The Creative Zone

The creative geyser -- must release the pressure

The last two weeks have been tough. My days, thoughts, my sleeping hours, were consumed by stress: I wanted an answer for what was bothering me. I wanted it now. And I wanted it to be the best. I found myself bursting into tears whenever anyone offered a kind word. I cannot tell you what my problem was. Perhaps it is enough to say it was related to parenting and to wanting to parent well.

From below the chaos, Perspective would touch my shoulder with its light hand, reminding me: “Be grateful. You are healthy. The children and Dar are healthy. They are happy and they love you. You are all together. Concentrate on what’s good, and more good will come.” In my heart I knew this was true, but then the moment of gratitude would pass, and fears would take over, and the ever-relentless drive to find a solution now.

Lacking peace of mind, my creative zone zoned out. Unable to compete with worries, it became dormant, hiding below layers and layers of protective parts. This time, however, sleeping through the chaos was not enough. The Critic directed my thoughts away from writing by asserting: “You will never be a writer. It’s never going to happen for you. You better give up.”

I’ve been listening to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. “You will never write this well,” said the Critic. “I have no need to write like Tolstoy,” I argued. “Only Tolstoy could write like himself.” The critic scoffed: “You will never be able to create a world like this. You will never be able to create a story of so many characters, so real, so colorful, so simple at the same time.”

The Critic looted every coin of confidence, burnt every standing wall, painted graffiti over my most treasured pavements. Instead of resting till the storm passed over, my creativity found herself engaged in a survival war. “Is it true?” She asked in a timid voice. “Is it really over?” And then, as though disappearing into herself: “Why do I exist at all?”

No matter how often I affirm that I am a writer, still doubts and fears assail me. I turn on the computer, my fingers trembling, eager and yet afraid to pull my document up on the screen. A huge weight settles on me. I am unable to begin. Then I remember. In the beginning was the word. I type a single letter, and then another, and suddenly, without knowing how or why, what or where, I am sitting here and writing again.

Relief.

Blooming into beauty -- simply and easily

I still search for the answer to that parenting question I mentioned, but perhaps for now the crisis is over. I can raise my head over the storm and find perspective, allow the Critic to calm down, listen to my Creativity hum as it goes about its business, and let my fingers move over the keyboard, bringing my fairy tale world to life.

What do you do to quiet the Critic? How do you keep your creativity free to work its magic?

The Price of Passion

Uri's main competition for my love.

Writers often claim that they write because they must. Why else would we write? Riches and fame, after all, are rarely the results. I have struggled with the inexplicable need to write for at least ten years, writing in bursts and sinking into doom and gloom when no writing comes. Having noticed the connection between not writing and my bouts of depression, I’ve made an effort to get some writing time every day. I channel my creativity into the blog when the novel seems too complicated an endeavor, and I’ve come to realize that the feeling I called depression was actually frustration in disguise.

Realizing how important writing is to me was only one tiny step. Ahead loomed a greater obstacle, so great, in fact, that terrified and ashamed, for a long time I preferred not to look it in the face. Even now, it seems to me both a ridiculous and crucial obstacle: my all-important mother-hood. Turns out that after all these years, I still doubt that I can be a mother and a writer at the same time.

My imagination, my creativity press on the dam of fears I’d built, lashing against it, trying to force a way out. When I write, I often don’t hear the children talking to me. I forget to tell them to go to sleep or to make them food. What will happen if I let all the passion of writing out from behind the carefully controlled dam? What if writing and novels and ideas will come rushing out in a great flood, overcoming everything? Will the mother mountain stay intact?

Yesterday my son accused me, “You love your book more than you love me.” I burst out laughing. I spend so much energy on being afraid that the kids will suffer because of my writing, and here he is blaming me for exactly what I fear the most. Except, he wasn’t talking about my novel, the one I am writing. He was talking about the ultra fascinating and unputdownable Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore.

Okay, so I admit that yesterday I was reading Bitterblue instead of playing with him lacrosse. And I was reading Bitterblue instead of paying him attention. And I was reading Bitterblue in the doctor’s office while we waited though he had nothing to do. But in one moment, with those funny and yet truthful words, Uri gave me glimpse of perspective about my great parenting-writing fear. Just a glimpse, mind you.

I have a feeling that if I let the dam loose the mother mountain will still stand safe and sure. I have a feeling that if I stop putting on the break with my writing, I will have more energy to spend both on my writing and the kids. And I have a feeling that it’s good for the kids to know that there’s more to their mother than just being a mother. It’s just a feeling. But I think perhaps it’s true.

Do you have a passion in your life, that makes you oblivious to the rest of the world?

Where Adventure and Home Meet

I love adventure. The idea of hanging on a rope between heaven and earth, holding onto nothing but steep, slick rocks delights me. I like to go far into the wilderness, sleep in a tent, discover new paths, light a campfire, and shiver as I bravely slide into a freezing lake. The lake especially is a challenge, because I don’t like to be cold, but the exhilaration I feel swimming surpasses most of my life’s greatest joys.

At the same time, I am a home body. I dislike leaving my routine. I’m not flexible in uncomfortable situations, and I like to have my own way. I get upset if I don’t have space to write, and I‘m attached to my quiet morning time eating and reading. I easily get overwhelmed and anxious in unfamiliar places, and if I don’t eat on time or enough I can get moody, headachy and unpleasant.

Paradoxical me, living with a dual temperament in one body, with one part that craves excitement and danger, and another that requires safety and routine. An odd combination, seemingly impossible to bridge. And yet, somehow, I have been straddling these lines for forty years, exploring the world’s wild places but also making myself a home where, despite the abundance of wildlife and trails all around, I rarely set foot outside.

Adventure is where I challenge who I believe I am. Sometimes I discover that I am capable of so much more than I thought, and other times I smash into a wall of limitations and weaknesses. When I climbed Mount Shasta five years ago, I leaped over the barriers of cold wind and darkness and found within myself the strength to keep moving and the knowledge that I can reach the summit. When I first arrived at Paradise to climb Mount Rainier, only a few months later that year, I grew overwhelmed by fears and found myself declaring defeat and retreating home without even trying.

In Kauai a few months ago, my creativity blossomed. Nothing, not heavy rain or Dar’s disability at the time could mar my enjoyment of the island. I wrote. I ran. I swam. I had endless patience to walk with Dar as he hobbled along on his crutches. But on Roatan, a Honduran island with every promise of heaven, I felt trapped, stressed and unable to handle any of the discomforts of the trip. Nothing, not our beautiful rented house, the promise of kayaking, or the glorious jungle could relieve the tension headache from hell that I had.

Perhaps it is time for me to stop defining success in adventure by whether I followed through with my plans and start appreciating that I left on adventure in the first place. I travel into the world, secure in the knowledge that I can always return home, my safe base from which I can challenge myself farther and to which I can return to lick any bruises to my courage. Like a baby who peeks out of her mother’s skirts, testing the waters. That’s how I am.

YES to Opportunity and Magic

A few days prior to the writers’ conference this year, I tried to decide what I want to get out of it. If I had a goal, I reasoned, I would be more likely to leave the conference a wiser woman. I could learn more about the craft of writing children’s books, meet other writers like me, perhaps get lucky and say hello to an editor or an agent, but what do I really want? For the last few months I’ve been writing a romance novel for adults -- what am I seeking in a conference aimed at children’s books?

I do have one novel for teens that is being considered by an agent, and I have been playing around with a sequel to it (playing around equals to about one hundred and fifty pages written before I got the main characters stranded on a magical mountain). That makes me count as a children’s fiction writer still, even if I am concentrating on romance right now.

And craft is craft. Perhaps no one will teach me here to write better rolling around in bed scenes (notice the euphemism?), but I could learn about revision, creativity, and dreams. That settled it for me. I was coming to the conference to be inspired. What better goal than that? And, just to be on the safe side, I chose a secondary goal: to give twenty of my business cards away. The least I could do, since Dar printed about five hundred of them for me.

The conference began yesterday with Charlie Price, author of Desert Angel (and more). After listening to him, my first action once I returned to my room was to buy the novel on kindle. Price spoke about his creative process and how he watches the movie of the story unroll as he writes. I could see his movie myself on the page once I started reading. Price's writing is visual, raw and real. I felt connected to Angel, the main character, from the first paragraph, and I’m sure this is a book that I will write about again. I was lucky to sit next to Charlie Price’s wife at dinner and talk books and work ethics with her. That was great.

After dinner I expected great inspiration. I had heard Dan Yaccarino speak before (and I wrote about his YES presentation). But this time he surprised me. After speaking for about an hour about his success, which he attributes to his saying YES to every opportunity that came his way, Yaccarino added: “For every project you see here there are ten that didn’t make it.” I was amazed and inspired by how Yaccarino keeps challenging himself, working hard, trying new things, never afraid of being ridiculed or making mistakes. Truly inspiring.

So inspiring, in fact, that I’m writing to you this morning before I even had breakfast, so I’m going to do it now. Wishing all of us a wonderfully inspiring and enriching Saturdday!

Singing Mozart in the Desert

I wonder if Mozart was interested in anything other than music. For 35 years he pursued, with single-minded passion, a career in music and composition, producing over 600 works that people love till today. Supposing that he started composing at around age 5 (which is not far from the truth), Mozart produced an average of 20 musical compositions a year. 41 of these are symphonies, which are probably as difficult to bring to life as a novel, with many musical threads, ideas and instruments flowing through.

Then again, Mozart did so much more than write music. He was a comedian, writing funny music that makes fun of operatic characters or instruments. He was a student of human character, an actor who could bring a scene to life without words, a politician who could maneuver the royal houses of Europe, and much more. He was a genius, born with the ability to juggle many talents and channel them into a creative output that remains alive all these years after his death.

You might be wondering why I am haranguing you about Mozart this evening. It’s not his birthday or the anniversary of his death. And it’s not even as though I was thinking about Mozart when I sat to write this blog. He just popped into my head, because I had been thinking about creativity. Mine, to be exact.

I pride myself on being a creative person. I write, paint and sing. I cook and bake. I also  often lack the ability to follow through on projects. I am not writing this to be hard on myself. Sometimes I want, very much, to find a way to channel my creativity so that it doesn’t flutter here and there and get lost in the breeze, to find focus and concentration.

But the truth is I love the way I am. I love the fact that one minute I am writing this blog, and the next I am talking to my cousin Iris on the phone and describing to her with excitement how horrible our vacation to Honduras was. I love that when the kids come home I am totally theirs, and how when I read I can’t hear it when people talk to me. I enjoy being a wild butterfly with antennas that dip into many flowers.

I guess I’m not going to be a Mozart. Maybe it will take me ten years to produce each novel. Or maybe not. I know it will take me a lifetime to parent the kids (I’m totally sitting in their living room and telling them what to do when they grow up). I’m just having fun, mostly, with all these talents. I think that is what they are for: cooking chicken and potatoes for dinner, writing this blog, reading a book to the kids while doing all the different voices, singing a silly song to wake Eden up in the morning.

What are you most enjoying with your talents?

I Am Watching You!

Sometimes I feel like there’s a cartoon giant standing above me, tall, big and ugly, his head bent down to within six inches of my ears. This giant has only one interest in life, to harass me with reminders about my chores. All day long, and sometimes all night (depending, I suppose, on whether he gets a nap), he shouts in my ears what I need to do.

My room slowly fills up with his speech bubbles, each of which starts with the words "you need." “You need to call the dentist! You need to write a synopsis! You need to wash the dishes! You need to walk the dogs! You need to take out the trash! You need to teach the dogs to use the doggie door! You need to paint again! You need to work on your novel! You need to organize your desk! You need to listen to what I say!”

This giant is my monitor, keeping me not just honest but also stressed and overwhelmed. I try to shut him up by writing to-do lists. I try to silence him by calling the dentist. But he continually finds new things for me to need to do. No matter how fast or how hard I work, the giant keeps ahead of me by hundreds of items of to-do.

The giant monitor hardly ever demands that I do something fun. He will shout at me to floss, but never to take a bath. He will command me to get up, but never to take a nap. He won’t say, “you need to watch a movie.” Never! His words would be: “What the heck do you think you’re doing watching a movie? You need to wash the car!”

The giant is different from my inner perfectionist. He doesn’t care whether the job gets done well. In fact, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care whether the job gets done at all. He blindly yells at me, coming up with more and more ideas all the time.

I wish I had his creativity. I wish I could harness his energy into my writing and have new words flowing onto the page with the speed at which his “you needs” fill up the space above my head. I wish that instead of getting buried under his demands I could float up above them to where the air is clear, the sun shines, and it’s freedom all around.

Perhaps I could remind the giant that sometimes it’s important to have fun, forget to pay a bill, or leave the dishes lying for the ants. I’m pretty sure I didn’t come into this world to chase a list of chores, though I suppose the to-do list must be attended to once in a while. So maybe if I changed perspective and considered the dentist and the dishes fun, the giant and his bubbles will fade away or pop to reveal the clear, blue sky of my uncluttered mind.