I’m captivated by St. Ottilien’s hideout. There’s the grotto with its high stained glass and underground spring, and the restaurant’s mouth-watering meals and stunning patio views.

As you can see from the map below, the popularity of St. Ottilien’s hangout has nothing to do with location, location, location in the North American sense. It’s tucked in under the tall trees at the top of the steep Musbach River valley east of Freiburg. And every time we’re there, it’s packed.

A phenomenon of life in Germany is the assumption that if you go for a hike, even a long one into the Black Forest, you’re entitled to the sustenance of a hot lunch and a beer at a nice table. So you’ll find sit-down, full-service restaurants in the most unlikely of places, many of which aren’t accessible to patrons by car (though St. Ottilien is).

My husband and I spend most Sundays hiking through the beautiful forests and vineyards of Baden-Württemberg (Freiburg’s province), knowing we’ll get to sit down in a restaurant for lunch. It’s so civilized and satisfying it makes me giddy. No nut bars, no dry cheese sandwiches eaten from the ass-perch of a cold, hard rock. Instead, we sit our sweaty bodies down in real chairs and order black-sesame-coated chicken with asparagus risotto and white wine.

St. Ottilien is a bit more than an hour’s walk from our front door, so it’s become our fallback destination if we’re not up for a longer jaunt. I make sure to pay my respects to St. Ottilien herself while I’m there, as she’s the patron saint of good eyesight, without which reading and writing — two great loves of my life — would be much more challenging.

Sainte Odile, as she’s called in France, was born around 660 in Alsace, the region of France just across the Rhine River border between Germany and France — not far from Freiburg. Born blind, her vision was miraculously healed when she was 12. To pay my respects, I head down the stone stairs of the grotto and squat before the spring to gently dab my eyes (and my third eye — what the heck, it can’t hurt) with its water.

The chapel above the grotto was built in 1300. Check out this statue (left) of St. Ottilien that’s in the chapel above the grotto, with the eyes bulging from the book (and this one in France). Her abbot’s staff is like a fancy shepherd’s staff and its business end resembles a question mark. How could I not have a thing for her?

After the grotto, we succumb to a hedonistic descent into a gastronomic paradise of five-star (in my book) indulgence. My husband has grown accustomed to me moaning over everything we’re served at St. Ottilien’s restaurant, from my initial glass of cold, refreshing black currant juice to the last morsel of food that tempts me to pick up the plate and lick it clean.

One of my favourite things to order is a traditional Alsatian dish called Flammkuchen — an almost-not-there-thin-crust relative of the pizza. St. Ottilien’s Caprese Flammkuchen is unbeatable: atop the thin crust is Flammkuchen’s usual layer of sour cream. Then a layer of mozzarella, topped with pesto, fresh tomatoes, basil leaves, and chives. Creamy and dreamy in the extremey.

Frankly, everything about this place slays me. I confess to being St. Ottilien’s slave.

So, drop everything, catch a plane to Frankfurt, hop on a train headed south, leave your luggage in a locker at the Freiburg train station, and immediately start walking east — past the Freiburg Cathedral and up into the hills beyond. Follow the signs to St. Ottilien. By the time you’re really hungry, you’ll be there, plopping with sweaty relief into a chair on the patio. It’s crowded, so you’ll have to share a tile-topped table with some strangers. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.

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This article and the one linked to below are examples of how following a fascination can inform and motivate your writing.

What do you adore? What do you adore that’s unusual? What are you excited to tell about it?

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Related reading: Black Forest Beauties

When I say “falling in love with yourself,” I’m not generalizing. I’m not saying, “Oh, you know, just tell yourself how great you are and you’ll see. It’ll make all the difference.” That may be true, but my concern here is how to help you fall in love with yourself as a writer, so let’s get specific.

What follows is a series of short, playful writing assignments for instigating the love affair – ways to practice being a better writer, even if you’re not sure you have what it takes. Do them in order, pick and choose, or make up your own. The key is to use the tool of writing to help you fall in love with yourself as a writer.

1. “Dear Abby …”

In the absolute privacy of your journal or computer, write a short letter to Dear Abby, telling her of your struggle to believe in yourself as a writer, and asking for her advice. Sign your letter with a descriptive alias, like “Floundering at the Desk” or “Uncertain in Omaha.”

2. “Dear Floundering …”

Pretend you’re Dear Abby and answer your own letter. Be brief, confident, encouraging, and no-nonsense. You know what this person needs. Get your advice across in a short paragraph or two. Be nice, but don’t sugar-coat.

3. Three Elfchens

In a format so short and prescribed you can’t hide anything – the Elfchen – get soppy. Write three Elfchen love poems as though you’re love-sick about your own writing. Go way, way overboard. Lie, as necessary, to get this assignment done.

Scriber
of my
heart and soul.
Your beautiful words pierce.
Cupid.

4. Love Letter to a Place

Close your eyes and remember a time when you felt drunk with love for a place – the fort under the brambles, the cabin at the lake, the room overlooking the city, the garden all your own. Keep your eyes closed long enough to bring up the physical sensations and feelings of being in love with that place. Now write a love letter to it. Be sappy, but convincing. Pour your heart out, as though your task is – at any cost, as though your life depends on it – to convince that place to love you back.

Dear Mountain Cabin,

You may not remember me, but I can’t forget you. I’m writing to tell you how much you meant to me … and still do. I can still see the snow sparkling on your roof …

5. Mining Meaning

What means the most to you? See how much you can not filter your answer through any shoulds or expectations others might have regarding what’s supposed to be meaningful. You are your only audience. Just for yourself, name (in one or two words) what’s most meaningful to you and write 400 words about why it’s meaningful and how it came to be meaningful to you.

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The goal of these assignments is two-fold: to write – anything, as that’s the primary way we become better writers, and to practice feeling love. More specifically, to practice feeling love in association with writing.

Doubting your writing abilities or prospects means that your internal editor/judge has the upper hand. Doing silly things that the editor/judge doesn’t consider “real writing” is a sneaky way to get it out of the picture for a while, giving you some freedom to loosen up and tune in to the part of you that’s not the editor.

The non-editor, pre-editor part of you that comes to the fore when writing silly assignments like these is always there and always in love with your writing – no matter what. Zero exceptions.

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P.S. If you do any of these assignments and are willing to let me know, I’d like that. Even a super short note is fine (“Hi. I did 3 and 5. Bye.”). Leave a omment below, send an email, or use the contact form.

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Related reading: How to Reinvent Yourself

PISS OFF
I’M BUSY

and has two holes in the top corners for string so it can be hung on a door.

No one has to know what you do when you’re “working.” Dare to hang a “PISS OFF” sign on your door, as needed, to defend your right to regroup.

I lie to people on a regular basis. I tell you this in confidence. Since I consider writing to consist of myriad skills, from daydreaming and pretending to recovering from writing by lying on the bed and reading a gripping novel, I call all of those elements of my craft “working.”

If I know I’ll be engaged in the crucially important work of re-setting my brain after a morning of focused writing by watching a film with the curtains drawn, I tell people “Nope. Sorry, can’t do it. I need to work this afternoon.” I do this to spare us both the trouble of comparing notes about what counts as work.

I’ve found that my view of writing’s scope isn’t shared by most others. Before I discovered deviousness and lying as a successful ruse, I used to get into time-wasting discussions that started with some housemate or another saying something like, “Well, it’s not like you’re working. You’re just lying there on the bed staring out the window.”

No one else has to know what you’re doing when you’re “working” – but don’t kid yourself. If time-outs and daydreaming are part of your creative process, be honest with yourself about what those activities look like and how they work for you. Don’t crawl under the bed to whine, eat Ding-Dongs, and snort crack and pretend you’re serving your craft.

If you’re going to be a zombie, be a zombie in the service of your art. Be a temporary zombie (“Must. Watch. Funny. Movie. Now.”) so you can be a permanent writer. Be a zombie in recovery from practicing its craft, versus a zombie avoiding practicing its craft. You know the difference.

“Blow out the candle.
I will burn again tomorrow.”
Feist

Respect yourself enough to acknowledge that the writing goals you have and the writing skills you’ll gain over time require the edge of new growth. Allow yourself wobbly legs and tender shoots. Protect and nourish those aspects of yourself and your skill in the best, most fun, positive, and restorative way you know how.

Trust your body. It knows when and how it needs to regroup and refill. (“Me. Need. Nap. Now.”) By whatever devious means necessary, engineer time-outs that sustain you.

A week or so after arriving back on the island in British Columbia where we live (a long, long way from the Deep South homeland of many generations of my ancestors), in the midst of finding my way into a life without Mom, B’s letter arrived. It’s one of the most beautiful letters I’ve ever read in my life.

He wrote the letter in the middle of the night, during an intense thunderstorm, with the power out and a flashlight tucked between his chin and his shoulder. Periodically, he’d go out and check on the dove he’d seen sitting on the roof of his truck when he went to get the flashlight. The dove stayed there through the long, stormy night, through the downpour that soaked B’s yard, through thunder so strong it shook the dishes in the cabinets, through winds that tore big branches from his pecan trees.

“Losing the physical relationship of a parent is a very tough storm to face,” he wrote. As I read (and reread) his words of wisdom, encouragement, appreciation, and love, they calmed and healed a part of me that had floundered. “I guess God knows I could never grasp many things unless he put them into the most basic and simplest form,” he wrote. “But even I can understand a storm and a dove.”

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The bond created between writer and reader arises out of love. Whether we write to persuade or inform or entertain, whether we know the reader personally or not, the connection that opens a reader like a deconstructing origami crane comes from loving them.

It doesn’t matter if you write for a one-person audience, like my cousin B did, or a worldwide bestselling span of millions – people read what you write one by one. Though your readers make up a group, we don’t read as a group. We read alone, even if we’re being read to. We take the words into our minds and hearts and relate to them personally.

We can tell when a writer loves us. It makes a difference. It’s the difference.

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When my Aunt L was grappling with cancer, Mom organized a road trip to take her and another sister to some of Mom’s favourite places out west, while she still had the chance. All during their trip, Aunt L, Aunt G, and Mom kept journals. They wrote for themselves and for each other and for whoever might care to read their journals in the future.

Years later, after Aunt L had died, Mom and I worked together to make their journals into a book for our family. I used my skills to edit and format, and Mom used her bookmaker’s skills to create the book itself. It’s gorgeous, with maps for endpapers, a photo-collage cover, and different fonts for the three sisters’ voices. It’s full of stories about being on the road together, goofy poems, and reflections about life and loss and love. It’s funny and real and poignant all at once.

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That book, that limited edition, has had a slightly larger audience than cousin B’s letter to me. This article has a larger audience than that. And the novel you read as you eat your lunch today has an even larger audience. But the size of the audience is insignificant. The realness of the audience is paramount.

The people who read what you write – no matter who or where they are – have weathered storms. They breathe and hope and yearn. And they can feel your love.

Even if they’re nameless and faceless to you, even if they’re a cog in a wheel you’re writing to protest against – love your audience.

Person by person. Letter by letter. Word by word.

The joys of unabashed “Let’s pretend” sessions needn’t stop after childhood. If you create anything – from a novel to a stir-fry recipe – you start with “Let’s pretend.” Pretending as a conscious and playful process keeps the passageway between conscious and subconscious alive and thrumming, open and more available when you need it. The muse adores pretending.

It doesn’t matter what you play “Let’s pretend” about, but have as much fun as possible so you get accustomed to associating imagination with fun. Just before going to sleep and just after waking up are wonderful times to play “Let’s pretend.” The mind is already loose and flexible and the subconscious is more tangibly present and influential.

You can make up new stories about characters from movies or books (after seeing Brokeback Mountain, I pretended Ennis and Jack hitchhiked to California – a state-wide gated community of tolerance – were admitted as residents, and eventually bought a little ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada). You can change an experience you had from what actually happened to something that would have been a lot more fun. You can imagine parallel universes, alter the laws of physics, ignore time. The opportunities are limitless.

You can also experiment with tuning the mechanism that allows more or less of the subconscious to be in control of what happens. With more subconscious involved, timelines become fuzzy and loop back, scenes change in an instant, and reasoning doesn’t matter as much as senses and feelings. Allowing elements of what you’re imagining to be out of your conscious control trains you to recognize and welcome inspiration. Think of it as building your inspiration-reception muscle.

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In the wee hours of this morning, I lay in bed half-asleep and played “Let’s pretend we got a postcard from our dear friend P.” I imagined what she’d written and what the postcard she’d chosen for us looked like. I imagined myself being so excited to get it that I read it while standing beside the mailbox.

A few days ago (in real life), our mail delivery man rang the doorbell and I rushed down. He handed me a postcard and said something cryptic while pointing to who it was addressed to: “Miss Grace and Mr. T,” which did not match the way our names appear on the label beside our buzzer.

We have issues, this postman and I. For one thing, he obviously pops a handful of amphetamines on his way to work, which makes him fling his arms around a lot, roll his eyes in frustration, and babble impatiently in various languages, none of which seem to be English or German, though I do catch the odd French word now and then.

I told him, in my best German, that the postcard was, indeed, for us. (It was from a good friend of ours who’s been in Chile for months and I was excited to read it.) Before I could thank him, or even turn the card over to look at the picture on the other side, he snatched it out of my hand, waved me off with mutterings, and turned to put the mail into the mailboxes. Fine, I thought, I’ll come down and get it when you’re gone. But when I went back, our mailbox was empty. No matching names, no mail – that’s apparently the rule.

I tell you this story as an example of how playing “Let’s pretend” can definitely and practically affect your writing: I thought of this article as I lay in bed and played “Let’s pretend we got a postcard.”

This morning (in real life), I went down and confronted the postman. I told him again that the postcard had been for us. I was curious to find out what he’d say. He responded with the usual arm-flinging, a shrug, and a clearly enunciated word, a long one I didn’t know. I rushed upstairs, repeating his word over and over so I wouldn’t forget, and looked it up in the dictionary. I suppose he wanted to let me know how irretrievably gone that postcard is by now, because what he’d said was “It’s prehistoric.”

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Let’s pretend … the postman knocks on the garage door – a couple of sharp, rapid knocks. My brother and I recognize that knock. We exchange a meaningful look. I raise the garage door a couple of feet and leave the postman to scramble underneath on his hands and knees. “Do you have any more yet? Is it ready?” he asks, wringing his hands and looking nervously into the shadows.

D stands up from the chemistry equipment on the concrete floor and taps a jam jar as he holds it up to the strip of light beneath the partially open garage door. The orange swirl of the jar’s contents pins the postman’s attention. “Yup,” D says, “here you go.”

The postman lunges for the jar like the addict he is, but before he can grab it, D pulls it back. The postman groans. “What do you want this time,” he asks. We know by now that he’ll pay anything at this point, once he’s caught sight of the stuff. He takes out his wallet and paws through a thick slab of bills.

“We don’t want your money this time,” I say. The postman looks relived and puts his wallet away, but then sees our weird little smiles. “No,” the postman says, backing away (but only a little – he still needs the jar). “Please, no, not again. I’ll give you more. I’ll go to the bank. I’ll take out a loan. Just don’t make me …”

We shake our heads. The postman whimpers. We all wait. D holds out the jar and finally the postman shuffles forward and takes it, clutching it to his chest as I lead him to a corner of the garage where we’ve laid out the newest LEGO dental tools.

A mistake is an unexpected opening, a sudden fault line in the pathway. An accepted mistake is an unplanned chance to bring more creativity into the writing process. By allowing errors, we invite the unpracticed and the unforeseen to participate.

“She had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand,
of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities.”
Henry James

One day at a friend’s office, I struggled to navigate a complicated online login process, growing more and more exasperated. “Argh!” I (actually) said. “How many mistakes can I make?!” He looked up from his computer and said cheerfully, “LOTS!” Determined not to be irritated, I said, “Well, the trick is to get over it and move on.” He said, “No! Mistakes want to be made. I mean, imagine if you were a mistake. You’d want to have an existence.”

So. Mistakes exist. Always have. Always will. We can resist them and diminish their value, or give them room and, in so doing, alter the flavour of their definition from bad to hmmm. Hmmm implies interest, with judgment in abeyance, at least for a moment. A hmmm can much more easily become a work of art than something considered to be bad.

“Those who make no mistakes are making
the biggest mistakes of all —
they are attempting nothing new.”
Anthony de Mello

I have a bulging compendium of quotes and stories on the topic of mistakes. I keep them around to remind me to practice pre-forgiving my miscalculations. This is one of my favourites:

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the ‘quantity’ group: fifty pound of pots rated an ‘A,’ forty pounds a ‘B,’ and so on. Those being graded on ‘quality,’ however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an ‘A.’ Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the ‘quantity’ group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the ‘quality’ group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

David Bayles and Ted Orland, in their book Art and Fear

Not every brilliant occurrence can be planned. That’s the whole point.

On another day, that same friend of mine and I were talking about a new project, and I (being me) brought up a way we could systemize it. He considered this seriously. “No,” he said, “Let’s not have a system. Let’s consciously make room for the contrary.”

So make room for mistakes. Let the blinders fall away. Reclaim the peripheral vision of miscalculation. Envision more.

You see your goal. You aim for it and move toward it. You glimpse the unplanned rushing in for a sideswipe. You stumble without resistance. You learn to learn.

Mistakes are made. And your art flourishes.

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Related reading: Defending Stupid

Researchers report that children who read to dogs improve their fluency by up to 30 percent. Kids who read to dogs say, “I feel relaxed when I’m reading to a dog because I’m having fun,” and “The dogs don’t care if you read really, really bad so you just keep going.” Reading to a dog is a way of practicing reading without feeling judged.

A friend told me about a professional conference she went to where many of the attendees said they wanted to write a book. My friend would ask, “What have you written so far?” thinking they’d have blogs or work-related brochures – something – but many of those aspiring writers hadn’t written and didn’t write. They weren’t practicing.

This may alarm some aspiring writers, but writing requires the action of writing. Writing a book, for instance, requires practicing writing a book. So how do we practice without feeling judged? How do we find or create a way to write badly while we learn, without stopping because we’re writing badly and feeling judged for it?

And who’s doing the judging? The ego, of course, which loves nothing more than to be an expert (preferably the expert) and which cringes at the thought of imperfection. The ego would have us believe that we have to choose between perfection and learning: Either you start perfect or you don’t do it at all. But the ego is not the part of you that writes. You have to write in spite of the ego.

Just start somewhere. Just. Start. Somewhere. Write a letter, by hand, to your mom, put it in an envelope with a stamp on it and stick it into a mailbox. There! You’ve written something and sent it out into the world. Ta da!

Or take your putrid, no-good, vile excuse for a first really, really rough chapter of your eye-rollingly horrid book (that’s the ego’s view) and a folding chair into the woods behind your house and unfold the chair in front of the friendliest, wisest tree you see (don’t look too long or it’ll be dinnertime and you won’t have done anything except successfully avoid the issue) and read what you’ve written aloud to the tree. Not at the tree, mind you, but to the tree, as though the tree cares about you and loves you. A tree (or any other natural, non-human thing, like a rock) provides a judgment-free audience for practicing your craft, for gaining the courage to begin and to continue.

Even if you feel foolish as you do it, share what you write with an audience that loves you right now, so you can begin right now. A tree, for example, can transmute even the wobbliest voice and the most tentative writing into sap and leaves and the air you breathe as you read. It can give you something back to sustain you.

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For general information about reading to dogs programs, check out R.E.A.D. (Reading Education Assistance Dogs) online, which includes a listing of program participants by state and country.

We’re made of blood and bone. We tire. Courting inspired forward movement involves kneeling and bowing our heads now and then – a pause to acknowledge that our brilliance must come through a body which lives in the world.

Endurance, particularly through a long writing project like a book, most likely doesn’t take the form of a straight, uninterrupted line from conception to book tour. We move forward in surges and cycles. It helps immensely to be aware of your own needs for renewal through those cycles.

Resist assuming that tiredness of mind or body, wandering attention, and diminished ability to focus are signs that the track you’ve been on is suddenly the wrong track. Step away from the swirling vortex. Beware of prognostications and sweeping conclusions. They’re often figments of a tired imagination, really only signals that it’s time to take a break and recharge before continuing again in the same direction.

persist – endure, pursue, carry on, keep going, follow through, be resolute, be stubborn, continue, go all the way, tough it out, be tenacious, be determined, continue, prevail

A slight shift in perspective can relieve the strain of flagging stamina: Persist through to the end by maintaining your focus on the journey to your goal rather than primarily on the goal itself. This allows attention to be here now rather than always in the distance somewhere. Focusing primarily on the endpoint can blind us to the effects the journey itself has on us and on the creation, which can be significant.

Within the overarching cycle of your quest, smaller cycles and feedback loops have the potential to deepen and enrich the work as a whole. Pushing toward the end without attending to renewal along the way diminishes your ability to notice the small journeys within the big journey, and to tap their potential for deepening the work.

“Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which
you must see the world.”
George Bernard Shaw

When we take care of ourselves well during a journey, we arrive at the end powerful rather than depleted. We arrive without having spent ourselves in the process. This makes crossing the finish line a celebration of creativity rather than an urgent health necessity.

What are your warnings signs of flagging stamina? An “Are we there yet?” feeling of boredom, dullness, and depletion? Weakness and glimpses of something resembling depression? Frustration and easily-triggered irritation? Spot warning cries for relief sooner than later so a cure can be applied early – a Band-Aid rather than a trip to the hospital. Then your strength is maintained for the long haul and your focus can return to the work.

relief – easing, comfort, solace, alleviation, release, diversion, respite, assistance, liberation, recreation, succor, help, reassurance, sustenance, soothing, amusement, consolation

How do you rejuvenate? What’s your most direct route from flagging energy to restored energy?

• A walk around the block or through the woods,
• a cat purring on your lap and a cup of tea,
• a gooey snack at the neighbourhood bistro,
• a long bike ride with the kids,
• dancing, singing, listening to music, going to a concert,
• a weekend away with a favorite pal,
• a night out with friends who make you laugh,
• a long meander through a bookstore or a flea market,
• a nap, a phone call, a picnic, a hot air balloon ride?

Sometimes, however studiously applied, rejuvenation remain ineffective. What then? If a review of your quest as you’ve defined it no longer rings true and your energy resuscitation efforts aren’t working, maybe you do need to revise. Spend a while reconnecting with your fascination. Does your aim only need adjusting? Or do you need to admit that this is no longer a true quest so you can clarify one that is?

Sometimes the quest’s aim remains true and the raw material still invites adoration, but the writing seems to refuse to cooperate and nothing productive (meaning movement toward your quest as you’ve defined it) occurs, or not without great effort. Are you willing to ask for help, then?

Asking for help doesn’t have to mean hiring someone. It starts with a willingness to look outside yourself for relief. Release pressure by seeking help from someone who’s been where you are and gotten through it, or from sources of wisdom that have proven useful to you before – in the area of writing or in another area altogether. Look around outside yourself for help with getting back to yourself. Be willing to see and to ask.

“If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.”
Henry David Thoreau

When you reach the end of your quest, kiss the ground. Do something to bless the journey you’ve made. Lay down the riches of your quest, with love, and acknowledge that your finished creation, which you gestated and brought into the world, now has a life of its own.

However small or large your project was, turn around and look back at the path you took to get to the finish line. Pause to bask in your own glory. Be the prize.

As you cycle through creativity’s stages over and over (and over) again, please be gentle with yourself. The world needs what you have to say. We need to be blinded by the light reflecting off your treasure, so we can see anew. Take good care of yourself and your gifts. Be a sustainable resource for the rest of us.

Here’s a mini starter kit to get you going. Ask yourself …

• What activities keep my creative vision clean and bright?
• What’s my favourite way of reconnecting with my excitement about this topic?
• What are my first warning signs that I might need a focus break?
• How might I remind myself to check on my energy level?
• What systems can I put into place to make resuscitation quick and easy?
• What type of help tends to be most effective for me?
• What rewards can I give myself for continuing toward my goal?
• How will I acknowledge my astonishing greatness when I’ve achieved my quest?

Travel with curiosity about yourself from start to finish: Make your quest worth the journey, fall in love with your topic, discover and practice your system for finishing, and find a way to lay your head down in the warm grass and stare up at the sky.

 “The ultimate act of faith is breathing out.”
Chery Cratty

Allow yourself to exhale. Another breath will come. Another word. Another milestone. Keep inhaling what you love and exhaling what you write. Above all, ask questions. Know yourself.

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This is the fourth article in a four-part series on writing better by being curious about yourself:

1 – wander – write better by clarifying your quest
2 – wonder – write better by exploring your fascination
3 – ponder – write better by organizing your ideas
4 – persist – write better by maintaining your focus

Often, we do this kind of pondering automatically and unconsciously, our attention on the topic rather than the process, but it helps to know how to do it consciously. You can take your writing to another level when you know how to muscle the magic.

This evaluating stage of creating doesn’t look like the cold, hard kind of thinking. There’s room for sensing and intuiting as the writing moves forward by trial and error, as we rely on an inner sense to tell us when we’ve said what we want to say in the way we want to say it.

The process of pondering can make a big mess. We bite off more than we can chew and have to spit some of it back out (yuck). We leave half-thoughts lying around and trip over them later (sometimes just when we need them). We test possibilities by walking on bouncy planks across gaps between thoughts, surviving crash landings and wading through cast-offs. We break things as we test them for strength. We learn as we try.

ponder – review, weigh, chew over, think about, pore over, study, deliberate, puzzle over, consider with care, turn over in one’s mind, think through, contemplate, reflect deeply, ruminate, mull over, muse on, meditate on

Pondering with the intent to finish is a way of curating your collection, a way of working out how to build a trail through your trove of raw material that someone else can follow. You interpret and show. You entice. You place something alluring in the reader’s path, beguiling and seducing them to move closer, to examine and follow.

Through distillation and presentation, you give the reader the benefit of your expertise. You put a prism into the light beam of your wonder, which your adoration has focused. Pondering refracts and clarifies wonder, translating and intensifying it to make it more visible to others.

The prism’s mechanism is the act of deciding. If you want to write something you can share with others, you’ll need to decide. What do you include and what do you leave out? How do you work the half-baked, half-chewed mess of the process into an organized finished something? How do you present it in a way that helps the reader see what’s amazing?

decide – select, pick, choose, examine, sort out, figure out, commit oneself, determine, work out, settle, solve, opt, negotiate, give a verdict on, take a stand, make up one’s mind, conclude, resolve, complete

The crucial focus in the pondering stage of creating revolves around how you decide. What’s your way of turning your raw material into a finished piece? How do you turn your ideas about the characters into a novel? How do you turn an experience into a poem?

Know yourself. Resist apology. Invite tolerance. Don’t try to curate your wondrous collection as though you were someone else. You aimed at and found raw material that inspires you – by being the most you you could be. Keep doing that. Be most like yourself as you sort and decide. Finding your way of pondering will transform your writing process and your writing, by freeing your attention so you can focus on the words.

If you resist the idea that you already use a system or that you need a system as part of the creative process, consider expanding your idea of what a system can be. Creativity and systems are not mutually exclusive.

system – strategy, style, modus operandi, approach, a method for achieving an objective, arrangement, tactic, map, route, master plan, methodology, recipe, process, coordination, interconnected parts working together, a means of forming a complex whole

Systems get a bad rap when we think of them as static: “Either you can use this system or you can’t, and if you can’t, it’s you who’s lacking.” Wrong. Systems serve. If you’re serving the system and feeling punished for your efforts, free yourself to try another way of working.

This golden rule about systems never fails:

If it’s not working for you, it’s the wrong system.

This is crucial. Knowing how you curate your raw material into a finished piece makes a gigantic difference. You can’t fake it. Don’t be a slave to a system of writing a novel or finishing a dissertation or turning out three articles a week for your blog if it’s not actually working to produce those things.

Invent a system if you need to. Free yourself from the inefficiency and tyranny of system slavery. Demand support for your artistry, starting with the way you treat yourself as you create.

Here are some examples of systems for writing:

• Use bribery. Tie incredibly motivating rewards to goals, like writing a certain number of words a week. Reach the goal, get the reward.
• Ask someone who understands you to give you assignments toward finishing the project. Report back to them as you go.
• Use what already works. Transfer a favourite way of organizing in another area of your life to the writing process.
• Talk into a recorder, have the audio files transcribed, and revise from there.
• Write in a cafe, with a writing buddy, and share what you’ve done after each session.
• Use flow charts, mind-mapping, clustering, spreadsheets, a clipboard, specialized software programs, a three-ring binder … whatever works.

The trick about discovering and designing systems that really work is keeping at it until you succeed. Such systems are well worth the effort of figuring out because of their zoom effect. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when the system itself fades into the background and all your attention is on the work, on the writing itself.

If your attention remains on the system rather than the work,
the system isn’t working.

You can try using systems other writers use, but if their system doesn’t fade into your background, leaving you to focus on your work, you’d better tweak it so it does, or toss it out and try another one. Keep exploring and asking questions.

Here’s a mini starter kit to get you going. Ask yourself …

• What format does this material want to be presented in?
• What’s the hardest part of finishing this writing project?
• What else can I experiment with to make my process less difficult?
• What kinds of process systems have worked for me in the past?
• What part of the process can I eliminate altogether?
• What do I most enjoy about the writing process?
• How can I maximize and build on what I love about this process?

Writing mastery is built through practice. You write. You write again. You write some more. You figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. You open more. You remain curious. You learn about and fine-tune the instrument that is you. You practice being you. Get to work.

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This is the third article in a four-part series on writing better by being curious about yourself:

1 – wander – write better by clarifying your quest
2 – wonder – write better by exploring your fascination
3 – ponder – write better by organizing your ideas
4 – persist – write better by maintaining your focus

A writing quest will draw out the best of you when it compels you to need to know more about your topic. Why do ravens do that? What part of my day was a poem? What would make the father cry? As you allow yourself to fall into the depths of the fascination, as you follow feelings of awe and immerse yourself in adoration, you let wonder lead you to yourself.

We write to express ourselves, to express the self. Even if you’re writing a business plan, you express your self in what you include, in what you deem important enough to draw the reader’s attention to. Clarifying your quest is about connecting with your self. Exploring your fascination is about using the feeling of wonder to learn more about your topic in relation to your self.

wonder (verb) – admire excitedly, marvel, feel surprised, speculate, be awestruck, be flabbergasted, question, be astonished, be awed, be amazed, gape, goggle. (noun) – fascination, amazement, reverence, bewilderment, surprise about something new, incredulity, awe, curiosity, puzzled interest

At the heart of wonder is the desire to know more – about the past lives of the story’s characters, about the company’s goals, about what mice do in the wintertime, about whatever intrigues you. There’s nothing of the editor in wonder. Only pure, unfettered devotion.

Raw material makes no apologies. It’s not trying to be something else. Particularly, it’s not trying to be a super-cool creation. The raw material isn’t doing the creating. You are. Your creation comes from the way you react to your raw material, by following your feelings about it, by wondering and collecting and noticing, by combining and allowing.

Allow your love affair with the raw material to lead you to strange and curious ways of gathering, playing with, sorting, recombining, and expanding your collection. It doesn’t matter how that looks, as long as it works for you. It’s okay if your raw material is messy and all over the place, literally and figuratively. The muse is charmed by the limitless.

raw – unedited, unprocessed, undigested, undisguised, new, unrefined, immature, green, naive, wet behind the ears, raggedy-ass, young, unripe, unanalyzed, strong, organic, intense, powerful, unrestrained, uninhibited, in its true state, naked

This stage of creativity is not about supposed to. It’s about love. It’s about listening carefully to what your love is telling you about your topic and how to fondle it. Cardboard box with scraps of notes piling up? Spreadsheets? White board? Digital bulletin board? Workbench? There are no limits. Invent something if you need to. Or, better yet, fall further into what’s already happening naturally.

Lean in. Lean toward. That’s the whole point of wonder – removing the limits to your devotion so you’re free to hear and feel what your fascination wants to tell you. Get sappy, be eager, fall open, become raw like your material.

As you build your expertise with your raw material, hold judgment at bay. If you feel wary or uncomfortable about what’s coming forward to be adored, ask more questions. Delve into what’s making you feel uncomfortable. It could just be your ego hoping you don’t discover that gold nugget which would upset the status quo and change everything. Don’t turn away. Look. Reach out. Make contact. Go further. Understand. Befriend.

“When enthusiasm encounters obstacles
in the form of adverse situations or uncooperative people,
it never attacks but walks around them
or by yielding and embracing turns the opposing energy
into a helpful one, the foe into a friend.”
Eckhart Tolle

One question leads to another. And at some point, something mysterious and remarkable happens. When the fascination that compelled you to choose your quest is given your curious attention and caring, when it’s allowed to thrive, what you write will glow from within. Wonder gives your writing layers, light and shadow, dimension, vitality. Your immersion in the fascination illuminates you. Through adoration, your quest becomes holy.

Building your expertise through wonder invites a force greater than you to play along. That force goes by lots of names, depending on who’s doing the naming – the muse, the universe, God, a benevolent power, inspiration. Whatever you call it, it will transmute your raw material into energy that turns the light bulb over your head into a sun. And it will turn a thought into a thing.

That thing is a creation, your creation, a coming together of fascinating bits in a way that transcends and is more than the sum of its parts. Your sustained adoration of the topic gives birth to new life. This is not unreachable divinity only reserved for special people. It’s the everyday miracle of revelation brought on by combining curiosity and true love. And, yes, I believe it’s available to everyone.

The shift from collecting to creating is the trajectory of wonder. The shift from collecting to creating can show up big or small, come sooner or later, and will occur over and over again. It can show up as soon as you plunge into a query that fascinates you. It can appear in stages, in accrued small moments of insight that add up in big ways over time. It can appear suddenly in the immediate foreground (“Ta dah!”). It can come when you’re already deep into the writing.

The creative process is made up of such shifts. We spiral through our raw material, seeing it anew as we view it from different angles, in different moods, on different days. The whole collection revises as more is added and the no-longer-fascinating bits fall away. So stay tuned. Turn willingly through the shifts. Keep a lookout for the feeling of alert stillness that indicates the birth of a new idea.

The shift from collecting to creating also marks a transition from sorting to sharing, from playing happily with the raw material to wanting to express discoveries, recombinations, and interpretations. From inflow to outflow. From exploring to writing with inspired focus.

Throughout a project (and often long before and long after), wonder about the raw material remains active, seductive, and inviting, continually breathing. Keep it alive by following your curiosity and asking questions.

Here’s a mini starter kit to get you going. Ask yourself …

• What do I love most about this?
• How can I go deeper into what I love most about this?
• Have I been resisting any desires about my topic?
• What did I use to love about this?
• How does enthusiastic wonder feel in my body?
• What activities make me lose track of time?
• What’s exciting, but irrelevant? Is it really irrelevant?
• What would feed my wonder?
• Do I have multiple fascinations that could be combined?

We get accustomed to a definition of “normal” that looks like a two-dimensional paper cut-out of our pulsating, succulent selves. Practicing wonder breathes us back into three dimensions, then expands us even further, way out beyond ourselves, out to where wild inspirations roam. Gullible enthusiasm is your means of transport. Enjoy the ride.

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This is the second article in a four-part series on writing better by being curious about yourself:

1 – wander – write better by clarifying your quest
2 – wonder – write better by exploring your fascination
3 – ponder – write better by organizing your ideas
4 – persist – write better by maintaining your focus

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Related reading: A short article about why curiosity is meaningful to me appeared yesterday on the life by me website.