Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within (8 page)

We want honest support and encouragement. When we receive it, we don’t believe it, but we are quick to accept criticism to reinforce our deepest beliefs that, in truth, we are no good and not really writers. My ex-husband used to say to me, “You look ugly. Aah, now that I have your attention . . .” He said when he complimented me, I never heard him, but as soon as he said something negative, I perked right up.

Students say to me, “Well, you’re just the teacher. You have to say something positive.” Friends say, “Well, you’re just my friend. You already like me.”
Stop!
Really stop when someone is complimenting you. Even if it’s painful and you are not used to it, just keep breathing, listen, and let yourself take it in.
Feel
how good it is. Build up a tolerance for positive, honest support.

What Are Your Deep Dreams?

I
ASKED MY
Sunday-night group (many of whom had been doing practice writing for three years), “Where do you want to go with writing? You have this strong creative voice; you’ve been able to separate out the creator and editor. What do you want to do with it?”

There comes a time to shape and direct the force we have learned. I asked them, “What are your deep dreams? Write for five minutes.” Many of us don’t know, don’t recognize, avoid our deep dreams. When we write for five, ten minutes we are forced to put down wishes that float around in our mind and that we might not pay attention to. It is an opportunity to write down, without thinking, wishes at the periphery of our perceptions.

Reread them. Start to take your dreams and wishes seriously. If you’re not sure, if you honestly don’t know what you want to do, start wishing for a direction, for your way to appear.

When I was in Israel last year, I walked the streets of Jerusalem wondering what other kind of writing I should do. I was finishing my second manuscript of poetry,
Top of My Lungs
, and knew that I needed something, some new form. Lots of poets back in the Twin Cities were writing novels. Judith Guest’s success with
Ordinary People
, her first novel, spurred everyone on (she lives in Edina, Minnesota). I kept saying to myself, “Natalie, do you want to write a novel?” The answer was clearly “No!” There was some comfort in that, in knowing what I didn’t want. But I was worried. I had visions of my end, lying in the gutter, clutching a few last poems in my hand and, with my last breath, begging someone to read them.

There’s a wonderful
New Yorker
cartoon of a man standing in front of passengers on a plane with a rifle and a notebook in his hands, saying, “Now, sit still. No one is going to be hurt. I just want you to listen to a few of my poems.” Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.

A friend who is a poet, now writing a mystery novel, suggested I write this book. I remembered that I had started it five years ago. The time wasn’t right then, but like our obsessions, our dreams do reoccur. We might as well pay attention to them and act on them. It is a way to penetrate into our lives; otherwise we might drift with our dreams forever.

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too—going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico—and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them.

Syntax

T
RY THIS.
Take one of your most boring pieces of writing and choose from it three or four consecutive lines or sentences and write them at the top of a blank piece of paper.

I can’t write because I’m an ice cube and my mouth goes dry and there’s nothing to say and I’d rather eat ice cream.

Okay. See each one of those words simply as wooden blocks, all the same size and color. No noun or verb has any more value than
the, a, and
. Everything is equal. Now for about a third of a page scramble them up as though you were just moving wooden blocks around. Don’t try to make any sense of what you write down. Your mind will keep trying to construct something. Hold back that urge, relax, and mindlessly write down the words. You will have to repeat words to fill a third of a page.

Write I’m an mouth rather cream say eat ice and nothing dry I an write rather say and my goes cube because an there’s I’d to dry goes write and mouth cream to I’d rather dry cube I’m an write I and nothing say goes an can’t because nothing rather I’d dry to and say cream goes ice rather to my cube nothing there’s say.

Now, if you would like, arbitrarily put in a few periods, a question mark, maybe an exclamation mark, colons, or semicolons. Do all of this without thinking, without trying to make any sense. Just for fun.

Write I’m an mouth rather cream. Say eat ice and nothing dry! I an write rather say and; my goes cube because an there’s. I’d to dry goes write and mouth cream to. I’d rather. Dry cube I’m an write I and nothing say goes. An can’t because nothing rather; I’d dry to and say cream goes ice. Rather to my cube nothing there’s say?

Now read it aloud as though it were saying something. Your voice should have inflection and expression. You might try reading it in an angry voice, an exuberant, sad, whining, petulant, or demanding voice, to help you get into it.

What have we done? Our language is usually locked into a sentence syntax of subject/verb/directobject. There is a subject acting on an object. “I see the dog”—with this sentence structure, “I” is the center of the universe. We forget in our language structure that while “I” looks at “the dog,” “the dog” is simultaneously looking at us. It is interesting to note that in the Japanese language the sentence would say, “I dog seeing.” There is an exchange or interaction rather than a subject acting on an object.

We think in sentences, and the way we think is the way we see. If we think in the structure subject/verb/ direct-object, then that is how we form our world. By cracking open that syntax, we release energy and are able to see the world afresh and from a new angle. We stop being so chauvinistic as
Homo sapiens
. Other beings besides human beings matter on the earth: ants have their own cities; dogs have their own lives; cats are always busy rehearsing for a nap; plants breathe, trees have a longer life span than we do. It is true that we can have a sentence with a dog or cat or a fly as the subject—“The dog sees the cat”—but still there is the pattern of self-centeredness and egocentricity built into the very structure of our language. It is a terrible burden to have to be master. We are not ruling the world. It is an illusion, and the illusion of our syntax structure perpetuates it.

Katagiri Roshi used to say: “Have kind consideration for all sentient beings.” Once I asked him, “What are sentient beings anyway? Are they things that feel?” He told me that we have to be kind even to the chair, the air, the paper, and the street. That’s how big and accepting our minds have to become. When Buddha reached enlightenment under the bodhi tree, he said: “I am now enlightened with all beings.” He didn’t say: “I am enlightened and you’re not!” or “I see enlightenment” as though he were separate from it.

This does not mean that from now on we should remain immobilized because we are afraid of offending the rug below our feet or accidentally jolting a glass. It does not mean that we should not use our syntax structure because it is wrong. Only once you have done this exercise, though you probably will go back to sentences, there is a crack, a place where the wind of energy can fly through you. Though “I eat an artichoke” sounds sensible and people will think you are sane, you now know that behind that syntax structure, the artichoke happens to also be eating you and changing you forever, especially if you dip it in garlic-butter sauce and if you totally let the artichoke leaf taste your tongue! The more you are aware of the syntax you move, see, and write in, the better control you have and the more you can step out of it when you need to. Actually, by breaking open syntax, you often get closer to the truth of what you need to say.

Here are some examples of poems taken from
Shout, Applaud
, a collection of poems written at Norhaven, a residence for women who are mentally retarded.
⁵
These women were never solidly indoctrinated in English-language syntax, so these poems are good examples of what can be created outside of it. Also they are fresh in another way: they are full of surprise—because you had breakfast yesterday doesn’t mean it isn’t amazing to eat eggs today!

Give Me a White

Maple Leaf

The Stone and I

Everybody

Nervously Sipping Wine

R
USSELL
E
DSON READ
at the University of Minnesota several years ago. He said that he sits down at his typewriter and writes about ten different short pieces at one session. He then comes back later to reread them. Maybe one out of the ten is successful and he keeps that one. He said that if a good first line comes to him, the rest of the piece usually works. Here are some of his first lines:
⁶

“A man wants an aeroplane to like him.”

“A rat wanted to put its tail in an old woman’s vagina. . . .”

“If a scientist had bred pigeons the size of horses . . .”

“A beloved duck gets cooked by mistake.”

“A man having to do with an éclair heard his mother breaking something, and figured it must be his father.”

“A husband and wife discover that their children are fakes.”

“Identical twin old men take turns at being alive.”

Here are two complete pieces:

Sautéing

As a man sautéed his hat he was thinking of how his mother used to sauté his father’s hat, and how grandmother used to sauté grandfather’s hat.

Some garlic and wine and it doesn’t taste like hat at all, it tastes like underwear. . . .