My book proposal is almost done. The chapter synopses are completely done. And now I see a longer road of my life than was available to me, this fully, before.
When you write from within the experience, which is what I usually do and almost always recommend to my clients and students, you don't necessarily know where things are going--in the book, or in your life. But after writing, you are changed from the person you were when you wrote. You are, in some sense, your own future. You have helped to create yourself in writing from inside the experience, and the result is not only on paper. It is also what is freed up in you. It is the largeness of your being, the you beyond the self you identified with when writing.
Enough of these chapters, in the book and in your life, and a path makes itself more clear. You can sense what's ahead as well as where you've come from behind, and the very fact of this road, this journey, tells you there is more to your life than you realize in any one moment in which you are viewing it. So although I used to decry making outlines for a book and then following it, I now see that every domain of our being has its use and its place. The mind projects an order, how things will follow from one thing to the next. The soul is timeless and nonlinear, and knows that things repeat, re-cycle, happen all at once, and doesn't want to be boxed in to a logical progression, only. But I have gained so much from seeing the length of the road by doing chapter synopses, and I have to acknowledge that I am in awe of what supports us, guides us, gets us through the tight places. And I am in awe of what I have learned, what I have gone through, what I have let go of, and the deep precious being that resides within me. All this out of the assignment, first resisted mightily, to pinpoint where my not-fully-written book would go. I am in awe, and inspired, to boot. The end of the book is illuminated, where the beginning was in the clouds of formless confusion. This is our life, our life, not only mine. We have so much to share as we share not only our journeys but the transforming process of who we become as we write them for ourselves and one another.
A nice P.S. I wrote the proposal because an editor wanted to see it--such a blessing that I quickly set that part aside, focusing instead on the task of producing a book proposal. Only in the act of writing the synopses did I realize the holy act this was. Then I could see how much value was in it, and that I have something wonderful to share. Then I could allow myself to be thrilled that an editor wanted to see it.
Today I got an email from the woman from whom I took the book proposal class. She knew my proposal well. And she referred me to an agent to whom she had already mentioned my proposal; and the agent said she wanted to see it.
I have always wanted to be invited out to show my writing, rather than have to pound on doors. Somehow, with Grace and whatever else, it is happening. This is too clear to ignore. Wow. What an opening.
The door to the pure land opens inward
Bringing our treasures into the world...
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Writing from the Deeper Self--compassion for your story
Two and a half hours later, and finally I understand why I was procrastinating writing the chapter synopses for The Blessings Ledger (see previous entry). For I have done a few more since then, and they are of some of the darkest times in my life. In order to even synopsize a chapter I haven't written but have indeed lived, I have to go back into that time and the feeling sense of the experience. I have to catch some details by the fast-disappearing tail. I have to find the story line...
And, I have to do all this while remembering that I already lived it. I survived it, I grew out of it; perhaps I even grew from it. In short, it's the same old challenge of being deeply compassionate for another's suffering, while not becoming so immersed in it that you begin to lose yourself. This is an ongoing practice for me--to not harden my heart but be willing to feel with another person's pain; and yet to remain in my own being, present to my own light, remembering that we all have our trials and our infinite being to bring us through.
What is different about this way of writing (and it comes up for many people) is that the one for whom I need to be both compassionate and distinct from is myself.
Here are two such synopses, below:
Chapter Five: Desperate for Home (Synopsis)
Nevertheless, I do not want another roommate. I don’t feel safe around other people, much less myself; and I’m still struggling within myself about my marriage ending. To seek someone I don’t know as a roommate just to help pay the rent would mean having to accept no longer being in a family, even a semblance of a family. I decide I’d rather run in place to try to make it work.
Still, I’m living in a large house I can’t afford, without furniture. It feels greatly like living in my parents’ home, trying to hold up what is clearly out to self-destruct. I seek out want ads for furniture, drive way downtown to buy a blue-and-white convertible couch for $25. When it’s set up in the living room, I sit on it as if trying to believe it’s a new beginning. A couch that can also be a bed can house company. Company makes a house a home. I begin to feel that my parents’ isolation is happening to me. My loneliness makes me ashamed.
After much delay, I finally fill out a do-it-yourself divorce form, staying up late at night finding the requisite information, having to account for the long stretch of my failed life as numbers, dates, and so on. I do it myself both to save money and so I don’t have to hire a lawyer and face my husband in a courtroom, with all that unsaid marital anger around money and possessions.
Finally I file the forms downtown, "divorced" is stamped on them before they are filed, and I walk out onto the street weeping. A kindly woman asks, "Are you okay?" Startled, I say, "I just got divorced." "Honey," she laughs, "we all get divorced. You’ll be fine." But I feel like the orphan I am.
Chapter Six: A Couch on the Street [Synopsis]
The time comes when I cannot run in place fast enough to make the rent. I have no choice but to give the landlord notice; but I have nowhere to go. I feel like I’m going to fall through the cracks in the culture, as my parents did. And the day comes when, having no idea where I will go, having lost everything, I put my lovingly gathered furniture out on the street to be picked up by Goodwill, even the blue-and-white-flowered convertible couch. But before the Goodwill truck can arrive, while I am still indoors, scavengers come and when I walk out on the street all the furniture is gone. There is no record of my life, here, or my attempts to live differently than my parents. I can sense the fall, ahead.
Granted that a synopsis is not the writing itself--what's missing are the subtle details, the movement towards something that is born from something else. But after writing the above synopses, I noticed that although my breathing was getting shallow as I reconnected with the image of my couch out on the street, there was also a voice inside me saying, "You aren't like that now." And there was also a realization that I could now see my own part in things during that time, which I could not at all see then. I felt at the mercy of my circumstances then, and had no awareness of how certain family patterns were repeating. Realizing this brings back into my current life, into the current moment, and all the changes that have taken place since that dark time from which I then believed I would never rise up again.
There is a saying, "Writers get to live twice--once during the experience itself, and again when they write about it." I have found that when I write deeply, with an insider's heart and the desire to see the truth, I do get to live twice. The second time, in reflection, I may not always see things I love about myself or that I loved living through; but I can see that looking, itself, brings blessings. It brings perspective, and hope, and compassion for the very humanness of the journey--a humanness that, in our own lives, we often try to hide, but that we look to writers and other artists to reveal to us, so we don't feel so alone.
Being a human being is both an amazing challenge and an amazing blessing. It's said that the chance of having a lifetime as yourself is so infinitesimal, and that if we but realized it we would be giving thanks every single moment. As I recomb my past in service of my book and book proposal, knowing that it all comes out in light at the end, I have to give thanks for having had this life this far--for trusting the human process enough to let shame go and give the whole of my story as a gift to my readers as well as myself. For it is out of this kind of unarticulated darkness that the light finds its reflective surface. We are given the power to transform our experiences into gold, through our writing. We are given the power to speak light.
And, I have to do all this while remembering that I already lived it. I survived it, I grew out of it; perhaps I even grew from it. In short, it's the same old challenge of being deeply compassionate for another's suffering, while not becoming so immersed in it that you begin to lose yourself. This is an ongoing practice for me--to not harden my heart but be willing to feel with another person's pain; and yet to remain in my own being, present to my own light, remembering that we all have our trials and our infinite being to bring us through.
What is different about this way of writing (and it comes up for many people) is that the one for whom I need to be both compassionate and distinct from is myself.
Here are two such synopses, below:
Chapter Five: Desperate for Home (Synopsis)
Nevertheless, I do not want another roommate. I don’t feel safe around other people, much less myself; and I’m still struggling within myself about my marriage ending. To seek someone I don’t know as a roommate just to help pay the rent would mean having to accept no longer being in a family, even a semblance of a family. I decide I’d rather run in place to try to make it work.
Still, I’m living in a large house I can’t afford, without furniture. It feels greatly like living in my parents’ home, trying to hold up what is clearly out to self-destruct. I seek out want ads for furniture, drive way downtown to buy a blue-and-white convertible couch for $25. When it’s set up in the living room, I sit on it as if trying to believe it’s a new beginning. A couch that can also be a bed can house company. Company makes a house a home. I begin to feel that my parents’ isolation is happening to me. My loneliness makes me ashamed.
After much delay, I finally fill out a do-it-yourself divorce form, staying up late at night finding the requisite information, having to account for the long stretch of my failed life as numbers, dates, and so on. I do it myself both to save money and so I don’t have to hire a lawyer and face my husband in a courtroom, with all that unsaid marital anger around money and possessions.
Finally I file the forms downtown, "divorced" is stamped on them before they are filed, and I walk out onto the street weeping. A kindly woman asks, "Are you okay?" Startled, I say, "I just got divorced." "Honey," she laughs, "we all get divorced. You’ll be fine." But I feel like the orphan I am.
Chapter Six: A Couch on the Street [Synopsis]
The time comes when I cannot run in place fast enough to make the rent. I have no choice but to give the landlord notice; but I have nowhere to go. I feel like I’m going to fall through the cracks in the culture, as my parents did. And the day comes when, having no idea where I will go, having lost everything, I put my lovingly gathered furniture out on the street to be picked up by Goodwill, even the blue-and-white-flowered convertible couch. But before the Goodwill truck can arrive, while I am still indoors, scavengers come and when I walk out on the street all the furniture is gone. There is no record of my life, here, or my attempts to live differently than my parents. I can sense the fall, ahead.
Granted that a synopsis is not the writing itself--what's missing are the subtle details, the movement towards something that is born from something else. But after writing the above synopses, I noticed that although my breathing was getting shallow as I reconnected with the image of my couch out on the street, there was also a voice inside me saying, "You aren't like that now." And there was also a realization that I could now see my own part in things during that time, which I could not at all see then. I felt at the mercy of my circumstances then, and had no awareness of how certain family patterns were repeating. Realizing this brings back into my current life, into the current moment, and all the changes that have taken place since that dark time from which I then believed I would never rise up again.
There is a saying, "Writers get to live twice--once during the experience itself, and again when they write about it." I have found that when I write deeply, with an insider's heart and the desire to see the truth, I do get to live twice. The second time, in reflection, I may not always see things I love about myself or that I loved living through; but I can see that looking, itself, brings blessings. It brings perspective, and hope, and compassion for the very humanness of the journey--a humanness that, in our own lives, we often try to hide, but that we look to writers and other artists to reveal to us, so we don't feel so alone.
Being a human being is both an amazing challenge and an amazing blessing. It's said that the chance of having a lifetime as yourself is so infinitesimal, and that if we but realized it we would be giving thanks every single moment. As I recomb my past in service of my book and book proposal, knowing that it all comes out in light at the end, I have to give thanks for having had this life this far--for trusting the human process enough to let shame go and give the whole of my story as a gift to my readers as well as myself. For it is out of this kind of unarticulated darkness that the light finds its reflective surface. We are given the power to transform our experiences into gold, through our writing. We are given the power to speak light.
Seeing Your Story from Behind and Ahead
Today I am working on my book proposal for the book I've been writing for about 8 years, The Blessings Ledger. There are so many parts to a book proposal, it's easy to get overwhelmed. I am trying out bringing my deep life into every aspect of my work, so this too will be touched by a deeper prayer than just "getting it done" or "I don't want to do it but I'll force myself." I know how to write from the deeper Self, listening, nurturing, trusting it to unfold. What I want now is to live from the deeper Self, every moment's worth, everything I need to put my precious attention to.
I have chosen, of all the parts of the book proposal that I need to address very soon, to write synopses of the unwritten chapters. Being who I am, there are a lot of chapters. It's a long story. Happily for everyone concerned, I've parceled this story out into three volumes. But I still need to indicate that I know where the whole story is going. Thus, the chapter synopses for chapters I have not yet written.
I procrastinated a bit--it's 2:30 in the afternoon, and I did other things this morning, where I suppose I could have made myself take a flying leap into the book proposal straight off, still in my bathrobe. But I'm here, and I'm willing to be here. The difference between how my sometimes less than kind mind holds what I am doing, and the reality of what I have already done, is a teaching for me today. That is, I've already synopsized many of the chapters, written and unwritten, both. And as I look at what I've done already, I am moved, with great compassion as well as interested, by my own story--where I began, what I have lived out and lived through, and where I am now.
This book is about a journey to bring compassion into my dealings with money, out of a soul need to have all of me available for loving as well as financially surviving. It was a long journey. It starts with early childhood, and at some point touches on my being on the Board of Directors of my Credit Union, and a juror whose learnings from keeping what I call a "Blessings Ledger" helped me tip an unfairly weighted case in favor of the defendant. And more, much more.
Perhaps the short of what I'm saying right now is that seeing the trajectory of your journey from behind--from where you are now, looking back--can breed amazement and compassion, not only self-criticism and regret. Looking ahead--the forecasting required by the convention of book proposals (What will you write about that you haven't yet written? Where is this book going?)--is a guess and a prayer, and, for me, a realization that things can change utterly in the doing. But looking back with kindness is a blessing. It shows me how something within us--call it the divine, God, our deepest caring--manages to come through and take us, throughout all the seeming failures and fallings, closer and closer to who we really are; further away from the image we seek to present, in order to prove we are worthy, and closer and closer to who we are. And in that intimate process--the same as for writing from the deeper Self as for living from it--we have the openness and yearning and capacity to bring us to a place of holy gratitude just for being alive, for being this unique expression of the incarnated divine, falling and learning and sharing the journey, and giving of our hearts as we go.
I have chosen, of all the parts of the book proposal that I need to address very soon, to write synopses of the unwritten chapters. Being who I am, there are a lot of chapters. It's a long story. Happily for everyone concerned, I've parceled this story out into three volumes. But I still need to indicate that I know where the whole story is going. Thus, the chapter synopses for chapters I have not yet written.
I procrastinated a bit--it's 2:30 in the afternoon, and I did other things this morning, where I suppose I could have made myself take a flying leap into the book proposal straight off, still in my bathrobe. But I'm here, and I'm willing to be here. The difference between how my sometimes less than kind mind holds what I am doing, and the reality of what I have already done, is a teaching for me today. That is, I've already synopsized many of the chapters, written and unwritten, both. And as I look at what I've done already, I am moved, with great compassion as well as interested, by my own story--where I began, what I have lived out and lived through, and where I am now.
This book is about a journey to bring compassion into my dealings with money, out of a soul need to have all of me available for loving as well as financially surviving. It was a long journey. It starts with early childhood, and at some point touches on my being on the Board of Directors of my Credit Union, and a juror whose learnings from keeping what I call a "Blessings Ledger" helped me tip an unfairly weighted case in favor of the defendant. And more, much more.
Perhaps the short of what I'm saying right now is that seeing the trajectory of your journey from behind--from where you are now, looking back--can breed amazement and compassion, not only self-criticism and regret. Looking ahead--the forecasting required by the convention of book proposals (What will you write about that you haven't yet written? Where is this book going?)--is a guess and a prayer, and, for me, a realization that things can change utterly in the doing. But looking back with kindness is a blessing. It shows me how something within us--call it the divine, God, our deepest caring--manages to come through and take us, throughout all the seeming failures and fallings, closer and closer to who we really are; further away from the image we seek to present, in order to prove we are worthy, and closer and closer to who we are. And in that intimate process--the same as for writing from the deeper Self as for living from it--we have the openness and yearning and capacity to bring us to a place of holy gratitude just for being alive, for being this unique expression of the incarnated divine, falling and learning and sharing the journey, and giving of our hearts as we go.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Writing from the Deeper Self
Writing from the deeper Self is an approach I came up with over 20 years ago, when the literary aids to writing didn't help. As I sought to heal much of what had shadowed and veiled me for decades of my life, I became aware that the real energies and insights of healing--most of them nonverbal--was what was turning me into the kind of writer, and human being, I had always secretly dreamed of being, and just as secretly despaired of being.
This approach, then, became, over time, something I have used with other people, taught to other people, helped other people write books by means of. I have a companion website in which I discuss and evoke this approach at length, focused on my work as a book developer. That website is www.essentialwriting.com. If in reading this you are moved to consider working with this approach yourself, you can read about it and contact me there.
But this blog, I sense, is for my own deep writing to have an airing, beyond the book(s) I am writing. Because I believe that meeting ourselves in this deep way heals us, heals the reader, heals the world in a real way. After the recent Jewish High Holy Days, I have fallen back in love with our world in a way and to a depth that surprises me. I watch the news now, and everything is relevant, everything is my story, our story. So what can I do? Which of the zillion spokes of action are mine to engage with, to help us remember our connection, treat each other with care, help each other out of ditches--financial, emotional, physical, spiritual? I think the truest thing I can do is be an artist in the public domain--that is, to be intimate with myself, as writing (and singing) allows me to do; and to do it where you can read it. Maybe I will be graced to speak for you, and with you, too. Maybe we will come to a place of great rejoicing.
So, for today's closing, a quote from Meister Eckhart:
""Every Creature is a Word of God and a Book about God."
May you be blessed, beyond what you can think to ask for.
--Naomi Rose
This approach, then, became, over time, something I have used with other people, taught to other people, helped other people write books by means of. I have a companion website in which I discuss and evoke this approach at length, focused on my work as a book developer. That website is www.essentialwriting.com. If in reading this you are moved to consider working with this approach yourself, you can read about it and contact me there.
But this blog, I sense, is for my own deep writing to have an airing, beyond the book(s) I am writing. Because I believe that meeting ourselves in this deep way heals us, heals the reader, heals the world in a real way. After the recent Jewish High Holy Days, I have fallen back in love with our world in a way and to a depth that surprises me. I watch the news now, and everything is relevant, everything is my story, our story. So what can I do? Which of the zillion spokes of action are mine to engage with, to help us remember our connection, treat each other with care, help each other out of ditches--financial, emotional, physical, spiritual? I think the truest thing I can do is be an artist in the public domain--that is, to be intimate with myself, as writing (and singing) allows me to do; and to do it where you can read it. Maybe I will be graced to speak for you, and with you, too. Maybe we will come to a place of great rejoicing.
So, for today's closing, a quote from Meister Eckhart:
""Every Creature is a Word of God and a Book about God."
May you be blessed, beyond what you can think to ask for.
--Naomi Rose
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