The Dancing Wind

How many writers are out there? Millions, I figure, and for all different kinds of reasons. I used to write only to hopefully make money. I called it being a professional writer. Even my most creative work, my speculative screenplays, my short stories, and my poems were to be validated with a prosperous prize.  The money was to be proof that I had a valuable “voice” and this caused me to find a way to produce a valuable piece of writing every time I picked up a pen, or opened a new document on my computer, and sometimes that worked out. I studied hard, and I was paid, but I didn’t feel like it was what I dreamt of as a little girl. I was looking for something more rooted.

A lot of the time my education didn’t work that well, too, and I became distressed that my voice was not being heard through writing. I felt that if a few part-time readers, working freelance for a producer, or publisher could decide my fate, then it was a crazy thing to even attempt. I wanted to quit.

However, I missed something important about writing when I wrote for any kind of attention at all. I became inflexible in an attempt to create that sought after “voice”. That something unique carried out in words somehow didn’t come out of the formulas I’d studied so very hard. I came to realize that the assumption that any idea is ever complete and finished, is arrogant, to say the least. I realized there is always a new way to write about anything. Always.

Once, far away, and long ago, there was a girl who danced with the wind. Twisting around giant rocks, skating over wild rivers and leaping over whole forests, she danced wherever the wind blew her. She made up her moves right on the spot where she found herself, sometimes echoing the voice of the wind and sometimes playing against the wind, but never for long. Improvising allowed her to create just the right dance, and she never repeated a dance she’d already danced in a new place. A new dance for each moment of her journey was her way. She didn’t worry if the dance was long or short. She didn’t worry if there was no one to see her dance except the wind.

It pleased folks to see the child dance and she found herself supported along the way. She didn’t plan for tomorrow. Yesterday’s dancing was forgotten. The wind was her angel and the storms were her friends.

One day the air was still. No breeze. No trembling leaves. It was hot. And, she didn’t feel so much like dancing. She sat beside a pond and looked at the mirror to a cloudless sky. It was so still that she could not imagine that the water was any more than a surface to reflect upon. While sitting there day in and day out, in a state of deep fatigue, it occurred to her that her insides felt different. In this state of immobility she noticed smaller things, too. She saw life was very busy even without wind to blow it along. Getting nearer to the pond, she began to see life beneath the surface when sitting in the shadows of tall motionless trees. It began to astound her that she’d missed so many opportunities to see the world while she was dancing with the wind. She didn’t notice she was alone.

Then the wind kicked up again, but this time instead of dancing, she found resistance bubbling up inside. She stood against the wind and felt the struggle of life. Feeling determined, she grit her teeth, and began to bury her feet in the earth. She was not going to be pushed into dancing with the wind anymore. She forgot she loved to dance. She let the rain pound against her face. Her existence became one of struggle to be herself so that she could watch the world living and contemplate on it and be a part of it.

Years went by and by and she didn’t dance, and her body grew sturdy. She saw the seasons come and go as she reflected on the waters, the cycle of life surrounded her, and she was awestruck. When the breeze stirred and she hunkered down to wonder what her purpose was and where she belonged. She found fewer and fewer answers the more she asked. Watching life move along with or without the wind didn’t make any sense to her, but being still didn't either. The bugs and butterflies seemed to adapt to whatever the weather brought. Sometimes they danced on their own, even, and when she realized this, she realized she had lost her way. She wished she could remember the dances she once had danced, but they were firmly in yesterday. She wasn't even sure where her feet were anymore.

One still day, she decided she’d had enough resistance. She wanted to move like the life around her moved, and she decided if she couldn’t remember how to dance with the wind, she would dance in the stillness. Since her feet were planted firmly into the soil so far away, closing her eyes, she stood and waved her arms. She waved them a little bit at first, but then she imagined they were dancing and they began to sway gently up and down, back and forth, and the trees around her noticed and waved back gently.

Soon her body swayed with a new found rhythm and she felt a soft breeze upon her cheeks. Her body bent and stretched as it hadn’t for so very long. She felt her hips swirl this way and that way. Rolling her head around and around, her long hair ruffled like leaves on a willow tree, dipping into the pond and stirring the mirror. Soon her knees bent and straightened and her toes beneath the dark soil began to move, and she could feel her own feet had grown deep into the earth.

When she felt the raindrops hit her cheeks, her eyes opened, and there, all around her, she felt the embrace of the wind welcoming her back. Though she no longer felt the need to leap over the forest, skate the wild river, twist past the rocks around her, she knew that she would never forget how to dance again. She had become the dancing wind herself.

Writing to Stay Awake

A writing practice sounds so lofty, but to me it is often mundane and every day. It is something that needs to be done more than something that wants to be done. Some days I write profoundly in my writing practice, but more often my virtual trash bin is full to overflowing. What I am learning over time is to remove the notion that I have to make progress with the outcome on this day or that day, and instead use my practice to sink into saying what I want to say through the written word. I use writing practice to train my brain to keep working even when it is frustrating.

First, I have to admit that being paid did not make me the writer I wanted to be after all. Some of my writing was to meet the needs of my clients, and was skewed with keyword rich statements and incomplete thoughts that were word cliffs to hang upon. The writing that came out for pay was an expression of my job to please the client, and my job often distracted me from the process of writing very well. I often referred to myself as a "hack" because I could drop words into any project I was called on to write, but this did not make me into what I consider an honest writer, developing and using the skills of wordsmithing to communicate well. It was frankly bull shit.

I'm not embarrassed about this truth. I did what I had to do, to pay for food and shelter for my family. I didn't view this paid work as an opportunity to become a better writer because I assumed that I wrote well enough to be paid already. I didn't view this work as part of my writing practice. Of course, that is exactly what was wrong with my writing, but I didn't know it at the time.

Here's what happened to me: I lost my ability for written words slowly but surely until I hated writing and prayed I would think of something else to do. Really. I didn't know it, but I had a brain tumor near my left temporal lobe. Eventually, at my husband's office party, I had a partial aphasic seizure, and was unable to speak. I had images and even non-worded thoughts floating in my mind, and no way to connect them to my tongue, to words I knew so well. I said ridiculous things, and was truly panicked. It was not babble-icious. I ended up in the ER thinking I'd had a stroke. That was in October of 2011, when I was diagnosed with a benign meningioma.

I stopped writing much at all after brain surgery. My prayers had been answered in a strange way. I recorded events a little bit in a journal and a blog, but mostly I spent time drawing with oil pastels, and eventually digital painting. I let my mind wander away, but I found that I still wanted to write as stories bubbled up without my control. What happened next was a shock to me. I really didn't realize that I'd not been writing for so long until I tried to sit down and write out some of the ideas that had surfaced. Now, when I sat down to write, I fell asleep within a few sentences. Fell asleep.

It took me a year to realize that my left temporal lobe was actually damaged by brain surgery, even though I could walk and talk, and knew who the President of the United States was, I was still reaching for words, for my own voice. It wasn't the voice of "knowing" that I'd projected before. It seemed terrifying to me. I decided then that it was like recovering from any surgery. What I needed was practice. I began writing again nearly everyday with no purpose other than to be able to stay awake while writing. It has only been in the last few months that I could make writing last more than an hour.

I'm telling you all of this because I have no doubt now that writing is a lot like a sport. When I first began as a writer I experienced an accidental winning streak, called talent. However, eventually I discovered that to keep it going my mind needs to practice with no goal except to practice. This builds not only skill, but confidence in my writing. Practice builds a stronger mind that is able to awaken and respond to the words that I want to write. Literally, I mean to say a writing practice is the same as doing cardiovascular and core strength work everyday. It exercises my mind in ways that specifically lead to better writing. I believe that I'm becoming a better writer than I was before my seizures, but I still have miles to go. I still have to practice every day. When I don't, then I'm sore. My writing pays.

As with any exercise program, of course, I began too hard on myself and then reeled in mental anguish about it for months afterwards! Frustrated that I could not penetrate the veil between what I wanted to write and what was going onto the page, there are times I've wanted to give up the ghost. Every word seemed an arms length away from my heart. With reluctance, I learned the hard way to begin gently.

I can only recommend writing for ten minutes a day for several weeks with no purpose other than to write. I can't tell anyone what to write about. I write what I'm obsessed with, to be honest. Usually, relationships long past or events I'm not clear about, but sometimes I write about writing, about my dogs or about art. Stretching beyond ten minutes can happen later.

I realize that, for me, it is hard to focus on a topic even for ten minutes, and maybe this is true for more writers than I know. I try to stay on subject in a simple blog post like this, for instance, and find myself wandering. I am prone to catching on a tangent going someplace else, but I'm getting better at seeing that now,  Knowing when I have more to say on a subject, then, I can put it into a new piece of writing. A surgical rewrite, if you will, separating what might even be symbiotic so that each piece can stand on its own, rather than one piece collapsing on itself. This is a new skill for me, from practicing over the past months. Though, rarely am I satisfied with my finished product still as a writer, I now see my frustration is because I've not given myself the time to try other options. This is okay. Learning that I can write regarding the same topic in a myriad of ways has proven to me that flexibility is a craft I want to hone as a writer. I'll show you what I mean.

This is the first post on writing practice.  It is about getting stronger in my brain for the sake of my brain and communicating what my brain intends to communicate. I've placed a hint about the next topic. I'm continuing this theme of writing practice for both our sakes, in the hopes that there will be something that helps you feel writing is a worthwhile process in and of itself.