my mind and some days completely sane. I must accept that not everyone is so eager to turn their anxieties into something they respect and use to become involved in fellowship. I must accept the depth of another person's fears I will never completely understand and so I must never judge.

In fellowship we identify, we share, we support, we love, we talk and we no longer feel alone. I must never be alone because when I am alone I am overwhelmed by my fears. I must always be able to share with like-minded fellows. I must always be able to talk about how I feel. It is only through talking that I become a part of the world.

When I am a part of the world the burden I carry of my fear lessens. It is in this lessened state I become rational again. I develop a tolerance, an acceptance, a respect for me just as I am and my anxieties for just what they are. When I tolerate, accept and respect what it is I fear I am able to find the courage within to use my anxiety to help me write more, to be more and to be a part of more than anything I can imagine when I isolate.

When E. B. White accepted the National Medal for Literature he wrote about the courage it took for him to come to terms with his anxieties. In the best most productive periods of my life I identify with what White wrote when accepting the National Medal, “A writer’s courage can easily fail him, I feel this daily.” Not only does my courage to write fail me daily, but my courage to face other parts of my life also fails me daily. It is not the feelings that define me. What defines me is what I do with and how I use those feelings of anxiety. I cannot choose how I am going to die, but I can choose how I am going to live!!!!!!

Exercise #7

I had always felt like a jigsaw puzzle. Life was all about putting the pieces of me together. When she came into my life the last part of me fell into place. She washed over me like shellac. Her essence filled in all the cracks of my put-together puzzle pieces. When she left I became unglued. It took a while for me to pick up the first puzzle piece to start all over again. What I'm discovering is the pieces just aren't the same. I'm a different jigsaw puzzle now . . . .

Formulating a writing plan.......

noreply@blogger.com (Tammy) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 04:22:00 +0000

Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of a writer."

I'm tired. Been running on empty for days looking out the window and not seeing a thing. I need to stop shaking from the inside out. I need to laugh, be enjoyed and to go enjoy. I need to go rest, re-evaluate and formulate a plan.

It's time to clear away the voices from my head.......

Good night.