Why I Haven’t Blogged in Over Two Months

            First, my heartfelt thanks to all of you who responded to my last post, “Being Cheryl Strayed.” You energized me. You made me believe in myself again and my writing. When I read your comments, I wanted to reach out and hug you all and let you know how much I believe in you.

I hope you’re all still digging deep for that authentic self, the one you always carry, the one that sometimes gets layered over with other people’s expectations, perceptions, and needs. The one that gets lost in our modern world, the world that keeps us so distracted we forget who we are and what makes us powerful creative beings. A toast to all of us.

            Now to tell you what happened after I wrote my last post. And it wasn’t what I expected, not by a long shot.

I truly expected to have a mega burst of creative energy. I was raw, open, and a little scared, but raring to go, especially to finish my novel.

            Instead, I found myself drop kicked to the ground. I just couldn’t get up. I couldn’t find the energy to write, to keep up with my responsibilities, to even be excited about the novel. What was wrong? What was happening? When I finally dragged myself to my feet and examined myself, I had a whole new problem to figure out and another layer to dig through.

            It was morning, a few weeks after the last blog post when I dragged myself out of bed and realized I was anxious and depressed. I’m not one to be depressed. It’s just not me. I took my usual half hour to wake up, my usual easing into the day. Dan was downstairs, drinking his coffee and reading the paper. He knows not to talk to me first thing and woe is he who asks, “What should we have for dinner tonight?”

            I stumbled around, heated water for tea, and tried to remember what my last thoughts were before I fell asleep and what I’d dreamed about. I often use sleep and dreams to solve problems. When I’m fully in tune with myself (happy, excited, adventurous, expectant), I go to bed with a story problem and sometimes wake up with a solution. My dreams are vivid, Technicolor, intense, full story dreams with a beginning, middle and end. Sometimes they are simply stories. Sometimes they are a collage of recent personal events and fears, or my fears for the world. Before 911, I had, like many people did, dreams of being in a tall building that was crumbling around me.

            But that morning I couldn’t remember anything about my dreams or what I’d wanted to process before I fell asleep.

While my tea brewed, I wiped down the sink, put dishes away from the night before, and read part of the paper standing up at the counter. I grabbed pencil and paper and wrote down a few groceries we needed. My fuzzy morning brain was waking up, but I wasn’t happy. I plunked down on the kitchen stool. When was the last time I was happy in the morning? When had I last woke up feeling excited, adventurous, expectant? I couldn’t remember.

Okay, the best way to push through all this was to prepare for the day. I flipped to a new sheet of paper and decided to write down what I would do that day. I started a list:

Write a blog post.

Then it came back to me, what I’d gone to bed mulling over and worrying about—I could not come up with a subject to blog about.

I’d never had a problem writing this blog. Never. I did think about what my readers would find interesting, but for the most part, my topics came from what I found interesting. Readers would find it worth reading or not. Sure, I worried about execution, the old “Can I pull this off? Or will I sound like an idiot?” I didn’t worry too much about the last part. I’ve sounded like an idiot before and it didn’t kill me.

Okay. So the problem was a topic for the blog. Easy then. Quit trying so hard. I could do a follow up to the reader comments from the last entry. I’d take the “Being Cheryl Strayed” to another level. I wrote that down on my list. I could write about my decision to drop the pirate persona, how I now found it tedious, and I’d explain why.

Nah, that wasn’t even interesting.

I took a deep breath. My mind was all over the place with ideas but I just couldn’t get excited about any of them. Okay, don’t panic. I’d set that aside for the moment. I would make a list of everything I needed to do and start working on that. Crossing things off a list was always therapeutic. I wrote:

Check your Facebook page because you’ve let that go.

You forgot to check ValinParis account for comments.

Post the Cheryl Strayed piece to Women Writing the West Yahoo users group.

Set up Hootsuite; need to follow hashtag groups.

Goodreads—woefully out of date!

Go through all your email; needs attention!

Respond to SheWrites messages and post to groups.

Write the column for Books By the Bed.

I set the pencil down. I felt a little sick. I stared at the list.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

I took my now cold tea to my writing room and stood there, looking at my library of novels and reference books, the stacks of literary magazines and the binders full of research. A partial manuscript was tucked in my laptop bag with all my revision notes.

Reading area in my writing room

What used to make me happy, excited, adventurous, expectant was writing. Writing fiction. Why wasn’t I devoting every waking—and sleeping—moment to finishing my novel? That’s what I used to fall asleep with—characters, story, plot problems, structure possibilities. I know I can’t do that all the time, but I remember when I’d wake up in that fuzzy first hour, noodling ideas and excited about perhaps a scene I needed to finish.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

Internet.

That’s why I couldn’t move, couldn’t be excited, was depressed. I’d been letting all this online networking and social media—creating a web presence, as they call it—take over. What was the use of having all this “presence” if I didn’t have a finished novel? What good did it do anyway? Who were these people who said you had to have a web presence if you wanted to be an author? Who were these gurus who insisted that this new world of publishing demanded an author FB/Tweet/blog/Google+/Klout/Pinterest, etc.?

I drank my cold tea and pushed away that old Puritan who said, “How dare you question authority.” What authority, I asked? I used to work in advertising and marketing. I understood the old caveat emptor warning. So I asked myself, Who is selling us on the idea of all this social media and internet marketing?

I don’t begrudge anyone the opportunity to recognize a need and create a service to fill that need. They have to make a living and they do give away lots of good info before asking you to buy something. I subscribe to three of these social media gurus e-newsletters, so I asked myself, What roped me in?

 Use of their urgent language? Use of their authoritative tone? The fear of not doing it?

“If you don’t do this, you won’t succeed.”

Well, maybe. But does anyone have the numbers to prove this? Sure, I want to be successful. I want to be ready for the moment when my book is published. But what price am I paying?

            If I’m sacrificing my happiness, my creativity, the immersion time I need to write, if I don’t have time anymore to read other novels, why bother? I’d even dragged these demands to Colonyhouse retreats because when you’re on that many sites, you have to keep up on a daily basis. You have to get online and be “present.”

            No, I said to myself that morning. Not if it means you can’t be fully present in your writing. In that wonderful creative half-awake state that morning, not once had I thought about my novel.

            Not once.

I had to do something drastic.

So I did. I dropped all my social media activities and went on a blog hiatus. Just like that.

Once again, I was back in the land of the writer. I went to bed with my novel, woke up with it, noodled it in the car, devoted myself to it for a month, and fell in love again. The novel grew stronger and deeper with this immersion; the writing was some of my best.

I finished April 1, the deadline I’d first set for myself, and that’s not an April Fool’s joke. The novel is now out with five readers and I’m happier than I’ve been in … damn, I can’t remember when. Probably sometime before I dove into the social media. Even Dan has commented on how much happier I seem.

            I've heard the argument for balancing both, limiting my time online, giving myself one hour in the evening, etc. etc. But let’s be honest. How many of you have been online for an hour? It’s more along the lines of look at the clock and gasp because three hours have gone by. And never mind trying to return to your writing, fully present in that. No, you’re concentration, that precious immersion in story, has been infected. With internet.

            As many of you know, the gift of being a writer is the joy of noodling an idea, slurping it around the mouth, playing with the creative food. It’s about immersion. When I’m writing, even the bad days are good. Even when I’m writing drivel, the days are better than anything else.

            I did have pangs of guilt for not being on all those internet sites I’d joined. But it didn’t depress me or make me anxious. After the novel was done, I decided to clear up my writing room, weed out saved articles and old magazines. Spring was in the air and I like order. As I went through articles I had saved, I came across one that took away any residual guilt about my dropping out from the internet.

The article, “Inner Space: Clearing Some Room for Inspiration,” by Frank Bures examines the same problem I’d been dealing with and that many creative people face. When I was online every day to do my social media, I had what Bures admitted he developed, what researcher Linda Stone calls “continuous partial attention.”

Continuous partial attention.

Lake Winnisquam

Ping! I couldn’t stay in the story or daydream or be in the warm fuzzy creative space upon waking. My focus was chopped up into too many small bites. I yearned for my childhood days when I would spend hours sitting under a tree beside Lake Winnisquam, making up stories that I’d spin into words later on paper.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m organized. I have systems. I keep great files. I’m pretty good at time management.

This, however, is something entirely different. Overuse of the internet slices and dices your brain. It damages your focus, your creative headspace.

So here we are in this modern tech age when we are expected to be online every day to create a presence and it’s rupturing the connection to our creativity? And what of our writerly isolation and prolonged sitting? (Lots of new info on how dangerous that is.) I know I have even more reason to limit that “online presence.”

I do love my online communities, the amazing, helpful, wonderful people, the great resources. But I will from now on be absent when writing and promise to give you a heads up.

And yes, I finished my novel. Relief! Happiness! Fulfillment!

For fun—after the novel was done—I ran the first page of it through the website “I Write Like …” and came up with David Foster Wallace. Yes, go ahead and play with the site. Drop a chunk of your writing into the box and see who pops up. I wanted my writing to be like Margaret Atwood’s, but David’s would definitely do.

I’m celebrating, both the finish of my novel and my new freedom. You’ve been with me for almost a year and a half, given me support and courage, and for that I’m giving away a copy of Cheryl’s memoir Wild. If you leave a comment, your name goes into the hat. Either use the comment box or send to the ValinParis email.

Also, I would love to have your reactions to my story. Do you have similar stories and concerns? What are they? Have you experienced a negative effect on your writing from being on the internet? Or not? I’m really curious. I know we have to market our books once they’re published, but is all this social media necessary and does it work? What do you refuse to do? What do you think is really necessary? How do you make those decisions?

Thanks again for being there, for reading this. Please join the conversation. In the meantime, ask yourself this: what is running around inside your head when you wake up? Does it make you happy or anxious? Why?

And for your information, I won’t be blogging weekly. I’ll blog when I’m inspired and want to reach out to you.

Until then, hugs all ‘round.

Val

p.s. If anyone heard the NPR Morning Edition story about this same subject/issue, please let me know when you heard it and if there's a link to it. I didn't hear it, but was told about it. Thanks!

Also, if you're interested, check out the books I'm reading, Books Beside the Bed, at We Wanted to Be Writers.

The Muse is Back and Dishes Inspiration

Hello, everyone!

Sparrow here, Captain Val’s muse. Thank you for all the support you’ve given her lately and, new pirates, welcome aboard the Gobsmacked.

I’m once again filling in for Captain Val as she is a tad bit overwhelmed (taxes, polishing her novel, family, a short trip to Ashland, and, well, life). For those who remember my last post (read it here), she did apologize for calling me flighty. I’m not upset anymore. She needs me. And what’s a muse for?

            Of course, now I have to think of something muse-like to write about. As my role is to inspire and sprinkle some kind of writerly fairy dust, I decided that perhaps the lot of you could stand a little sparkle also. It’s January, it’s winter, the holidays are over, and don’t you feel a little … well, just a smidgen in need? of encouragement? of love? of inspiration?

            Good. Now that’s settled, let’s start with a bit of humor, sent by Kathryn Lang and found at Jason Love’s website.

            Isn’t it refreshing to see that writers can make fun of themselves—well most of them. I do understand your angst. We all have it. But if writing is like dealing with cancerous tumors, as one writer told Captain Val, stop writing and become a pilot or a nurse, anything that gives you joy. Life is short!

            Now, onward to inspiration.

I am not a writer, just a muse. So I turn to others, your kin, with their words of wisdom. Think of what I offer as your very own goody grab bag.

            Let’s start at the beginning. 2012. How did you approach the new year? Resolutions? A to-do list of all the things you want to fix or make or change? Now that we're in the year of the dragon, let's do something auspicious. Ellen Goodman has a the right idea.

"We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives ... not looking for flaws, but for potential."

Potential. I like that! Thank you Becky Green Aaronson for posting this.

Barbara Sullivan, Captain Val’s go to advisor on all things literary, uses this idea of potential when guiding her through a rewrite. I paraphrase here:

Don’t look at what isn’t working. Read through your novel. Look for and highlight all the passages, scenes, descriptions that knock you out. The ones that cheer you as in “I can’t believe I wrote that!” That’s the good stuff you want to tap. That gives you the potential, the scaffolding, for everything else.

            Captain Val’s crewmate, Chris Scofield, sent this quote from Josephine Demott Robinson, a circus performer in the first half of the 20th century. Her advice not to let failure deter you is sound and is the idea that you need to encourage your efforts. Like the inferred note of self-assessment too, not so bad, a little more practice and you'll get there, an applicable bit of inspiration for everyone. For writers, this can be what you need during each rewrite.

"Never mind if you fall far short of the thing you want to do, encourage your effort. If no one else will say it to you, say it to yourself. ‘Not so bad.’ It will make the next effort easier and better."

            Do you encourage your efforts? Do you give yourself credit for every growth jump you take? Captain Val doesn’t wait to publish before she rewards herself. She rewards the levels of efforts it takes to get there. If she finishes an application to a residency, she celebrates. If she finishes a first draft, she celebrates. Every rewrite, every move to the next professional level is cause for celebration according to her. (Yes, she does like to celebrate!)

           Another bit for those who love the crazy free-spirited Jack Kerouac. In 1958, he wrote a letter to Don Allen and included a 30-point list of “essentials” that he titled “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” You can read the entire list on Lists of Note, but here are numbers 14-17:

·  Like Proust be an old teahead of time

·  Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

·  The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

·  Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

 The ultimate inspiration for February and the Year of the Dragon? Kristen Lamb’s treasure chest blog Warrior Writers offers “Three Steps to Freedom: Grab Hold of your Brilliant Future.” What a title! And this is not just for writers. Everyone! Read this. Please! Here’s a taste:

This blog is dedicated to helping writers holistically. We are more than robots sitting at a desk pounding out word count. We have hopes, dreams, fears, bad habits and baggage. …

Three Lessons of Confession

Confess the Real Emotion—Name It and Claim It

One of the first things that offered me a new sense of empowerment was when I learned to confess the real emotion I was feeling.

Click here to read this blog: Kristen Lamb’s WarriorWriters

            Ah, there’s my call to duty. Seems as if the Captain needs me for a few hours while she polishes her novel.

My inner child at the moment

             BUT before I go, I want a word with the guy who wrote “Housebreaking Your Muse.” I beg your pardon! Muses are not DOGS! How demeaning! Muses everywhere demand an apology. I know you were trying to be cute, but muses are energy, light, intuition, not a bad pup that needs its nose rubbed in its pee. It’s the writer who needs training, focus, meditation … whatever! Muses are always there for our captains. So, please! No more!

            Sigh.

            Again, gentle readers, thank you for letting me be here. Captain Val will be back next week.

            In the meantime, what inspires you? Can you see the potential instead of what doesn't work? In fact, tell us how you're going to change your outlook, how you'll approach your project from now on. Will you now approach your writing with a fresh new attitude? What will you do? What will be your reward for the first step you take?
            Oh, what fun! Captain Val would love to hear from you, and you don’t need to be a writer to do this. I think February should be The Potential Month, See the Possibilities Month. Now I’m excited!

            For now, until next time, much love,

            Sparrow
 p.s. And don't forget to call on your Muse for help! (But please, don't use a dog whistle.)

Coming Soon!

Captain Val Throws a Creative Soiree with her Crew
Waiting for Wild and Why I'll Read Everything Cheryl Strayed Writes

How a Research Trip to Paris went Aground and What Saved It

Lucille Ball and Brenda Starr’s Love Child: Interview with Jessica Maxwell

Ahoy, me Gobsmacked Crew!

Jess Maxwell

            Yer in fer a treat. On May 27^th, Jessica Maxwell, author of the wildly successful Roll Around Heaven: An All-True Accidental Spiritual Adventure (phew!), sat down with me at Bella Vita Spa in Salem, Oregon, to answer a few questions. Instead of the usual interview—ar-ha-ha!—me pirate’s playful nature needed a playground. Seein’ twas still me birthday week, and Jess was treatin’ me to a pedicure, why not ha’ our brilliant nail technicians (who know Jessica and RAH) ask the questions? (Aye, captains love ta leave the work to the crew!)

            So wi’out further ado, here be the interview!

            Elena Leo, Jessica’s Bella Vita nail technician.

            Elana Leo:  How old were you when you decided to be a writer?

            Jessica:  A good question, because until I was sixteen I wanted to be a doctor. I always wanted to heal people. But when they were handing out math brain cells, I got back into the poetry line, and I didn’t get any math brain cells.

            So at sixteen, I knew I couldn’t do medicine, and I said to myself, I’m good at English, was even in honors English. Plus, I’m a redhead. I can be either Brenda Starr or Lucille Ball.

            Brenda was more appealing because she had all these exotic assignments all over the world. Plus, she had Basil St. John, this tall boyfriend who always showed up wherever she was, and he wore an eye patch, which I found intriguing. She had these fabulous clothes, and I thought what a great job! I ended up doing all this without the Basil part.

            Now, Lucille Ball was not a part I counted on. I had assignments for serious stories. The first one was on the LA sewer system, and I wanted to do an environmental story. But when I arrived, it’s Girl Scout day and only Girl Scouts could tour the sewer system. So I pretended to be in one of the troops. While I was on one of their tours, I noticed the workers at the sewer had big fancy rings. I said to one of them, “Man, they must pay you well,” and he said, “Oh, no. It’s finders keepers.”

            Then I interviewed the supervisor of the LA sewer system. I sat down with him and interviewed him very seriously. After, I asked, “Okay, what is your name?”

            He said, “Arthur F. Sewer.”

            I laughed, and he didn’t. “Is that your real name?”

            He nodded. 

            “How do you spell that?”

            “Suhr.”

            See? I tried to do a serious story and ended up with outrageous comedy. I was Lucy from then on.

             

            Michelle Moore, me Bella Vita nail technician asks her question.

            Michelle: What flower do you most identify with?

            Jessica: I adore flowers. And old Indian master Swami Satchidananda once said, “Flowers are God smiling at you.” And I thought that was so neat because you look at a flower, and it’s so beautiful and happy, even in the middle of yuck!

            What flower do I identify with? For some reason I love violets. When I lived in France my junior year of college every February-March is violet season, and they have little bouquets of violets. I actually have a little bouquet of faux violets I pin on my dresses all the time. I think they’re just so … so French! I love lilac time, too. I love cherry blossoms. What I love about flowers is they represent blooming again, every year, and if you think about it, it’s amazing we can count on spring bringing us again so much hope. I mean, what if flowers never bloomed again? In terms of a spiritual symbol, the lotus flower is the symbol of what the Eastern people call enlightenment. I don’t know if you know this, but the lotus floats on top of water, and its roots go down like jelly fish into the mud. So it gets its nourishment from the mud of life and then blooms forth on the surface. I think that’s perfect. Our feet are in the mud. Life’s messy, yet we can still bloom. So I love that. I have a lotus on my keychain.

            The other thing that comes to mind about flowers is my dad. He was born in Honolulu and lived in New Zealand, and any South Pacific flower—the pikake, gardenia, tiare—their beautiful fragrance, it’s like you’re smelling heaven right here on earth.

            I was on assignment and remember getting off the plane in Tahiti. They have tiare flowers planted everywhere. It’s very smart. And it’s not sickly sweet. They say the masters produce a fragrance, and that’s wild. All in all, I associate flowers with the highest, deepest level of awareness that we can attain on this planet here and now.

 

            I, as Gobsmacked Captain, could not be left out of the interview. I’ve known me shipmate Jessica for years, know the quest she was accidentally dropped into, and ha’ seen the results. She might write for all the big mags—National Geographic, Esquire, Audubon, Forbes, Gourmet, Outside, Town & Country  to name a few—but her True North is not of this earth, at least not that we know of. Being a witness to these adventures, I had one burning question.

            Captain Val:  Of all the questions in all the interviews you’ve done, what question have you not been asked that you would have liked to answer?

            Jessica:  (a long pause; a faraway look in the eye; husky low voice)

            What no one has asked me and what I have not volunteered is what I’m going to do in the next book. I’m going to write about what I really know—what I really know—because I don’t go around talking about it because it is so out there, or in there, and it’s not about me; it’s what we know, we’re always dancing around, even with the concept of enlightenment or samsara. The reason that I know what I know is that I live and I experience it, but I don’t talk about it. It’s so profound. And I don’t mean I have any big secret. I mean these trappings we give to the real stuff is the best we can do.

            It’s like when you’re writing. You have your idea and who the characters are, but what is their story? We call it inspiration, this unbelievable knowingness that comes through, and you write and write, and somehow a paragraph happens, the best you’ve written in years, and it glows. What is it, Val, really? We’ve tried to put words to it, but if you say “I’m channeling,” well …

            The words that come close are tainted by religious history, which makes intelligent people throw the baby out with the baptismal water. And what I’ve really come to understand didn’t come like a lightening strike.

Lama Karma

            What’s interesting is watching how people respond to my workshops. I’m giving them information, and we have a wonderful time, but certain people get that it’s literally coming through me, and it’s like transference. Like I say to them, “I’m the spiritual FedEx girl and don’t crown the messenger.” It’s a very interesting situation to be in because I instinctively know what people can take and not take, what you can offer and what you can’t because you don’t even talk about it. What you’re offering is something deeper but you don’t even talk about that because it comes with it.

            The closest I have found to a description of what that is I found in this book Glen, Randy’s* husband, gave me on Tibetan mysticism. How they understand the sound of chanting is bringing you and your mind to this place of peace—and that’s hackneyed too—but it’s literally medicine for your soul. Even that’s not it. But it’s starting to describe the undercurrents that are at work. A baby monk will be taught a chant, and the energy of the sounds, the rhythms and the cadence, will take the monk to this place.

            The first time I “got” it was when Lama Karma on New Years was chanting and I listened and was taken to a place where I understood the design within the chanting.

            Back to me, the Captain. I can tell no more o’ this interview because Pirate Maxwell asked me to keep the rest confidential so it is saved for her next book.

            But I ha’ to throw in me pieces o’ eight. Me thinks what she’s sayin’ is like when sailors thought the world flat and they’d fall off the end of the earth if they went too far. That’s where we be in the spiritual realm. We’re just waitin’ to find out the earth is round, and we’re spinnin’, and we can’t fall off because the design is so freakin’ awesome. And, nay, I be non religious, just a spiritual pirate spoutin’ similes.

            Ah, but I must ask one last question of Jess. Can’t resist.

            Captain Val:  What is your dream?

            Jessica: To have a farmhouse in the beautiful Paro Valley of Bhutan.

            So for ye on a spiritual sail, bon voyage!

            And “Stay tunaed,” as Miss Maxwell is fond o’ sayin’. The Gobsmacked is headed for adventure! With a private peek at me month at Vermont Studio Center and a frightenin’ tale of me run-in wi’ a tsunami. Shiver me timbers!

            Until then, I remain your

            Captain Val

*Randy is Jessica’s best friend.

COMING UP!

Adventures at a Writer’s Residency: Captain Val Goes to Vermont Studio Center

Runnin’ for Me Life:  Tsunami!

More News & Confirmed Gossip from the Writing World

And … an unusual interview with cartoonist Jan Eliot of “Stone Soup