Staying the Course in Your Creative Life
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This month, at the suggestions of both a workshop participant and meditation coach, I’ve been reading Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg. I was struck by her discussion of style and writing honestly about the most difficult subjects, including the death of a mother:
A writer can do this with equanimity and clarity because the writer’s bones, heart, and muscles have eaten it and she is willing to face her fear. So finally a writer must be willing to sit at the bottom of the pit, commit herself to stay there, and let all the wild animals approach, even call them up, then face them, write them down, and not run away.
N. Goldberg, Wild Mind, p. 29
Goldberg has been practicing zen for decades and uses writing as spiritual practice, so it’s not surprising that this passage seems to be speaking simultaneously about writing and meditation. We could easily replace “writer” with “meditator” and the passage would work perfectly.
But I was surprised by how much this passage echoed scenes from the Odyssey, an Ancient Greek epic about a hero who sacks Troy but struggles for ten years to achieve a homecoming in Ithaca. About halfway through the epic, Odysseus lands on the shores of the Phaeacians and spends about four chapters narrating the long story of his wanderings and adventures, including a journey to the underworld. During this episode in Hades, he performs a ritual that allows him to speak with the dead—including his mother. Like Goldberg’s writer, this heroic storyteller must remain in place while fearsome characters arise.
When I had prayed sufficiently [35] to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the spirits [psūkhai] came trooping up from Erebos—brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had been crossed in love, [40] and brave men who had been killed in battle, with their armor still smirched with blood; they came from every quarter and flitted round the trench with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with fear. When I saw them coming… I sat where I was with my sword drawn and would not let the poor feckless [50] spirits come near the blood till Teiresias should have answered my questions.
Odyssey 11.34–52, trans. S. Butler
ed. by Soo-Young Kim, Kelly McCray, Gregory Nagy, and Timothy Power
Odysseus succeeds here in part because he shows heroic stability in the way he simply remains to face the task at hand. But it’s noteworthy that he’s not achieving this just by sheer force of will. There’s a great deal supporting him. The whole endeavor is part of a ritual, so he has a structure and sequence of events to help ensure his success. He’s not alone; his crew is aiding him, and he’s there in the underworld asking for help from someone with special experience and knowledge. He also doesn’t try to speak with all the shades at once. He takes these conversations bit by bit.
Still, even Odysseus is worm out by telling this kind of story. Halfway through his description of his time in Hades, he interrupts his storytelling and suggests going to bed for the night. It’s only after the supportive feedback of his audience that he picks up the narrative and continues to the end of the tale.
I can’t help thinking that some part of Goldberg had Odysseus in mind when she wrote the lines above. After all, it seems like Odysseus has a great deal to teach us about sticking with even the most challenging projects. Creative rituals, committed schedules, and support from peers and mentors can support our most daunting creative tasks, just as they supported Odysseus.
Here’s a case in point: for the past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with a creative roadblock on a longterm project, a work about the ancient Greek ideas of heroic stability. I was doing a major rewrite of an early chapter which includes analysis of the passage above, but things had ground to a standstill. I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but I was stuck. Week after week, I got nowhere. I even considered taking a break from the project for a bit. That would have been easy to justify, since I was juggling several new responsibilities that were taking considerable time and energy away from this writing. Fortunately, I have a mentor who helped me talk through the concerns that were holding me back. As my writing began to flow again, I saw details that allowed me to read this passage and others in a new way—things I never would have noticed if I hadn’t slowed down. So pausing isn’t always bad, so long as we don’t give up our goals.
Looking forward, I see several steps I can take to make my next roadblock easier to overcome. I can reinvest in strengthening my commitment to the “rituals” of writing even when things get crazy. For me, these “rituals” include scheduling the right time to be creative each day, preparing my physical space for success, and asking for help when necessary. It’s wonderful when writing or any creative endeavor feels easy, but we shouldn’t dismiss the days when we struggle. The most valuable thing we can do is simply turn up and honor the commitment we made to ourselves to nurture our creative life.
If you are struggling to write about a painful subject or difficult project, but don’t have a mentor or group of peers supporting your creative work, you can tap into the wisdom of writers like Goldberg. She suggests the following:
Take a subject, a situation, a story that is hard for you to talk about, and write about it. Write slowly, evenly, in a measured way. Don’t skip over any part of it. Stay in there. It might take you several days, a week, a month to write out the whole thing. Continue to work on it every day until it is finished. Include the colors, the smells, the time of day. Before you enter the writing each day, you might want to take a long drink of water or a walk around the block. Do something to let you sink into yourself, so you may write from that quiet place of equanimity and truth. You are safe, go ahead. Stay simple.
N. Goldberg, Wild Mind, p. 30
Once you finish, if you feel discouraged by the result, keep this advice from Pat Schneider in mind:
It is my experience that a writer who is using painful memories in written work often does not immediately distinguish between the work itself and what the writer has to see in order to do the writing.
P. Schneider, Writing Alone and With Others, p. 92
So take some extra time before working on a second draft. And be kind to yourself after such an ordeal. Remember, even Odysseus needed a quick break. It’s hard, heroic even, to tackle painful memories and subjects, but the process and the results can be life-changing.
