— Gary Snyder
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To me one of the hardest things about writing is overcoming the formal style I learnt at University. I like to think of that time as when I was pretending to be left brained, which wasn't really fooling anyone, but nevertheless I attempted. Somehow this brings me to Anne Lamott because she has a way more intimate style of writing, where she reveals quite a lot about herself, and the inside of her own 'psyche' which has quite a twisted sense of humor which I find easy to warm to, and which makes me feel better about myself, and she has good advice about writing.
— Jon Wilson
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Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do — you can either type or kill yourself."
…Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning — sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming…One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this…
— Anne Lamont
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I don't care if you're a genius, creating is work. If it's work you like for any reason, in spite of its failures and unsolved mysteries, then do it. If you can still love it, warts and all, you must be made for it, but it's never going to be easy. That's not the point.
Creativity comes from a deeper place in us than we normally have access to. We have to find a door to it. We may be surprised that this door is not where we think it is. I think it's a more physical process than we imagine, that we have to relax the body, especially the midsection and the breath, before that door will start to open.
On the other side of that door are insights and inspirations our quotidian self knows nothing about. Creative processes need a synchronous and integrated energetic flow throughout the body/mind of the creator. You can't create in a state of tension or attachment to results.
A kind of 'letting go' yoked to intense focus unites to remove impediments to the voices in us, voices that have surprising power. Those voices are very sure of what they wish to say and if we can get out of the way they will speak with startling clarity. The key is in giving permission, in trusting what shows up, and in preparing the way.
I think the body is key to this process. There's stored wisdom and truth in our physical being, if we can befriend it.
Then, once we have the unsmelted ore in our hands we can start to shape it a bit. Not too much, or we'll take the soul out of it, but just enough to make ourselves clear. Clarity is essential, and not always easily attained. That's why it's good to let a creative work rest a while and then come back to it with fresh eyes. Sometimes minor adjustments make all the difference.
Anne Lamont is funny about how fraught that process is for most of us, and how skeptical we are of anyone who says it's easy. But that shaping and refining work is satisfying too, in a strange way. Speaking clearly about important things is an accomplishment not to be disparaged. Speaking casually about trifles is a waste of human intelligence and capacity for insight, in my opinion.
Fashioning your own creative path is important work that is hard to teach, and in our social construct it's rare to find anyone who can help you do it. It's common to be led down the wrong path by people who can't imagine what you really need. We're often presented with people who are sure of solutions that actually confuse the issue.
The work of developing your own way to create is more than gathering technical knowledge; it's more in releasing energies that live inside you. It's a kind of meditation on the riches of your unexplored self.
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Volume four of my series Meditations on Living is now published on Amazon. If you read it, please leave a review.
Here are two reviews:
Insightful and eloquent musings on the human condition
A regular contributor on Medium, David Price's articles caught my attention a couple of years ago. Combined with stunning artwork — some of which is his own — and often wonderful quotes from celebrated sources, his daily submissions became a fixture with my morning coffee. He combines an almost poetic prose with razor-sharp insights into the state of humanity and the world we've created. Time and again I've been thoroughly impressed by his views of the state of things, both the good and the bad, views that will often follow me around all day. This book is a collection of a number of his articles, and I highly recommend it.
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This book encourages in the true sense of that word as no other I have known the creative process in oneself as spiritual necessity. David Price's writing is beautifully alive, articulate, kind. The form is prose; the feel is poetic, flowing, metaphoric. There is not a dry line in it. I heartily recommend it to anyone who longs to crack the shell around their own creativity, to become more sensitive, creative, and alive themselves.