Category Archives: slowing down

Resistance

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in art, comparison, creating, creativity, Guidance, ideas, Process, prompt writing, ritual, slowing down

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When they say upgrade, go outside and chop some wood.

When they say new and improved, tell them you like the old ways better.

When they say get fit and fabulous, tell them you’re misfit and fabulous.

When they say there’s an app for that, tell them there’s a nap for that.

When they say buy this, ask why?

When they say buy this, ask again.

When they say buy this, make art.

When they say be more of a woman, tell them that’s funny.

When they say you don’t have to be grey, ask if they would dye the heron.

When they say here’s a free sample, tell them you’ve sampled enough.

When they say heart healthy, ask them to define heart.

When they say identity theft, ask whose.

When they say season premier, say, yes, four times a year.

When they say fast food, soak some beans.

When they say consumer confidence, ask in what.

When they say more value, tell them the world needs that.

When they say instant, tell them about cicadas.

When they say but wait there’s more, tell them to be quiet so you can hear it.

 

Written from the prompt, resistance.

The Chase

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Alchemy of writing, Attention, creating, creativity, ideas, Nancy Peacock, Process, prompt writing, ritual, slowing down, Writer's journey

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Twice a week I teach a prompt writing class. We write to a prompt, provided by me, without editing, thinking, or worrying. The rules are: Let it rip. This past week the prompt was: Running out of something. Here’s what I wrote.

 

This morning, I felt as though I was running out of fresh ideas for prompts. I sat at my desk and looked out the window and said out loud, “I know you’re out there.” The leaves rustled in the breeze showing their white undersides. It felt like a taunt. A tease. “You’re looking too hard,” the leaves said. “You want too much. Your head is too filled.”

I know. I know. I know.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I sometimes feel I am running out of ideas for prompts. And it doesn’t change the fact that I believe there are a million ideas surrounding me that I’m just not capturing. They are like little fairies in the woods. Lithe and free and quick and laughing at the lumbering writer who tries to catch them. They call out, “Here we are. Here we are. Here we are,” and then vanish, a puff of smoke left behind. An idea that could have been mine, but instead remains its own.

I wonder if I shouldn’t go to a mall. Not that there is a store where I can purchase ideas, but that it might help to expose myself to the mass of humanity. Perhaps ideas among people are less illusive. Less playful and teasing. In the mall I might see a mother, harried and stressed, tugging a child behind her like a suitcase – and this might trigger an idea for a prompt, or a story. I might overhear a man tell someone on the other end of his cell phone that he is in a meeting. “Just taking a break,” he adds, realizing his friend might overhear the muzak, the clang of cash registers, the sloosh of Coca-cola descending over a cup of ice.

I might sit in a mall and capture the rhythms of conversation in my notebook. I might find ideas jumping onto the page instead of hiding on the undersides of leaves among the eggs of insects.

The woods are my home. There, a deep peacefulness settles over me. The woods make my mind go cottony like a cloud. Thoughts are less important. They flit through and don’t land. They are like the waterbugs across the surface of the pond. Glittering in the sunlight they skim across the surface before being eaten by turtles and fish. They do no mind being turtle food, or fish food, or eventually fertilizer dropped by a heron lifting off from the branch of a tree. They are afraid of nothing. They are not even afraid to be my ideas, the ones we use for prompts to write about on Friday mornings. But ooh – they do love a chase.

Holding Space for Yourself

16 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in comparison, competition, creating, creativity, emotional safety, Process, prompt writing, ritual, safety, slowing down, Writer's journey

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In teaching, one of the things I try to do is hold space. In my private prompts classes, we close our eyes and take some deep breaths and get quiet, letting the workweek fall away, the effort that went into getting the kids off the school, the traffic we drove through to reach our destination, all the little niggling energy that we carry with us to the next place. My studio, where I teach my private classes, has, over time, taken on a lot of creative energy from my work there, and the work of others. The space supports our creative endeavors, and the work of holding space is made easier by this concentrated energy. But the energy in my public classes is also concentrated, and held collectively.

The class I teach regularly, for free and open to the public is called Prompt Writing. I teach it in a book store, and here I have a different ritual for opening the space. I ask each person to say their name, and give one or two sentences about their writing practice, and in this way we settle into each other.

I then introduce myself and tell the class what we’re going to do, I give the prompt and we write. There are rules for responding to others’ writing when it’s read out loud, and they are rules I believe in, so I try to enforce them gently, but firmly, and consistently. I do not waver from these rules.

The rules are meant to create a safe space for writers. It’s important. This is what is meant by holding space. Holding space is holding safe space, and there are lots of different ways to do it, and lots of different ways to not do it, or to undo it.

Competition is anti-safe-space holding. Overly critical thinking and analyses also. Hierarchy. Self-promotion. Comparison. Trying to fix something for someone, be it their writing or their life. Sometimes asking digging, probing questions can make a person feel challenged and defended instead of heard.

Recently I have been thinking about how powerful this is, and how I might try the same techniques for myself. In other words, when I am feeling low and anxious, perhaps I could recognize that I need something that’s not being provided and try to provide it. I might try to hold space for myself.

I don’t think it would be any different than holding space for others. The first step would be to get quiet, and the second step would be to create a safe environment for myself. One without competition, without over-thinking, without hierarchy, without self-promotion, without comparison, without trying to fix it, without digging at myself. In fact, when I need to hold space for myself, it’s always because I have let these things in. It’s natural that they should creep in. We live in a world of low thoughts. The trick is to see it, and to say no to it, and to open the space for yourself again.

The Burning Times

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Alchemy of writing, creating, emotional safety, Guidance, Process, self, slowing down, Story, stress

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Years ago, when I first started teaching writing, a woman signed up for my class at the John C. Campbell Folk School in the N.C. mountains because her doctor told her that if she didn’t do something for herself soon, she’d die. She wasn’t looking for a writing class. She didn’t think of writing at all. She was just looking to do something for herself, doctor’s orders, and she ended up in my group. I will call her Gladys.

In this class we wrote from prompts, and read back to each other, and received each others’ writing by recalling what we liked. We weren’t trying to create anything specific – no novels or poems or essays, although we ended up with parts of all of those things. The purpose, though, was to get used to writing as a way of expressing ourselves, and to get comfortable telling stories.

As the week went on, the class became a community, and we became important to each other, and we all found out more about each other. We found out about Gladys’s alcoholic husband. Her demanding adult children. The dishes in the sink and the laundry on the floor. The smack across her face. The black eye she covered with makeup.

We didn’t try to fix these things for her. We didn’t offer advice or even comfort. We didn’t judge in any way. We just responded to the writing, as we did with each person’s work. Write, read, receive, let go, repeat. By doing this we held space for Gladys to speak her truth. That was all.

Gladys wrote the scenes of her life that week. The scenes spooled from her pen and stitched themselves into story. Her story. It may have been the first time she ever told her story, even to herself. Stories are about pattern, and as Gladys wrote she saw the pattern of her life without the distractions of daily drama her situation kept her in.

After that week Gladys went home and left her husband. She rented a small apartment and lived alone. She wrote me a few times about how peaceful her life was now. She thanked me. What had I done? Had I broken up a marriage? No, of course not. I’d only held space with a group of writers for a person to hear her own thoughts. In the burning times, the times when women were being prosecuted as witches and killed, this might have been considered the work of a witch.

Powerful women, smart women, women with property, women who healed others with herbs and deep knowledge, women who were not married, women who lived outside the “norm” were accused of practicing witchcraft. The accused was often tested physically for witchcraft by various means. Some women were put in a chair and dunked in water. If she was a witch, she wouldn’t drown. If she was a normal human being, which she was, she would drown. Another test was called needling, a woman’s skin was pricked and pricked and pricked and pricked with a needle, all over her body, because somewhere on a witch was a bit of flesh that would not bleed. And if she bled, which she did, she was not a witch. And likely dead.

Isn’t it interesting how the tests for witch always leave a woman dead. And isn’t it interesting how Gladys was told she was at death’s door if she didn’t do something for herself.

I think that before the writing class, Gladys’s life was the equivalent to being needled. She was pricked and pricked and pricked and pricked by an abusive husband. Pricked too by a society that didn’t care about her as a human being. Likely pricked by things she’d learned and absorbed as a child, about how a woman needs to make sacrifices, stand by her man, have dinner on the table at a certain time, etc. etc. etc. Thankfully Gladys had someone in her life, a doctor, who could see beyond immediate medical needs into the soul of a woman who needed, simply, to do something for herself. And thankfully the thing she chose to do was attend my writing class. And thankfully, even though I was new to teaching, I was able to create an environment where, for one week, Gladys could be with her story. She could tell it and have it received. As the week went on she began to understand the concept of emotional safety, and she began to see that she didn’t have that at home.

At the end of the week Gladys wrote a piece about coming down off the mountain and ending her marriage. We responded to it as we had responded to everything else. Without judgement. None of us knew if Gladys would leave her husband or not, but we could see that the week had affected her, and that she was stronger for it. The space we provided for writing gave her space to trust herself.

This is the alchemy of writing. In my work as a teacher, I’ve witnessed this alchemy again and again, women and men coming back to themselves, hearing themselves, hearing each other, becoming stronger. I’ve seen the tough and guarded made vulnerable. I’ve seen the meek and voiceless start to speak up for themselves. I’ve seen barriers break down and humanity show through. I’ve seen tears burst forth from my writing prompts, not because my prompts are so great, but because the process and the safe space I create in my workshops allow people to reach deep inside themselves and bring forth their truth. Be it fiction, memoir, poetry, essay – writing is always about truth. Art is always about relationship to self.

And frankly, if bringing people to writing, bring people to themselves, is the work of witch then I accept it. Even in these burning times.

Fast Food / Slow Food

17 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by in Attention, Reading, slowing down, stress

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I arrived early for a lunch date at a local mall, so I do what I usually do when I have a moment of downtime. I read. I always have a book with me to read in places where I might have to wait. I have read in lines at post offices, waiting for service at a restaurant, while getting an oil change, or having a recall fixed on my car. On this day I read on a bench in a mall.

A woman came up to me and asked me what I was reading. I showed her the title, thinking she’d drift off. I was reading after all. But instead of leaving she settled on the bench beside me and said, “I used to read. I read all the time. I read a lot, but I just can’t anymore. All the political stuff that’s going on. All the trouble in the world. I just can’t read anymore. I’ve tried and tried but the world just keeps getting worse and worse off.”

She sounded angry. She nearly spat her words out, as though to blame someone else for her inability to focus on a book. It was something she used to do, but no longer could.

“You should read,” I said. “It will help the world.”

“I can’t,” she said. “How can you?”

“I have to read,” I told her. “I have to read no matter what’s going on.”

“But, how can you focus?” she asked.

I was tempted to tell her that I wasn’t focusing right now. That I had been, but then I was interrupted by a stranger, a stranger in need it seemed like.

“I sit down, and I open the book, and I read. That’s how I focus.”

“But the world,” she said. “All this terrible stuff going on. I’m so upset.”

“There’s plenty of time to be upset, and for now, if you have a roof over your head and food in your belly, you can make time to read. You need it,” I added, hoping I didn’t sound too insulting, hoping it wasn’t like screaming RELAX at someone who clearly couldn’t relax.

She stood up. “Enjoy your book,” she said stiffly, and left.

I’ve thought about that woman a lot. I felt a little judged, as though by insisting on reading instead of joining her in a stress-fest, I’d abandoned all that is good in the world. In fact, I felt I was embracing good in the world by insisting on reading.

And that’s what you have to do. You have to insist on things. You have to insist on cooking at home and not hitting the drive-thru for fast food in the evenings. You have to insist on weekends and time with your family. You have to insist on brushing your teeth and bathing. And if you want to read, you have to insist on it. You have to make the effort. You have to procure books and turn off the television and give it some time.

What would our world be like if we insisted on good habits instead of falling into the trap of bad ones? I know it’s not easy. The energy of the commercial world, the world that is so in your face all the time, is against you. The woman in the mall was right about that. She felt it. She felt crazed with it all, as most people do. She blamed the current political scene, but how much of this was already in place? How many hours are most people working just to pay their bills? How stressed are people as they drop their kids off here and there and try to make it to the office on time? How stressed are they when they get that memo from the idiot at work who dropped the ball on some project and now they have to work late to cover him, and themselves?

The commercial world, the world of buy/sell, the world of fast lanes and fast foods is totally against you doing anything worthwhile. It’s good for business to have you stressed out to the max. If you’re stressed out to the max, you’re unlikely to do something subversive like make art, or read.

I don’t know what the answers are to the world’s problems. I don’t know how to tell you to pay your bills and keep your head above water. I don’t know how to tell you to stay sane. But I do know this: Taking time and slowing down helps. Read a book. And when you’re done read another one. Reading novels actually reduces stress. It also increases empathy and helps you focus. If you’re feeling fractured and splintered and stressed, read. Please. And I don’t mean Facebook posts and Tweets and news stories. I mean novels and memoirs. Read stories. As Muriel Rukeyser once said, “The world is made up of stories, not atoms.”

Unplug and read a book. I don’t tell you this because I am an author and want you to buy my book. I tell you this because, like the woman in the mall, I see that the world is in a big fat mess, and as a human being, I think one of the strongest most important things I can do is slow down. Not give in to the super stress. Not let it take away from me the things I hold dear, and reading is one of those things. I read fiction and memoir. And I listen to people as much as I can, even if they interrupt my reading.