Remixing

Oh dear, I'm having another of those 'everything I write lately is mediocre' times. Which is perhaps a good thing, as I did plan to focus on revision this year. And I've embraced some tools I've given little attention to in the past, so as to not merely revise but remix.

I've suddenly fallen in love with things like the erasure and the cento, using my own poetry as source material, and sometimes coming up with what I think are improvements to the originals. My readers say kind things about them, so I could be right.

I like the way it puts a bit of mystery back into my poetry. After years of trying to acquire limpid clarity through practising haiku and the 'small stones' mindful writings, I think I'm in danger of achieving banality!

I look at my best friend Helen's poetry, with its masterful use of metaphor, and remember that I too used metaphor once upon a time. I seem to have lost that art along the way, but perhaps my current revision tools will give me equally interesting effects.

Interesting to me, I probably mean. I guess we have to remain interested in our own art in order to keep creating it with joy and passion, and that's why artists in all genres go through different phases or 'periods', abandoning their successes to try new things.

Anyway I recognise that for me, the only person I can really speak for, the process has always been where much of the fascination lies.

Focusing on Joy — with Startling Effects

Strange things happen when you do one of Satya Robyn's courses! They are quite low-key in the way they're presented — one reason I like them; I so hate gung-ho. They are gentle, seemingly undemanding. The daily emails are wise in a down-to-earth kind of way, with beautiful quotations and illustrations. They are easy to digest, non-threatening. Yet the effects are profound.

The one I am doing this month is about joy. We are encouraged to examine it in various ways, which include noticing what gets in the way of it. Simple practices are suggested. I am only doing two: writing a daily 'small stone' about something that gives me joy if only for a moment, and going for a walk in nature each day. The latter is not difficult where I live, but it's nice to do it mindfully, paying attention.

I think the bits of writing I'm doing are nothing earth-shattering. They are not great literature, and reveal no unusual insights. I post them to my blog and facebook writer's page anyway, but I have been wondering why I bother.

Then yesterday, sitting in the writers' group I have been facilitating with great pleasure for the last seven years, it dawned on me that I have come to the end of that. This is momentous; it has been a huge part of my life. I said nothing, came home and thought about it — only briefly before I noticed how alive the idea of moving on made me feel. I'm ready to embrace the unknown. 

It's not that there's anything wrong with the group; it's great! It's just that my time as facilitator has completed itself. Even good things come to an end. It's not a disaster in any way. Several possible replacements for me are showing up, and I expect to remain friends with people in the group. I am also looking forward to more time for my own writing, and to having freedom from the responsibilities my role has involved. They weren't arduous, in fact were enjoyable, but they were a tie. It seems I'm lightening up. I talk about my decision, and my friends say, 'Well, you sound very happy about it.'

I don't quite know how Satya's course helped precipitate this. Perhaps just by having me pay attention to joy, to how it operates in my life. I suspect the decision has been percolating away subconsciously for some time; the course didn't cause it. But, in heightening my awareness, it did enable me to become conscious of what shape joy might take for me now.

The first Mindful Writing Day - join me?

This Thursday the 1st of November is the first ever Mindful Writing Day, organised by Kaspa & Fiona at Writing Our Way Home.

To join in simply slow down, pay attention to one thing and write it down (making a small stone). Read all about it here.

Small stones are easy to write, and they will help you connect to the world. Once you've started, you might not want to stop... You can read more about small stones and find out about Lorrie with pea-green eyes in Fiona's free ebook, Write Your Way Home.

If you visit Writing Our Way Home on Thursday you'll find out how to download your free kindle copy of the new anthology, 'A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems'.

You can also submit your small stone and see it published on the blog, and be entered into a competition to win one of five paperback copies of the book.

There's a Facebook invite here if you'd like to invite your friends, and feel free to repost this blog on your own blog. You can tweet this:

Connect with the world through mindful writing - join the first Mindful Writing Day on the 1st of November: bit.ly/VjzRKe #smallstone See you on the 1st!

Writer's Journal: Identifying a Major Withhold

Recently, when sending out my latest lot  of ‘small stones’ to my Google group of ‘Rosemary’s Readers’, I prefaced them with this rider:

Dear Readers

Truth to tell, I have been feeling very uncertain about these efforts, wondering if I should even inflict them on you. (And I note that 'should' is a sign that this thinking might be awry.)  

Difficult just now to put the focus outside myself. But I am doggedly persisting anyhow, at least once a day, and I think that small piece of discipline has value.

To which one reader, himself a noted poet, replied:

Dear Rosemary

I understand you might have doubts because of being so prolific. several of them were quite spare, & gained for that, in my humble opinion....  [He went on to comment on particular pieces.]

I don't think you have anything to worry about.  For me, a bit of hard edge is good. the proportion of success is quite high. if you are taking a new direction, the doubts are understandable. Keep going...

In the course of responding to his kind reassurances, I found myself explaining to him — and thereby to myself! — the root of my difficulty:

The small stone thing, started by Fiona Robyn, is supposed to be 'a polished moment of paying attention', being open to the world. What's so disconcerting to me this time around is that it's a real effort. In the past, I've found it easy and delightful. This time I am making myself do it, because I said I would.

Hey, this is good. In explaining to you right now, I am understanding better myself why it's so. My beloved has recently been diagnosed with 'mild to moderate' Alzheimer's, and is on some pills to slow it down. Mostly, the things I notice in my days are the ways he is changing.  He's still a sweetie, and we can still have decent conversations and shared interests, but there are some 'Mother and Son' moments. None of which are finding their way into the small stones. (I do have a prose blog about it, called Shifting Fog, but don't find time to write there very often.)

Jennie Fraine, Leah Kaminsky and I have been a support group for each other for many years, which has gone through different incarnations as our lives took us to different places literally and metaphorically ... but anyway, we identified very early on that when there was something wrong with a piece of writing, there was always a withhold of some kind or other. So much so that we named ourselves the WIGs*, for Withhold Identification Group. 

I probably need to address some of the things I'm not talking about on the page, to free myself up to be present to the rest of life as well.

* We usually capitalise the S too.

Writer's Journal: Small Stones January 2012

It's such hard going this time! This is surprising, as in the past I've loved writing the small stones, and it's been easy to open to the world around me

I feel this problem this time has to do with Penelope's death. It was 31st December that I felt her energy around me and thought she had died, though I tried to tell myself it wasn't necessarily so. After that I was in limbo, waiting for the confirmation. When it came, I went into grief — which gave me the impetus for some better writing, if not exactly in the spirit of small stones.

Now, I have shut down the grieving because I need to go on functioning in my life. And that means I am shut down to the world around me too; it is impossible to be selective and shut down in one area but keep others alive. I need to go and have a talk with Lisa, I think. (The psychologist I was seeing for a while.) Better than keeping stuff suppressed. Must phone her and see if I need a new referral.

I already posted a note on my Small Stones blog, complaining that the process felt strange this time and that far from falling in love with the world I seemed to be taking a jaundiced view. That wasn't the half of it — I actually felt I was writing shit. When I looked back later at those pieces, they weren't so bad after all. Tonight I feel the same about the latest.  Hopefully that will turn out to be better than I think, too.

But there's a withhold in it. I was writing about the spider that was in the house tonight, which, as the poem says, I 'guided' outside. I didn't say that I communicated with it telepathically and that it responded, following my instructions exactly as to how to get out, after I had first explained why that would be a good idea. Such wonderfully sentient beings, spiders — but how can I out that in a public poem, without going into a lot of explanation? And how could I explain it anyhow in a way that people could accept?

It is even a bit scary writing it here, now that I have made this blog non-private. But I tell myself no-one much will bother reading this; it won't sound interesting. I'll let it stand, though, and brave the possibility. I need to be frank abut who I am. In fact I need to post something in my Cronewyze blog about communicating telepathically with spiders and indeed all creatures — including other people. Maybe I need to write a 'how to' booklet on the subject too.

Writng 'Small Stones'

Would you like a 2012 with more colour, more juice, more clarity, more deliciousness?

During January, Kaspa and Fiona Robyn from ‘Writing Our Way Home’ will be encouraging you to pay attention to one thing every day and write it down.

You don’t have to be a writer to take part. You just need to have three minutes spare a day, and a notebook or a blog, and the desire to slow down and fall in love with the world a day at a time.

Do jump here to find out more, and Kaspa and Fiona hope to see you in the river. Here’s how last year’s small-stoners found the experience:

“I have to tell you, readers, I have loved writing a small stone every day for the last 31 days. It’s the most glorious exercise in mindfulness, in pulling yourself into this moment, and if you haven’t tried it yet please give it a go, if only for a week.”
~Rachel Hawes, writer of small stones

“My father was recently put into Hospice care and dealing with the imminent loss and pain and joy of his journey has become sweeter for me because I am paying attention. That is no small thing.”
~Lisa Haight, writer of small stones

“…I keep finding that [writing a small stone] doesn’t eat up time or mental space; on the contrary, time stops and a new space is created.”
~Jean Morris, writer of small stones

“Writing small observations daily was like a spiritual experience for me. I felt happy, joyous and free. I looked forward to my daily meditation. As a result, I feel awakened and alive; and I am truly thankful.”
~Laurie Kolp, writer of small stones

As for me, I've done this before, loved it like mad, and will be doing it again this January, at my Stones for the River blog. You're all invited to read and comment.

A River of Stones

You've heard of NaMoWriMo. Introducing (drumroll.....) NaSmaStoMo!

For the month of January, Fiona Robyn asks people to join her in writing a short piece of writing each day for the whole month, and blogging it either on their usual blog or a new one (or in a notebook if they're shy).

Find out more at her new blog,  A River of Stones, and please help spread the word by tweeting and sharing the link on Facebook and emailing your might-be-up-for-it friends.

Fiona says: Don't worry about whether you're a 'writer' or not - this project will help you to connect with the world, and we could all do with a bit more of that. Start the year as you mean to go on.

So are you in?

I am, and will be posting at my new blog (yet another!): Stones for the River.