I was going to skip a quarterly blog post, but hey: life gives you lemons and you make lemonade.

On Saturday I fell and broke my wrist! My first ever trip to A&E. I guess I should consider myself lucky to have lived so long without such a visit before, but it’s certainly tedious that I have to cancel and reschedule various plans, and will need to work one-handed. And it’s also tedious that my gardening plans for summer are scuppered. The irony is that it happened at the entrance to a rose garden on the day that we were taking a long-awaited trip to another rose garden at the peak of its floral display. Roses are my downfall – or maybe my falldown! And yes, it *was* painful.

It’s set me thinking about the tarot card the Tower, which represents the unexpected. In many decks, such as the Smith Waite one in this picture, the card shows some catastrophe with people literally falling through the air. (Which I now have experience of! Also: of having smashed bones reset. Which now qualifies me to write such a scene in, say, a western or a fantasy novel. Apparently, there was a bloodcurdling seven-second scream, then an audible sigh of relief, and then I said thank you to the wonderful nurses, one of whom has the best name ever, but I’m observing the Hippocratic oath of patients so shan’t reveal it.)

In tarot the Tower is often fearfully linked with conflict, disruption or violence, but my excellent tarot teacher Sue mostly stressed its associations with sudden change or unexpected events, and the subsequent upheavals or outcomes that result from them – which don’t always have to be terrifying. From Jessica Doré’s Tarot For Change:

the Tower can be understood as symbolizing the particular personality traits that function as a sort of buffer against the anxiety of living. And from this perspective, the Tower can go from being one of the most feared cards in the deck to a powerful blessing … The Tower falls when we realize that anxiety in itself is not dangerous. The danger comes from the intricate ways we attempt to outrun and escape it. These patterns of avoidance are what create problems for us beyond the natural pain of living. But there are simply better and more life-giving ways to cope with stress than building patterns that act like cement walls.

(Or in this case mossy stone steps, the natural pain and inconvenience of falling upon which I’d certainly rather have missed, tbh.)

So: the unexpected. There are often random things that arise in everyday life and take us in new directions. Reversals of fortune, new ways of doing, mossy stone steps, making lemonade from lemons. Learning to use dictation software more efficiently for writing this post. And to think: last week I had no idea what I was going to make my quarterly post about.

I do feel that writers are often quite hesitant about writing chance interventions or random happenings into their stories. They think, ‘That would never happen in real life.’ But perhaps they should be less cautious.

In A&E we saw a waiting patient with the mother of a kid who’d stuck something in his ear. I thought they were a couple, then I understood they weren’t. And they were definitely flirting … She even came back and chatted to him for half an hour after her kid had had whatever removed from his ear. Unexpected fortunes indeed.

As a writing experiment: If you are writing something and it needs something of a kickstart, invite something of the unexpected into your story – fall from a tower!

Find something random. Pick up a book, open a page, choose a word or a sentence that attracts your attention. An action, an object, a character. Or pick a tarot card. Or use the first thing you see when you turn on the telly. Or if you fancy something a little more abstract try one of Brian Eno’s oblique strategies.

Then incorporate this chance intervention as some meaningful turning point in your story.

What matters of course is how this random element is incorporated. A character’s responses will be unique to that character, will reflect and test and even change that character, and will lead them into further adventures – and that is what makes a story. Is the response Fight or Flight, or Moan, or Laugh It Off And Get On With It? (Though I’m usually very open in my writing advice, moaning can make for boring characters and thus for boring stories, so moaning characters might best be avoided, unless of course the moaning character is the whole point of the story and you can, e.g., do something funny with them.)

To repeat something I often use from Ursula Le Guin in Steering the Craft:

Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.

This works for nonfiction as well as fiction. A random interception might provide the framework that helps you come unstuck.

And of sideways relevance, on the subject of pain, something from the excellent Spring Rain by Marc Hamer, which I just happened to read at lunchtime:

There are two kinds of old people. There are the old people who are in pain and miserable, and there are the old people who are in pain but who are lighthearted. All the old people are in pain. Only some of us have the skills to be able to laugh at it every day. Life is ridiculous and full of pain, and to be kind and happy is the finest act of rebellion I can imagine. Lasting happiness is a skill; it’s not an easy skill to learn, but once you’ve had a glimmer of it, it is impossible to ignore. To get it, I gave things up; stopped competing against others, accepted nature’s flow, handed myself to simplicity, accepted inevitability, change and meaninglessness, but most of all I had to forgive people. Time passes, things happen, nobody knows why.

Marc’s insight arrived like that lightning bolt from the Tower. Perhaps all stories are about learning the skill of living with the pain – the suffering – but also the joys of everyday life.

(Actually, now I think about it the joys require skills too.)

One final note: nurses are amazing. Like, really. Give them the pay that they deserve, which is probably a lot more than that of grifter politicians who should be in gaol. Let’s not forget some catastrophes are political.

And also, while we’re here some dates for your diary. I’m leading a workshop called Magicians and Fools: Tarot for Writers on the morning of Sunday 17 September 2023 at the Hastings Book Festival. And in conjunction with Words Away I’m planning a workshop in central London called The Four Elements of Revising for the afternoon of Saturday 14 October 2023.

More anon! Fracture clinic tomorrow.

The Winter Solstice: tomorrow the days start getting longer! Which just goes to show the ever presence of paradox in the cycles of our lives. But for now it’s 4.30pm and dark outside. A robin is singing: one of my favourite sounds.

Rather than post a writing experiment this quarter, I’ve added a page to the resources on my site for Field Work, which is a practice I frequently suggest in tailored forms for writers that I’m mentoring.

Do take a look, especially if you’re wanting to freshen up a draft or are getting stuck – it’s a great way of deepening your understanding of the world of your writing and how you might serve it. Suspend any grasping towards word counts or other outcomes; simply give yourself the gift of time hanging out with your characters in writing, and after a few weeks see what the practice brings.

Best of all it’s straightforward. Too much in writing is overcomplicated. ‘Just sitting – what a relief in this busy world’: a helpful description of meditation from Natalie Goldberg. So: just write – bring some of that ease of letting things be to your writing too. See what comes up.

I’m just over a pretty exhausting cold. It was worse than covid! Guess these things test our immune systems. Stay warm, wear a mask, eat fruit cake – this year’s have been particularly fine.

I’m very pleased to be planning a new real-time, in-person workshop for 26 November: Reawakenings.

It’s been nearly three years since we last met at a Words Away workshop! And a lot has happened since then, so for this first workshop I thought we could explore some of these changes in our writing. There’s some darker stuff there, of course, but it also gives us plenty to think about in terms of transformation and creativity and coming out the other side. Plague and war and sourdough starter: meet notebook and pen.

We’ll draw upon the ideas of sleeping and waking for our focus: slumber, hibernation, dreams, nightmares, rebirth, recreation, the interactions of the conscious and the subconscious minds. I’m currently gathering some short readings – probably some Natalie Goldberg and Robin Wall Kimmerer, perhaps some Tove Jansson, almost certainly a reference or two to Brokeback Mountain. I might bring in some Buddhist psychology I’ve been studying over the last couple of years, and we’ll also use the Four Elements as a holistic creative framework.

Kellie and I are particularly excited about a super new venue in the heart of the West End: the Phoenix Garden. A couple of months ago, as I was taking a short cut behind Shaftesbury Avenue to the bookshops of Charing Cross Road, my eyes were drawn to Tibetan prayer flags behind the railings of a little pocket park. I realised in fact it’s where I once ate fish and chips – or was it a cream cake (or maybe both?!) – when I met up with an old friend. Since then it’s had a bit of a makeover: it has its own meeting space, and the garden has been carefully tended into a little oasis. I’ve always wanted to teach a workshop in a garden: now my dream comes true. Perhaps, if it’s not raining on the 26th, we can even do some writing outdoors?

And of course the idea of a Phoenix fits perfectly with the theme of reawakening.

The formal description for the workshop is copied below, and here’s a booking link at Words Away.

Rise again! I hope to see some of you there.

REAWAKENINGS
A Four Elements workshop
1.15-4.45pm, 26 November 2022
Phoenix Garden, 21 Stacey Street, London WC2H 8DG

What’s been sleeping, and what’s now stirring? And what can we spring into action in our writing?

The past few years have been marked by great changes for all of us: fears of plague and war and climate disaster, moral panics about woke culture, political upheaval, social isolation, personal loss. But there’s also the possibility for seeing and doing things anew.

Drawing on the powers of the four elements, in this workshop we’ll look for fresh inspirations for our writing in the ideas of sleeping and waking. As we come together again to write, let’s sharpen our awareness as we reawaken our imaginative purpose.

This workshop will include:
* preparatory readings and writing exercises (optional, and to be circulated a couple of weeks before the class)
* in-class discussion, meditations, and writing
* teatime with the book doctor: opportunities to raise questions about writing and publishing over tea and cake
* follow-up notes, including writing experiments, reading suggestions, and resources on writing and creativity

Something we discussed earlier this year at a Words Away Zalon on mindfulness and writing was the idea of gnarliness.

I first encountered this term in the context of writing via Californian novelist Rudy Rucker at a Naropa University summer school. I learned that gnarly was a word used in surfing, and brought away the idea that a gnarly wave is a difficult wave – one that could kill you, but too one that could give you the chance to really prove your worth.

Rudy covers the subject in further detail in his essay What Is Gnarl?, where among other things he states that ‘a gnarly process is complex and unpredictable without being random. If a story hews to some very familiar pattern, it feels stale’.

I’ve perhaps adapted or simplified the idea a bit for my own teaching. I relate it particularly to the idea of seeking out whatever is difficult or challenging or unpredictable in your work, or something you’d prefer not to deal with.

I also relate the word gnarly to the idea of knottiness – a knot in a tree that’s craggy but just unavoidably there and a defining feature of it. Think of a gnarly piece of wood, and the personality contained in its shape and working.

From The Origin And Meaning Of The Word Gnarly on Surfer Today:

The name is often used to describe a person, a situation, or something that is simultaneously exciting or cool, dangerous or challenging, and even bad or gross … Within the surfing community, the adjective is mostly used to highlight a big wave, rough closeouts, or an extreme surf stunt.

Like many slang terms, it can embrace opposites of meaning.

The word “gnarly” can be used with both derogatory and negative connotations. It can be used to describe something or someone awesome, cool, excellent, wonderful, amazing, radical, incredible, tough, great, intense, extreme, or fantastic. On the opposite side of the spectrum, it’s a negative or derogative term to describe something or someone grotesque, gross, difficult, dangerous, treacherous, complicated, challenging, difficult hairy, or rapidly changing.

Which perhaps reminds us that many things in creative practice require us to embrace paradox, or take on board the idea of negative capability, where we grapple with uncertainty instead of taking the easy route.

I also relate this to many of the ideas that come up in the teachings of Natalie Goldberg. How the writing comes alive when we are handling scary material. Going for the jugular. From the chapter ‘Go Further’ in Writing Down The Bones:

Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

In Wild Mind, Natalie quotes Ernest Hemingway: ‘Write hard and clear about what hurts.’ The point of suffering could be something that’s personally painful. Handling pain truthfully is going to make your writing richer and more authentically felt; you might choose to edit or adapt it before sharing the writing, but you probably have to go there first. Tackling the gnarly material will force you to go deeper in ways that will enrich your writing and extend you as a writer.

And sometimes the gnarly issues are more everyday: unresolved technical issues that have solutions waiting to be found. That extraneous character who might need pruning (put them in another book!). Or that scene of dialogue that’s not working but could be rewritten as reported speech in first person. Or that lack of a clear focus that demands a different form, or maybe a more obvious central character. Or that dip in pace that calls out for a total restructuring that really going to make everything stronger.

As a writing experiment: make a list of the gnarly points in a piece of writing – points of difficulty you’ve encountered in the writing, things you’ve avoiding saying, technical problems, unresolved matters, annoying bits of feedback, things that feel complicated or grotesque or extreme or exposing, things that make your heart beat faster.

Then take the gnarliest point, and write through it. Ride it like a gnarly wave! Make it even more complicated or grotesque or extreme, let it make your heart beat even faster. Identify its force – then tame it, and really use it as a powerful strength in your writing.

You don’t have to make a big deal out of this. A timed write of ten minutes might flush out something alive and interesting. But too, think about giving over an hour to gnarliness, or maybe even the revision of a whole draft. You will still have the un-gnarly version to go back to – though maybe you’ll see that in a different light now.

You might also like to refer to my post on Field Work, which offers writing topics that cut to the heart of many of these gnarly matters.

*

My monthly blog posts seem to have become quarterly. Maybe they’ll become more frequent again in the near future. What funny times we are living through – what gnarly times.

But while I’m here: a note that on Wednesday 21 July (5pm-6.30pm, London time) I’m leading a workshop on The Four Elements of Editing for The Literary Consultancy’s Being A Writing programme, and a limited number of tickets have just been released for non-members. I’ll be talking about the Four Elements practice I often apply to writing, and specifically talking about ways to use it in revising and self-editing.

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.