Author Archives: Andrew

Suffering For Your Art, aka Pull Yourself Together

by Andrew | 2 Comments

As a guest at a recent Words Away Zalon on mindfulness and writing, I made a passing reference to Kellie Jackson about the manuscript as a site of suffering. It was a bit of a throwaway remark, but I’ve been thinking about this idea since.

First, and most simply: as an editor I see a lot of writers suffering over their writing. Uncertainty about technique, confusion about feedback, frustration and even anger about rejections, envy at the success of others, doubts about the very idea of the book in the first place, sales figures for the last book. Angst, worry, fretting, the workings of Monkey Mind: these are very real obstacles that writers suffer, whether they are at the beginnings of their careers or experienced authors.

Weren’t we supposed to be doing this because writing is fun?!

Secondly, I’ve recently been taking a series of classes on Buddhist philosophy. The foundation of Buddhist practice rests on the four noble truths: suffering is a basic fact of life; suffering has causes; those causes can be alleviated or ended; and there is a path to that end of suffering. Simple principles, simple observations.

I found it hard to relate to this idea of suffering back when I first encountered it – in some encyclopedia, I think – in primary school in the 1970s. That Victorian notion of progress and the forward march of history with a certain Judeo-Christian tinge: that still carried weight then, and a midcentury faith in the future offered all sorts of technocratic utopias.

But as I get older, I understand the relevance of this teaching about suffering on both global and personal scales. The innocence of Ladybird books about Kings and Queens and Marco Polo gives way to way to the truths of history and the threats of the anthropocene. And we all experience losses, or struggle with challenges. I still have that habit of seeing the glass a quarter full, but at times life really does suck.

Which does remind us that all things are relative. Yes, you might be struggling with this book you’re writing. But take a look at the sufferings in the world around us: disease, hunger, the climate emergency, grieving communities, grieving families. I’m rationing the news and social media at the mo, so who knows what today brings, but it will include some or all of the above. And then there are all the losses that don’t make the headlines too.

So beside any of those things, let’s place the worries permitted for writing a book. Sometimes, in fact, the Buddhist concept of suffering is translated more subtly as dissatisfaction, and that might be a more useful way of looking at things.

Of course, we seek support and guidance in our writing. But at a certain point we really do have to gather our energies, and regroup, and maybe ask why we are doing this, and what we can do to help ourselves further, and take a long hard look. Pull Yourself Together: that is the title of my own as-yet unwritten self-help guide (a family joke – I’m not always known for being patient with the moaning sorry suffering of others). I’m in the middle of Natalie Goldberg’s online Way of Writing at the moment, and she says we have to grow a spine. At a certain point, we have to cut through the worries and the struggling, and listen to ourselves and just write.

With that rather hard-faced perspective, try this as an exercise in writing or revision: write for at least ten minutes for each of the following prompts:

  • How is your writing suffering?
  • What are the causes of your writing’s suffering?
  • How can those causes of suffering be ended?
  • What can you do to help end that suffering? Maybe think about: craft, process, further studies or training, feedback, other forms of guidance and support? Break these aims down into a list of tangible tasks: pull yourself together (this might take more than ten minutes as an ongoing exercise in planning and list-making).
  • Also: translate the word, and consider your sufferings as  dissatisfactions, and ask yourself how you can be satisfied.

You might want to try these as free writes, Natalie-style: write without stopping, keeping the pen moving, following your mind and getting it down on paper. Then maybe, later, read it aloud – read or send as a voice note to a writing buddy.

No harm was intended to any religious faith in the writing of this post! I don’t profess to be a Buddhist, or anything else other than someone who loves books and the world of writing. For what it’s worth, I also have four planets in Aries. I never used to think much about astrology until someone explained what that means to me (shocked at how accurate!).

Happy Easter! My favourite pagan holiday, full of Aries energy for fresh starts and cutting through. My birthday usually falls nearby, and I consider it an international festival for eating well, enjoying the garden, and thinking about books and bunnies and birdsong.

Voice Notes

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I am currently taking The Way of Writing, Natalie Goldberg’s new online class with Shambhala Publications. It was truly exciting on Saturday evening to sit among a body of 2,181 students beaming in from all over the world via Zoom. Natalie makes it work – her teaching and her spontaneity and her big heart make for a powerful transmission.

When it comes to writing practice, Natalie tasks writers on writing using prompts in, e.g., ten-minute sprints, and then we read our work out aloud to other people, in this case via Zoom breakout groups. This weekend I read and listened to writers from British Columbia, Connecticut, and Florida. It was thrilling: raw, confessional, direct. Some of the best writing I’ve ever heard has been in such contexts.

One of the things that is so special, I think, is that we just listen without giving feedback. In fact, feedback is not allowed, though we usually smile or offer a hands-together bow of thanks.

I have blogged about this before: Express Yourself Without Feedback: feedback has a time and place. It can sometimes bolster your confidence or direct your attention to ways to improve technique, but maybe that comes later; sometimes it pumps up your ego or derails you with criticism or in some other way waylays you. As Natalie said on Saturday, you have to build your spine as a writer, and voicing your own work is one of the best ways of achieving this. There is great strength in the simple act of expression.

Sometimes this listening is combined with a ‘recall’, where the listener simply tells you afterwards what they remember at the end of listening to your piece. Even their misrememberings can be interesting, valuable. Recalls can help focus the practice of listening too. It’s an act of receiving, which is one to cultivate.

So: several friends are also taking this class, and because we are writing every day we thought we’d share some of this work too. Organising another Zoom is a bit like, well, organising another Zoom – maybe we can organise that later?! So for now I have been exchanging WhatsApp voice notes with some of my fellow writers. They are short – just two or three minutes. What a treat! The things I’ve heard. And shared!

And I also found myself playing my own voice notes back to myself. Just once to start with, then more frequently.

Now, I have a thing about my voice. I hate listening to my own voice: I think I sound too nasal, too whiny, too Midlands, too gay. All of that tripe from the monkey mind.

But, actually, this time, in playing back, I liked what I heard. It’s still nasal, whiny, Midlands, and gay – but hey, that’s me. And it felt authentic, and the writing felt true. And somehow what I am hearing in these voice notes is feeding what I am writing day by day too. At some deep preverbal level I feel my awareness of what I am writing and how I am writing it, and it’s coming out on the page. It feels natural, strong.

One of the classic tips for revising your writing is reading it aloud: see where you stumble, catch your mistakes, note where you get bored, or where the sap rises. I also know of writers who ask other people to read their work back to them. That to my mind sounds as good a use of a writing group as any. It’s also useful to record yourself reading your writing and to listen to those recordings.

I remember my teacher-friend Bobbie Louise Hawkins getting excited about some recording accessory you could attach to an iPod for overheard dialogue exercises; this was about 2004, and she’d been getting by for decades with Dictaphones and those miniature tape cassettes. We were thrilled when Sony came out with some pen-sized recording device.

Now digital technology and smartphones make this all so easy.

As a writing experiment: Write for ten-minutes without stopping, using a prompt.* Use a notebook and a pen that writes easily, and (as Natalie says) keep the hand moving – follow your thoughts.

Then, using an app on your phone or computer, record what you wrote and send it as a voice note to a friend or writing partner, e.g., on WhatsApp, or send Voice Memos via a messaging app. If you wish, ask them to do a short recall of what they remember at the end, without playing it again.

Then: listen to this too. Perhaps you can also listen to and acknowledge some writing of a writing partner too.

Give yourself fifteen minutes to do this every day, if you can: ten to write, and five to share and/or to listen. You might also want to make arrangements for sharing with a writing partner for a fixed span, e.g., of a week or a month. (And make sure you choose a writing buddy you trust!)

Just: be listened to. Be heard. Listen to yourself, hear yourself. Build a spine. There is perhaps no greater practice for growing your intuition as a writer.

*If you need a prompt, use one of the following:

  • A year ago …
  • The wind
  • What’s on my bookshelf
  • Flags
  • The clock
  • Prayers
  • Something for your work-in-progress – maybe take a random line and write off it

Acknowledgements

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At a recent Words Away Zalon, Words In Action, I talked to Kellie Jackson about mindfulness in relation to creativity, writing and publishing. Mindfulness covers a wide range of ideas and practices, and in 2021 I plan on blogging about specific topics that might have a bearing on our writing. 

At the Zalon I mentioned the idea of the monkey mind, or the loop of mental chatter that creates negativities that undermine our work: doubts, resentments, imposter syndrome. That monkey mind just needs to shut up, really!

Though that’s easier said than done. We can try meditation (more on that another time), but there are also simple writing practices that can ground us in mindful ways: present; clear, authentic.

Something that I suggested at the Zalon was to write the acknowledgements for the book you are writing now, before you finish (or even start!) writing that book.

This seems quite fanciful, but in fact I think it could be really grounding as well as affirming.

I was inspired to suggest this by reading the acknowledgements in the recently published novel The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. So recently published I’ve not yet had chance to read the book! But – like the good publisher I’ll always be at heart – the first thing I looked at was its acknowledgements section. And these acknowledgements are long! And very beautiful: ten pages of names and recognitions and reasons to be thankful. Family, friends, teachers, writers, singers, artists, professionals, supporters of all types.

Let me share the gorgeous credit he gives to St Toni (Morrison):

It was my dream for you to read this book, believe that it has merit, offer your blessing, and perhaps invite me for a cup of tea at your house so that I could tell you how without you, this book could not have been because it was your holy scripture, your complete indictment and rearrangement of the English language that inspired me to write it. You said if I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read, then I must write it. So I did. Wherever you are in the universe, it is my sincerest hope that you are pleased.

(I do love that idea of writing the book you want to read. It’s powerful.)

Writing acknowledgements is a bit like that practice of writing lists of gratitudes, though here I see subtle distinctions in some of the additional meanings of the word acknowledge: ‘to recognise the importance or quality of’, ‘to recognise as true, genuine, valid, or one’s own’.

I am also reminded of an exercise I once did at Naropa where we drew a constellation of influences on our writing like a star chart.

So as a writing experiment: give yourself half an hour and sit down at your computer or notebook and think of all the people who’ve inspired you or given you support in your path of writing in some important or quality way. People you know, people you’ve never met, people who’ve been true, genuine, valid, and one of your own. Acknowledge them.

Books of 2020

by Andrew | 3 Comments

My stand-out read of 2020 was a brilliant work of nonfiction. If you have not read it, you have to:

  • Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is graceful, attentive, urgent, and supremely intelligent in her exploration of our relationships with the world of plants. The best sort of nature writing, and with messages we can’t ignore: about interdependence, consumption, reciprocity. I highly recommend the audiobook – the author is wise and good-humoured company, and her prose has a gorgeous tone. Also look out for podcasts with Robin Wall Kimmerer, such as this one from Emergence Magazine with Robert Macfarlane.

My other essential reads of 2020:

  • The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes fired me up! A book about land, and who owns it, and who gets to share in its riches. Another essential read, particularly as Brexit brings into question any number of power relationships for the English. Resist, my friends, resist!
  • Letters from Tove, by Tove Jansson. My hero! Edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson, and seamlessly translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. It consumed me, I consumed it, and I shall be rereading. (There’s no audiobook yet … that would be perfect.)
  • Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart. My novel of the year. I KNEW it would win the Booker Prize! There is outright literary justice.
  • Surrender, by Joanna Pocock. Again, nonfiction exploring our relationship with the land, though here we are in the American West. I loved her curious mind.
  • The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. I first read when I was thirteen, and it made a powerful impression on my emerging political consciousness. It came as a timely reread at the start of a year in which economic inequality and ecological degradation would be even more sharply obvious. CAN WE EVER LEARN?
  • The Beautiful Room Is Empty, by Edmund White. Why hadn’t I read this before? Because it was waiting for the hot summer of 2020, I guess.
  • Stasiland, by Anna Funder. Because East Germany. Very excited that we are getting Deutschland 89 in February.
  • Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up In America, by Natalie Goldberg. I took her online Writing Down the Bones course again this year. What a treat, what a grounding dose of sanity, what an honour to share the freshly composed writes of complete strangers. Natalie’s memoir is exceptional in showing how the practice of writing can wake us up to the unexceptional magic around us. I also read The Great Spring and The True Secret of Writing. More Natalie to come in 2021.
  • The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Because I love craft books, I love St Ursula, and I LOVE the essential idea here and how it challenges conflict-driven theories of the world.
  • The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo. This novella is a real feat of imagination.
  • My Cat Yugoslavia, by Pajtim Statovci, in a translation from the Finnish by David Hackston that really captures a gorgeous tone in the telling. Because I love love LOVE it when works of literary fiction introduce the magical in not so everyday ways too. I’m reading his Crossings at the moment, and LOVING it.

Other notable reads:

  • Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk. A different sort of book from Drive Your Plow, and perhaps not so obvious, and less accessible. But many of the best things require a little work, and this is one of them. I love her – love her intelligence and her spirit. St Olga joins my shrine.
  • Ash Before Oak, by Jeremy Cooper. I’ve yet to finish this – I’ve been reading a few entries of this long novel in diary form at bedtime. On the surface it’s about the aftermath of the renovation of an old house in the country, and has some exquisite nature writing. Below, there is another sort of renovation taking place.
  • How to Wash a Heart, by Bhanu Kapil. Yes, she is a friend! And that is why I am so thrilled this fierce long poem has been such a success.
  • A Bite of the Apple, by Lennie Goodings. Another friend! I’ve recommended it to many writers already for its generous insights into publishing and the book business.
  • Germany: Memories of a Nation, by Neil MacGregor. Lessons in a nation coming to terms with its history.
  • A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit.
  • Music and Silence, by Rose Tremain.
  • The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins – whose audio narration of her own book is superb.
  • The Natural Way of Things, by Charlotte Wood.
  • Fierce Attachments, by Vivian Gornick.
  • Supporting Cast, by Kit de Waal.
  • Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
  • Dune, by Frank Herbert. Another reread, and another incomplete – I was rushing before the new movie, which I am MOST EXCITED ABOUT. And now we have to wait. Disappointment 🙁 I paused at a suitable pause halfway, and I shall resume. Another of those classics that’s so timely.
  • Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann. Yet another reread, and yet another incomplete, but I am COMPELLED to list it here as Jackie and Neely and Anne and Lyon have been the BEST company as narrated by Laverne Cox while I’m planting tulip bulbs for next year (some daffs still to go). Also, this was the last book I published in-house. Just sayin’.
  • Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. BECAUSE FINALLY! Ably helped by the Ahoy Me Hearties narration of William Hootkins.
  • Cook, Eat, Repeat, by Nigella Lawson, not least because she is devoted to pleasure. I’ve never cooked so much from one book or tv series so quickly. That gingerbread! That red cabbage! THAT RICE PUDDING CAKE!

I did other things in 2020. In addition to Natalie Goldberg’s class from Shambhala, I took another excellent online course – a training in Mindful Compassion – and I’ve just started a fascinating series of online classes on Buddhist history, philosophy, and practice; both come from my beloved alma mater Naropa University.

I watched lots of enjoyable tv. Highlights: Watchmen, Eastsiders, The Mandalorian, Unorthodox, Drag Race Canada, Mrs America, Disclosure, and Bridgerton. Schitts Creek was a particular treat; we watched four specially selected episodes on Christmas Day.

I cooked a lot, and baked, and gardened, and rediscovered Paper Mate pens. Way back in February I led workshops – in person! In London! In Cambridge! Closer to home, I tended to my friendships with tulips. I Zoomed, and FaceTimed with my mom as we walked the dog. We stayed close to home. I wore a mask, and so should you.

And I read a lot. Those above were the good books! The ones I enjoyed most. I do note that many of the books that left the strongest impression on me this year were works of nonfiction. Just as the first lockdown began, I started to read a novel I’d been waiting for, but somehow the mating habits of Manhattanites felt trivial. A lot of fiction felt trivial this year!

I know we can separate writing from writer, but I also fell a little out of love with a once favourite children’s book series for its author’s muddled yet insistent failings of imagination and empathy. It’s disappointing. The world changes, and so can we. This episode left me questioning the healthiness of feeding kids simplistic tales of good vs evil.

I craved nonfiction this year: the complexity, the rawness, the lack of sheen and artifice. The luminous truth of Tove Jansson as it shone through the voice in her letters. I did read some very good fiction, but even then Shuggie Bain and The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Grapes of Wrath are rooted in autobiographical and documentary realities. A lot (A LOT) of other novels that I am not mentioning here felt overwritten, half-finished, and overhyped by their publishers or oversqueed on social media.

Of course, even nonfiction has blurrings, and so much of the reality we are fed is made up. The culture secretary wanted Netflix to issue a health warning that one of its tv shows is fiction, but as The Economist noted: ‘Does it matter if The Crown fictionalises reality? It is more truthful than the story the royals sold.’

And how about the lies and delusions sold to us by politicians who’d be in prison for fraud if they were in business? I type this as the UK finally tonight leaves the EU. I feel this is heart-breaking, not least as it was achieved so duplicitously; it feels as if people who don’t read are burning down the library. Part of me feels we’ll be back, but another part of me feels that the English with their entitlement don’t deserve it (and I say that as someone who’s 100% English). So instead, let’s hold them to their promise of a Global Britain.

Some of the most engaging writing I have read this year came in unfinished manuscripts, and I sincerely hope that this work makes progress to finding a publisher. A lot of the writing really does show a lot of promise. Though, too, I always say that publishing is not the most important thing about writing. There is a special spark that comes in reading works-in-progress and talking about writing with writers.

During the dark moments of this year it’s been important to shine a light when we can. Something else I often say, quoting a line from the musical Rent: the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.

Thank goodness for dogs and dog walks and gardens and plants and cooking and books – and a big thank you to all the doctors and nurses and teachers and drivers and other essential workers who’ve kept the world running this year.

Create! Resist! Create! Wear a mask! And shine a light when you can.

Clear Thinking

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To round out this short series of posts about the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s look at the fourth and final element: Air.

Air is associated with the mind: thinking, mental states, logic. At its best, it’s associated with clarity: strong ideas clearly expressed in conjunction with the other elements, e.g., conjuring up the senses (earth) in ways that prompt action (fire) and evoke feeling (water). In tarot, the element of Air is represented by the suit of Swords, and it’s useful to think of the image of a sharp blade ready to slice through the air with precision and power – imagine, in the photo above, a giant sword cutting through the clouds towards clear blue sky.

In other contexts, though, an ineffective presence of Air lies at the heart of some of the most frequently encountered weaknesses in undeveloped manuscripts: cluttered writing that’s trying too hard, or stodgy prose that’s hard to follow or care about.

Air can also mess with our process, allowing our monkey minds to, say, worry neurotically about finding an agent while we are still only on page ten of a first draft.

With the craft of writing, I particularly associate Air with ORGANISATION and STRUCTURE and FOCUS. With the bigger picture of a piece of writing, this could mean a well-plotted storyline, or the architecture of a book: how events and revelations are paced and presented through time to create suspense or simply keep the reader reading on.

At a more detailed level, Air can be found in the structure of sentences and paragraphs: effectively rendered SYNTAX that achieves a certain speed or mood, and is clearly understood. Mindful choices of words and verb forms and punctuation will make all the difference to a text.

And Air isn’t just found on the open surface of writing. I also think about the THEMES and IDEAS that work with the intellect, as well as FIGURES OF SPEECH that operate on subconscious levels: symbols, metaphors, similes. Bits of cleverness that engage active minds – though not, it’s hoped, in the process overegging things.

As with the exploration of the other elements, it is going to make sense if Air is balanced with Fire, Water, and Earth – grounded with earthly details, for example, to prevent the writing getting aethereal in a dry and inaccessible way.

As a writing experiment: looking back at previous writing exercises that tasked you on writing letters between characters (Compassionately Yours and Earthly Exchanges), plan a series of letters or exchanges that maps out a larger story. The letter is a form that instantly creates connections and draws us into some sort of agreement – or disagreement. Letters offer gifts, extend invitations, send refusals, or deliver news good or bad.

For example, consider how specific letters can be placed within a story as:

  • triggers or inciting incidents
  • causes or effects in a chain of consequences
  • moments of rising tension, or reversals: do we teeter from moments of hope to moments of despair before hope rises again? Or does fortune rise and rise before a deep dive – or fall and fall before an improvement in circumstances? See Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories
  • obligatory scenes
  • a midpoint or point of no return, after which there is no going back
  • a climax
  • a resolution

To help with this, you might want to think about various theories of on plotting. Which are exhaustive – and can be exhausting! This is one of those points where overthinking can be a problem, and the clarity of Air can be achieved by committing to a simple known form. A few ideas about structure to help:

  • Map out your letters according to how they might fall with an established story structure. I often recommend Michael Hauge’s Five Key Turning Points and Six Stages of a screenplay (which can be adapted for prose too).
  • Or consider the twelve steps of Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey.
  • Or perhaps place a letter in every gap for a version of the Pixar Story Spine: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. And ever since that day ___.

Further posts on plotting: Plotting; Only Connect.

Make yourself a plan. List all of the letters or alternative forms of exchange. Note who they are sent between, and what is exchanged, and what might change in the world of those characters as a result: how do they end up feeling (water) each time? Also note how these letters might be grounded in the world of the senses (earth) with, e.g., settings or objects of desire.

Don’t worry too much (yet!) about gaps, or places where the story feels thin. You can flesh things out in the writing, feeling your way through characters’ intentions and yearnings. What goes on in these letters can’t always be planned, and sometimes you do have to keep on writing to see what emerges instinctively from your characters and settings as you spend time with them.

Eventually it’s likely you will have to put your thinking gear back on to decide how to arrange your material, deciding where to cut or expand – that’s drafting. But too sometimes a good exercise in thinking about our stories lies in actively not overthinking them during the early stages of writing: a balanced sense of Air.

You can take your plan further by committing to a calendar for writing these letters: one a week, or if you have time one a day across the course of a week or so. See where you end up. This might be the whole or part of an epistolary work, or these letters might serve as anchors in the scheme of a larger story to be fleshed out with other scenes. Or they might simply serve as an outline of sorts for a longer work.

Also take a look at the overall energy (fire) charted between the letters: can you identify a clear, focused line (air) that summarises the story they tell in a sentence or two?

Additional elemental activity: set a timer for five minutes and meditate at your desk or wherever you write before you embark on this activity. Keep it simple: each time a thought arises, note it as a thought and then let it pass, and then return your attention to your breath – connect with the air you take in, and the air you send out into the world.

And a date for your diary in the new year: on Monday 11 January at 6pm I am the guest at the next Words Away Zalon, where I shall be talking to Kellie Jackson about the Airy topic of mindfulness in writing and publishing: Words In Action.