Category Archives: Writer’s journey

Farewell in Four Parts

17 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by in Tamara Kissane, Writer's journey

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PART ONE: Celebrate

Congratulations! We made it, friends. We made it to December 2020. 

This is the final PL blog post of the year from me. (I’ll get to the concentrated gratitude in another section, but know that a current of gratitude runs throughout this entire post.)

As a New Year hurtles toward us, it’s tempting to look back and consider what we ‘accomplished’ over this past year. December scrolling reveals an internet rife with Best of awards and Year in Review lists. 

I guess that’s what our society does in December?

Are you planning to engage in a Year in Review of your own? 

My spouse and I spend every New Year’s Eve reviewing our previous 12 months and then set goals and intentions for the coming year. (This process involves snacks and champagne and occurs in the window between when the kids go to bed at 8:30pm and we go to bed at 10:30. Yes, we are the life of the party.) 

The goals we set for 2020 have been subverted, reconfigured or just crossed off the list, so I don’t think we’ll spend much time with those tattered aspirations. Instead, we plan to spend a portion of our two hour window celebrating what we achieved despite this year’s challenges and how we navigated the painful mismatch between our expectations and the reality. 

Our New Year’s Eve review has been a tradition for over a decade. It is a celebration of our most recent journey around the sun, and I love it.

Do you have a similar tradition? 

Will you reflect on your 2020 writing process? 

What will you celebrate?

Yes, celebrate.

What will you celebrate with a raised glass, a cheer, a song, a cupcake, or a pat on the back? 

Writer friends, my wish is that you find something to celebrate from your 2020 writing journey, no matter the painful mismatch between your expectations and the reality.

Celebrate, please.

If you wrote one idea on a sticky note that fell behind your fridge, celebrate it. 

If you wrote three books, a screenplay, your memoirs, and ten stage plays, celebrate those. 

If you wrote 15 well-crafted emails to your community list-serv/children’s teachers/doctors/family, then hurrah, celebrate. 

If you composed a to-do list that you never checked off, wrote GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE in lipstick on your bathroom mirror, or spelled out WASH ME through the dirt on your car window, that’s celebration worthy. 

Maybe you dashed off a few private journal entries that no one ever saw. 

Maybe you published 52 blog posts.

Maybe you discovered you are a poet not a novelist and now you write verse. 

Maybe you excelled in the chat box on Zoom.

Maybe you spent most (or all) of 2020 just…thinking. Thinking about writing. Thinking about words. Thinking about life. 

Maybe you spent most (or all) of 2020 just…feeling. A slew of feelings to carry and process and vent and sit with and burn through.

Maybe you spent most (or all) of 2020 just…existing. Growing, stretching, shrinking, breathing, sleeping, moving, dreaming, working, cleaning, watching, consuming. Maybe you tried on a lot of verbs, and none of them were ‘writing.’

That’s great. Good for you. Celebrate.

Whatever you did or did not do this year, let us celebrate the fact that we are here together. 

Let us also acknowledge that the writing process is more than putting words on the paper. 

Writing is a spectrum loop of gathering, processing, researching, considering, reading, resting, thinking, talking, revising, and so on. ‘Writing’ contains a multitude of verbs compressed. 

When I’m in a snit, when I’m feeling unkind to myself, when I’m feeling competitive or lost, I zero in on quantity — How many pages am I piling up? What’s my word count? How many pieces have I actually published/produced/made public? I zoom in tight on the quantity of the attention I’m getting — How many shares, likes, accolades, and paid gigs have I gotten and is that more or less than what I should be getting and more or less than what other people are getting? 

Yes, occasionally I find myself constrained by a very narrow and exacting definition of what it means to write and be a writer, but I’m not going there this year. 

I am NOT going there this New Year’s Eve because I know (and you know too) that writing is more global, more flexible, and all-encompassing than that. Writing is about quality too. Putting the words on the paper is only one element. Publishing is only one element. Sometimes we cannot ‘do’ all the writing. Sometimes we can attempt only a few of the verbs under the writing umbrella. That’s to be expected, and that’s ok.

There are so many of us writers, each with a unique perspective, voice, and file drawer of experiences. We may not share those perspectives, voices, and experiences, but we did share this year. We lived through this year as writers, and today I celebrate us. Cheers!

And most of all, most of all, most of all, let us celebrate the future.

Let us celebrate the writing that WE. WILL. DO.

Tonight, I raise my virtual glass to the writing that the future holds for us. 

We are walking toward it now. 

See, see, see! In the distance! 

Stories/poems/plays/essays are patiently waiting for us to arrive, and take their hands, and bring them home. 

PART TWO: Whether you are or aren’t

Looking for inspiration for when you’re not writing and for when you are writing?

Here’s a harrowing and inspiring piece by playwright Clare Barron: “Not Writing” by Clare Barron on the Playwrights Horizon website. It contains mature language and content, so beware, but if you are NOT writing, then maybe give it a read.

Excerpt: 

“….I pray that we lift up the voices that came before us. That we read our old plays and rediscover what’s there. That we allow for people to emerge at all ages. We allow for people to begin at all ages. To quit, and return again. To take breaks. And to come back to us. And we will welcome them with open arms.” ~ Clare Barron

If you ARE writing plays, then I highly recommend this piece by Ellen Lewis: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Play by Ellen Lewis on the Howlround website. I love it, and it invigorated my writing, and I wish I had written it!

“Inspired by Wallace Steven’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” I began thinking about the various ways I look at a play I’m writing, as I’m writing it. Every lens reveals something different.” ~ Ellen Lewis

PART THREE: Gratitude

Thank you for connecting and for your support and encouragement.

Thank you for reading and listening. 

Thank you for helping us to build a community during a very isolating and isolated year.

Thank you for celebrating writing. Thank you for the writing you have done and the writing you will do.

Thanks  to the City of Raleigh Arts Commission, the Durham Arts Council, Orange County Arts Commission and United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County for sponsoring the Piedmont Laureate program, and for supporting me during this strange year. 

PART FOUR: North Carolina magic

This year, I had the honor of conversing with dozens of amazing local writers, administrators and creatives, as well as co-producing short original audio fiction written by eleven NC playwrights. You’ll see some of that goodness below. I look forward to crossing paths with and showcasing more North Carolina artists and writers in the future — there are so many, and we are so lucky to live in this place of abundant creativity.

Please click on the links below to soak up amazing North Carolina wisdom and work.

(Transcripts available upon request, please reach out to artistsoapbox@gmail.com.)

Podcasts featuring NC writers and supporters:

Original Audio Drama:

Blogs:

Thank you sincerely + best wishes + safe travels wherever your writing journey takes you,

Tamara

First drafts stink

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Revision, Writer's journey, Writing Advice

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How are your stinky first drafts doing? 

This week I completed a stinky first draft of a new play. I felt victorious. I felt defeated. I felt nauseous. 

This is always the case for me.

My brain understands that the stink is part of the process. (I assure you that the stink is part of the process.)

And yet, I’m always surprised and a little disappointed when the first draft does actually stink. 

This is always the case for me. 

Despite a multitude of examples to the contrary, I thought maybe this time it would be different. Maybe this time my play would spring from my mind in fully-formed perfection. Maybe this time I wouldn’t have to grind out five gazillion drafts just to get it to an acceptable shape for a reading around my kitchen table with my three kindest friends.

Oh well, not this time. (This is always the case for me. Is this the case for you?)

Friends, I don’t have a problem with a blank page. I have a problem with what I write on it. 

Anyone else feel that way?

This is what helped me accept the reality of writing the despicable first draft:

  • Pep-talks from my friends
  • A spirited sixty minute walk
  • Advice from Ian Finley (more on that below)

Ian and Tamara look happy because they are talking about writing and not actually writing.

I accept that writing is work. Writing is revision. And more work. And more revision. 

I accept.

And I turn to one of my favorite podcast conversations with playwright and 2012 Piedmont Laureate, Ian Finley. Ian tells it like it is, and I find a lot of comfort in that. 

I find comfort in knowing that we all go through this.

Solidarity, writers! Make a stink! Carry on! 

When you have 50 minutes, listen to Ian tell it here: 043: What good is a bad first draft? Playwright and arts educator Ian Finley extols the power of revision.

For now, take a look at the transcript below and revel in his wisdom about revision. 

TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST EXCERPT:

Timestamp: 10:00

TAMARA:

Let’s talk a little bit about revision because I know this is something else that you have strong opinions about. And I’m in agreement. Your assertion is that revision is 75% of the work in writing a new play. 

IAN:

Yeah. So I hate Lord Byron.  I love his poetry. What I hate about him and all the Romantics was this belief that they put forward that is still so prevalent – that art is just given to you. Like the muse reaches down and you’ve got this great idea and you’re inspired and you go off and you write it and it’s done. And it’s a lie. It’s a gigantic lie. And it’s a destructive lie because it makes people feel that when they don’t get inspired that way, that they can’t write, that they can’t create.

Timestamp: 10:53

IAN:

And it’s a lie because that’s not how Byron wrote. Byron wrote and then he revised, he put the work in. Again, it’s a craft, not an art. The art comes out of the craft, right? The working of the pieces….

Timestamp: 11:38

IAN:

The first draft really ought to be quite horrible. Because if it’s not, you’re not trying anything, You’re doing the safe, easy thing if it’s any good in that first draft. Greatness is next door to awful. It’s like 10 miles away from good. Right? if you’re ever going to be really great, you’ve got to allow it to be just miserable in that first draft. And then you can fix it later on. Anything can be fixed once it’s done. And it’s an iterative process, right? You learn about the work by writing it. You don’t learn about it by researching. You don’t learn about it by outlining. Those are important things. And you do need to do some degree of them.

Timestamp: 12:27

IAN:

But you learn about the characters. You get to know the characters, you get to know the world by spending time in that world, which means piling up pages, and writing. And then once you’ve written it, you realize that 80% of it is crap and has to be thrown away, but it’s not wasted time. It’s how you got to know what you are actually writing. So the first draft is what is really your outline, right? The second draft is like your deeper outline and then maybe by the third draft you get something that’s sort of your first draft. Right? The process of revision, I would say is 75% of the work, that first draft maybe outlining all that is 25%. Revision is 75% because anything can be fixed if you’re willing to do that.

Reading Books in the Age of Madness

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in art, Attention, competition, frustration, Reading, Uncategorized, Writer's journey

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A few years ago, I sat on a public bench, waiting for a friend and reading a book. A woman interrupted me. (Please note: Do not interrupt a person reading a book!) The woman wanted to know what I was reading. I showed her the cover, and then the woman said she couldn’t read anymore. She used to read. She used to read a lot, but now she can’t. She can’t concentrate. Things have become so unstable lately, so volatile that she can’t concentrate on reading.

“Read,” I told her. “Go read a book. You’ll thank me later.”

After she left I muttered under my breath, “You think it’s hard to read in this environment? You should try writing.”

I know a lot of writers. We plug along. We ride the waves of self doubt and the waves of cultural madness. We have no choice. Being a writer, or an artist, requires a little unplugging. So we unplug. And then we plug back in. And our blood pressure goes through the roof and we unplug again. We write. It’s incredibly selfish of us. It’s incredibly hopeless. And it’s incredibly depressing as we watch the celebrity-titled books fly off the shelves while ours, and those of many authors I know, linger and gather dust.

You want to help the world be less crazy? Support the arts. Support a writer. Buy a book that does not have a flashy familiar face on the cover. And be seen reading it. And then buy another.

 

 

The Art of Listening

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in art, Attention, creating, creativity, Guidance, Observation, Process, self, slowing down, Writer's journey

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If you are a writer, you must listen. You must listen to your instincts. You must listen to the world. You must listen to the things that lack conventional voice. You must listen to the trees, the river, the deer, the rocks, the fungus, the rust, the sunrise and the moon. You must listen to your characters, to the sound of vowels, to the rhythm of language as well as its meaning. You must disengage, every day, from the noise and commerce and traffic and politics of the world. You must not let anyone tell you how to do it. You must not let anyone tell you what’s important. You must not let anyone tell you that you must do A, B, or C.

What fed your soul as a child?

Find it.

What did you do before the serpent of social media?

Find it.

Where were your secret places before you became an adult?

Find them.

What calmed your heart?

Find it.

What quieted your mind?

Find it.

What circumvented the chatter?

Find it.

What is the last thing you picked up off the ground and put into your pocket?

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.