Category Archives: Writing Experiments

Sufferings and Joys

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Today’s the day that the days get longer than the nights, and the sun is shining, and my hyacinths are smelling sweetly, and it’s time to sow seeds, and all over social media people are celebrating the joys of spring.

But – and I don’t want to spoil the party – for some reason lately I can’t get away from the idea of suffering. Maybe it’s taking a meditation course, where we’re paying attention to such things. Or maybe it’s hearing yet another story of someone’s sickness, or reading another story about war. Or maybe I’ve just become a winter person. But just because the sun is shining a little longer today, it doesn’t mean suffering is going away. The cycle is just turning.

Also, I’ve come to feel suffering is probably a more substantial and authentic driver for story than conflict. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: conflict is a primary engine in certain sorts of stories (war stories, crime stories, etc.). And it probably features somewhere in most stories in some fashion or other. But conflict feels overemphasised as the core principle of stories, and especially in cookie-cutter creative writing classes. No wonder there’s so much conflict in the world! And no wonder so much writing feels a bit formulaic. Let’s defer to St Ursula (again):

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’
– Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft

So how does change take shape in our stories? Experiencing change – or impermanence – is, after all, one of those facts of life that Buddhist teachings say we can’t avoid, and change usually leads to joys as well as suffering, major and minor.

Buddhist teachings also acknowledge suffering as a basic fact of existence, and much suffering is attributed to three ‘root poisons’: hatred, greed, and ignorance. So if we want to avoid suffering for ourselves and others, how might we reduce their presence in our lives?

And to prove I’m not a complete misery-guts, let’s note that these afflictions also have opposite virtues identified as the ‘beneficial roots’ of joy: love, generosity, and understanding. By contrast, how might we nurture these qualities?

Because my default mode is to think about writing and stories, I began to consider the ways in which these descriptions of suffering offer story arcs for our characters, and used these for writing experiments in the masterclass on Character earlier this month.

So for hatred and its related qualities:

  • How might anger feature in the lives of characters?
  • How might they have experienced rejection?
  • And what might they themselves feel aversion towards?
  • What might they be running away from?
  • How might they be driven by fear?
  • How might self-loathing, shame or guilt drive their actions?
  • What pain have they experienced?
  • What wounds do they carry, and how might they have injured others?

And thinking about the opposite quality of love:

  • Where does their open-heartedness begin?
  • And where might it be challenged?
  • What acts of kindness do they perform?
  • And what sort of benevolence has been shown towards them?
  • How might they show compassion in relieving the suffering of others?
  • And how might compassion be shown towards them at times of need?
  • How do they show love to others, and how do others share love with them?

Thinking about the root poison of greed:

  • How might your characters be defined by attachment?
  • What are their desires, and how do they shape their stories?
  • And how are they affected by the desires of other people?
  • What do they crave or grasp for?
  • And what do they cling on to?
  • And thinking about attachment in a more positive way: what might characters in fact gain from holding on to, or committing to?
  • It occurs to me that too often in less successful stories characters’ commitments or desires don’t really feel earned: so: how do characters earn whatever they gain or lose?

And by contrast, exploring the idea of nonattachment:

  • What is the role of generosity in their stories: what are they given, and what do they give to others?
  • What freedom might they enjoy in letting go or giving things away?
  • What sacrifices have they made in the past, and might they have to make in the future?

And to consider the root poison of ignorance:

  • How are your characters’ lives informed by what they don’t know?
  • How do misunderstandings cloud their relationships and experiences of the world?
  • How might your characters be deluded, or held back by illusions?
  • How might indifference or inertia shape their lives?
  • How might their stories be driven by doubt or uncertainty?
  • What foolish decisions do they make?

And on the flip side of understanding:

  • What might characters gain from knowing?
  • How might their stories be informed by their increased awareness of the world around them?
  • What do they come to appreciate?

I recently realised that hope doesn’t really feature in these reckonings of suffering! Which begs the questions:

  • What is the role of hope in the story?
  • And also its opposite: despair? Which can be crippling?

This gives me food for thought – about happy endings, which might be hoped for, but which in stories can so often feel trite: unearned or lazy, or simply not set up adequately. In fact, might the clinging and illusory aspects of hope stand in the way of characters seeing the simple joys in the world around them? And the happy ending is already here, and a character finally sees this.

‘There’s no place like home,’ says Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, whose journey takes her from doubt and ignorance to understanding and appreciation. It turns out her suffering and joy are actually bound up together in the same place – they just needed some unravelling and a bit of growing up, which of course required those adventures with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion.

I don’t know that it’s necessary to use all of these frameworks: in fact, that might get overly complicated! But these are ideas that might help in developing clear narrative arcs or resolutions for what might at times be subtle storylines. The move from hatred to love, from attachment to freedom, from illusion to understanding: these are journeys that touch on all the big themes and deepen characterisation, and properly explored can bring depth to characterisation and storytelling. You could explore some of these questions in the manner of the notebook practice of Field Work or filling out a Character Questionnaire.

And a final question: how about doing a loving-kindness meditation for your characters: May you be free of suffering. What would that involve?

*

My next masterclasses are on: Setting and Situation on 8 April, Story and Plot on 13 May, and Form and Structure on 10 June.

And I’ve blogged about suffering before in another context: Suffering for Your Art, aka Pull Yourself Together.

Slow yourself down

by Andrew | Leave a comment

A busy week: interesting manuscripts, Zooms, meet-ups, Space Crones, wild poets, wild dancers, old friends, decompressing last weekend’s workshop on tarot for writers in Hastings, thinking towards the next workshop on revising. Plus library books, libraries, bookshops – and a book barge!

Also very excited to see discussions in the George Saunders Story Club about ‘The Child’, a story I recommended – it’s sooooo wonderful to see so many readers discovering and appreciating the writing of my dearly beloved teacher Bobbie Louise Hawkins.

And now the Equinox has arrived, and I vowed to blog quarterly, so here we are. But what among the many things whirling in my head this week should I blog about?

Easy, really. What I need among all the busy is a good exercise in slowing down and going deep and finding focus.

As a writing experiment: draw a tarot card, and consider what it means for you and your writing. A prompt: This card means … It can really help to get your thoughts down on the page; just ten minutes of writing can bring great clarity.

If you want to get fancy, as I just did, pull three cards from three different decks. (Because you do have more than one deck, right?!) And of course there’s nothing special to read into the fact that two of my cards were the same, right?!

Something I’m contemplating in my interpretation of today’s picks, based on a recent desire to think more about the powers of the numbers rather than specific imagery: adjusting and adapting (Fives) in the world of words (Swords) (times two!). And that centre card: manifesting and getting things in order (Fours) in creative matters (Wands). What does all that amount to? These cards mean …

Also: don’t freak out if you get one of the scary cards. I guess it could mean you’re going to break your wrist or something [insert Scream emoji], but those cards are usually opportunities to think about things we avoid.

I mean, here is one beautiful way to think about one of those scary things from Sherman Alexie on Substack (don’t think he used tarot to write this poem, but).

If you don’t have a deck, try Serennu or randomtarotcard.com (which seems to do only Majors).

If you want a good tarot reference: Joan Bunning’s website lists some of the conventional associations based on the Smith Rider Waite deck; I use her book Learning the Tarot often. Another ebook I carry with me all the time is Tarot For Change – Jessica Doré always comes up with fresh and insightful interpretations, especially in ways that upturn conventional good/bad associations of cards. Because good/bad are often just different ways of looking at the same, and we need to be reminded of that if we are to avoid blame and hurtfulness.

Also, a reminder: that next workshop is running with Words Away at the Phoenix Garden in London’s West End on 14 October 2023: The Four Elements of Revising: Become Your Own Best Editor. My Four Elements practice began with tarot, which might come up in discussion there too. We shall be focusing on craft and practice and ways to empower you to finish your book, and – if desired! – send it out into the world. Yes – let’s become our own best editors.

Also, in case you’re wondering: the decks left to right above are the Marseille by Alexandre Jodorowsky and Philippe Camoin, the Smith Rider Waite, and the Visconti. And the other two photos are taken by my husband.

I Am A Delight Song

by Andrew | Leave a comment

At the Nature Matters workshop earlier this month, we read aloud together ‘The Delight Song of Tsoai-Tale’ by N. Scott Momaday. A few lines from the opening:

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind

And I love that line from near the ending. ‘I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful.’ It’s joyful, it’s everyday, it’s an invocation. I love it.

You can watch N. Scott Momaday himself read an excerpt of ‘The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee’ on YouTube. ‘You see, I am alive, I am alive’ – the voice of life, the breath of life run through this poem.

I love the list poem as form. Like I Remember, the I Am poem has the iterative power of repetition, which also lends a strong rhythm to the writing. There is a reason why such poems are often passed down in oral literary traditions.

Repetition brings something of the ritual too, here celebrating the interconnectedness of all things. Feathers, horses, shadows, fish: the personification here is powerful. As Joy Harjo says in a fine short essay, it inscribes the idea that ‘the Earth, all beings, are wired toward healing’. It conveys an affirmative energy.

Also note there are subtle variations bringing shifts in pace to keep our interest: syntax, line length, the use of nouns and verbs and adjectives. And there is plenty of concrete sensory detail to ground us.

Best of all: it’s easy, it’s accessible. You can let your perceptions and your observations and your memories wash over you and through you and out into your writing.

As a writing experiment: write your own Delight Songs, including things that come naturally to you.

You could write a Delight Song based on your favourite associations from the natural world.

You could pack a notebook when you go hillwalking, and write a Delight Song on a mountain top.

You could write a Delight Song sitting on a bench in a park you love, or tap one into your phone as you stand on a busy street corner in the city where you live.

You could write a Delight Song about the books who have made you the reader and writer you are today.

You could write a Delight Song on a special theme (trees, seasons, teachers).

You could write a Delight Song as field work for a character in a novel.

You could write a Delight Song out of whatever speaks to you.

And to fire you up, you might want to watch this first. Another jolt of anthem affirmation. And really: what a feat of choreography!

***

Update, February 2024: N. Scott Momaday died last month. The Paris Review has opened access to its wonderful Art of Poetry interview with him from 2022. As the great man says: ‘I am alive, I am alive’!

Blessings, and gratitude.

Rites and Writes for the Autumn Equinox

by Andrew | 4 Comments

It’s that time of year again – autumn always seems to be the favourite season of writers. Our inner nerd must associate the cooler air and autumn leaves with the wide-open prairies of unused exercise books. And we’re off!

Not that there are as many leaves left to turn orange and fall round here after the summer that we’ve had. Summer: increasingly my least fave season, though this year I did enjoy an excellent Zen meditation course as well as a wonderful introduction to natural history with the Natural History Museum. It’s been a weird year – heat and drought and war and politics and divisions, plus loss and grief that never really seems to budge. Perhaps the cycle of the year puts us in a space to start again.

Autumn, though. It’s something about the light, I think – the slant of the light in September, a thinner yellow that catches something: what? It was there in Orleans House Gardens in Twickenham this morning (see above). It was there on the English Channel last week when I taught a Four Elements workshop at the Hastings Book Festival (thanks for having me!). Something that changes in the light makes me see or maybe just feel things differently: a certain lift happens.

Thinking about that: as a writing experiment, take an old piece of writing and rewrite all or some of it by telling it slant.

A different perspective, a new setting in time or place, a fresh register: bring the subject matter in another direction.

Perhaps think about the quality of light this work might sit within, and let that feel its way into the writing. And maybe you could prepare by doing a meditation or visualisation that draws on a particular quality of the light.

To illuminate (ha!) this writing experiment, try this ritual for the Equinox from Bhanu Kapil, first published in the Ignota Diary 2019:

23 September
Ritual for Autumn Equinox
Invert yourself at the edge of the water, so that the top of your skull or your hair makes contact with the current or wave. And if this is not possible, if your capacity to take this posture is restricted in any way, then feel it in your body first. And if that is not possible, or if feeling is not possible in this moment, then take a glass of water and add some pink Himalayan salt, fresh lemon juice and pepper. Drink this. And if this is not possible, then lift your face to the rain. And if it never rains, then wait until the water finds you. Wait for the unexpected emotion that changes or charges your very real heart. And then: step through the indigo door, as Rachel Pollack said, into another world.

All of that! Some Bhanu (and Rachel) magic to send you on your writing way. Let the light lead you into another world of your own creation.

And spookily (or maybe not), as I type this post Bhanu also informs me about this. If you’ve ever enjoyed the great wisdom of Rachel Pollack’s writings, you might want to show your assistance. (And if you are interested in tarot but have never read her Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: you must seek it out! It is widely regarded as the best book on the subject.)

***

While I’m here, coming soon:

* Reawakenings, a Four Elements workshop run with Words Away, at a central London location tbc, 26 November 2022. Thinking about the changes we’ve experienced in the last few years since we last came together in person, let’s explore together ways to reawaken our writing: reset or reboot it, rebirth it even!

* Masterclasses on craft and practice, structured around an updated syllabus for my DIY MA in Creative Writing, on Zoom, January 2023 onwards.

 

Happy Autumn!

 

Worlds Of Work

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Copy of Marzahn, Mon Amour

It’s the summer solstice, and it’s warm outside, and there’s a train strike, and even though I don’t commute it makes me feel very lazy. Which is ironic, as this post is all about the world of work.

I am inspired by one of the books I’ve enjoyed most so far this year: Marzahn, Mon Amour, by Katja Oskamp, expertly translated by Jo Heinrich and published by Peirene. It’s a memoir by a writer who during an ‘iffy’ patch in her career retrains as a chiropodist and finds a job in a salon in Marzahn, a neighbourhood of communist-era high-rises in East Berlin.

Her clients are older, and – among the ingrowing toenails and painful corns – have tales to tell: illness, bereavement, surviving the Nazis and the communists. Katja also makes new friends with her colleagues; one charming chapter describes an outing to a local spa. There are many quiet joys, and I relished the book’s celebration of working people. Its stories are poignant and often enjoy a certain deadpan humour.

The book was chosen for the Berlin Reads One Book citywide reading campaign. I think much of its success arises as the writing is unfussy – effortless, simply observed. It wasn’t trying too hard, as too much writing is. What could be more intimate than working on someone’s feet, I guess?!

And Katja became a writer again. Sometimes, the fix to an iffy patch is a change of scenery and some fresh company.

As a writing experiment: in ten-minute writes, describe some of the people you have worked with – colleagues, associates, clients, regulars. An unforgettable encounter at a sales conference, or that moment when someone cracked in the office, or that person whose presence in your life from 9 to 5 across a span of several years still haunts you to this day.

Give us a few details of appearance, describe tics and habits, and perhaps relate something of their histories and their lives outside work. Perhaps allow us a sense of what you gave to them, and they gave to you.

Enjoy the solstice!