Listen to Oz sing "Over the Rainbow,"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I
mellow out, dream of sandy beaches and swaying palms, then check out
https://www.bestdamnwritersblog.com/
buy Joyce's book, and never forget that life is grand and you are loved.
“Put your ass where your heart wants to be and don’t ask anything else of yourself.”—Steven Pressfield.
I began to write this post for my other blog https://www.bestdamnwritersblog.com), and then I realized Pressfield’s advice applies to many endeavors, not just writing.
For Pressfield, it is writing.
He says he doesn’t worry about how many words he will write, about punctuation, or anything. He knows that if he sits for his allotted time per day (his is about 3 hours), in six months, he will have a book. In a year, two books.
Cool! It helps that he has some writing skills at his disposal.
True, I could probably write a book in six months, but from my experience, then it will take 6 years of rewriting and editing, and proofreading. Then does anyone what to read it? (Diabolical laughter.)
Maybe I need an attitude adjustment.
This morning, as I often do, I opened a book on writing as an oracle. I open the book to a random page, read a couple of paragraphs, and it sets me up for the day. Read an entire book on writing in one sitting, and your brain will go out to lunch, leaving you behind to starve. No, I take that back, read the entire book, then keep it around for a refresher.
This morning it was Steven King/On Writing:.
“Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill.” (Oh, goodie.) “One of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot.”
I don’t know what sensory experience. I want you guys to gain from reading this. It is non-fiction, which some successful writers say ought to be crafted as though it’s fiction.
I’m simply talking.
You are sitting in front of your computer. I am in front of mine. I use an external keyboard, for I simply cannot type on the computer’s keyboard--it drives me nuts. Maybe it’s because I learned to type on a typewriter. I like keys that pack a punch. And I have raised my screen to about eye level, as my Chiropractor suggested, so my back is straight. Whoops, I just straightened up.
I sit in front of a window, my favorite spot for writing.
I like to look up and see the green trees, the birdies flipping about, and if I raise up a bit, I can see my four chickens as they are in the backyard now. The area where they used to be behind the Wayback gave ample opportunity for the marauding raccoon to use them for snacks.
Safe house
The pink dogwood tree I see out my window is replacing flowers with leaves. I really praise that ancient tree for recovering from its extreme cut-back. See how we can recover even if we are ancient.
Remember how in Hawaii, I sat at my desk by the window and watched the Morning Goddess slowly meticulously adjust the morning sunlight until it totally enlivened the acre of green between me and the Tiki room. Oh, maybe you weren’t reading me at that time—it’s been ten years. (Really? It seems like last week.)
And now, I open Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, a book I read when?? In 1986?! I don’t know; that’s when her book came out. Since I left the book behind in California, I re-bought it in Oregon. The following is from the 30th Anniversary Edition.
“If you capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don’t only listen to the person speaking to you across the table but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming through the windows.” (Color has a sound?) “The deeper you can listen, the better you will write the truth about the way things are… Jack Kerouac, in his list of prose essentials, said, ‘If you can capture the way things are, that’s all the poetry you will ever need.’”
I wonder how this meshes with my reading Joe Despensia’s book, Be Your Own Placebo, where I learned that the brain has “Plasticity, that is it re-invents itself according to what you experience and learn.
Isn’t that great? We aren’t “stuck” in anything.
My movie/book suggestions:
Movie: Operation Mincemeat, about a fantastic clandestine operation during WWII.
Book: David Michie’s The Dali Lama’s Cat; Awaken the Kitten Within.
“As kittens, all it takes is a windblown feather, an unexpected delicacy, or the alluring rush of water, and instantly we are caught up in it. Wonderment. Enchantment. Being fully absorbed in the here and now.”
Is it possible to recover the unaffected zest for life?
“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
—Vincent Van Gogh
.png)
“When I write something that really happened, people read it and say, ‘Sounds like bullshit.’When I pull something completely out of thin air, I hear, ‘Wow, that was so real.’”—Steven Pressfield.
Where does this leave us?
Write what’s real, or make it up?
But don’t lie and say it’s real if it’s not.
Pressfield’s point is, Write everything as though it is fiction, even if it’s true.
I’m trying to learn to write since, for some stupid reason, I feel compelled to do it.
I remember the day it began. Well, not the specific day, but the place. I had driven my two girls to school, a 45-minute drive from home. One daughter was in the first grade, the other in the third. Sometimes I didn’t want to drive right back home, and often I would stay away the entire day. It took 45 minutes to drive back home, do a little work, then drive 45 minutes back to pick them up. That’s when I started to write.
Bless their hearts, they gave me a profession.
As I sat on a hill above Fashion Valley in San Diego, California, having just ordered orange juice and coffee, I asked one of those pertinent life questions. I had graduated from college and had my children. Now they were in school. My question? What do I want to do with my life?
“Well, I’d write if I had something to say.”
I wrote my first little children’s story that day. And I haven’t shut up since. I am not a verbose person, but I enjoy putting words on a page.
Am I an illustrious writer? Nope. However, I have filled copious notebooks since. I didn’t know about blogging then—come to think of it, neither did anyone else.
Some 40 years later, I had a book published. I remember reading that it takes 20 years to become a writer . I said I would do it, but I wanted a guarantee at the end of those years.
Life doesn’t come with guarantees, but I’ve had a damn good time with the process. This adventure has taken me to fascinating places. I studied and wrote about Cosmology—which is the origin of things. I told another writer what I was writing about, and he thought I said Cosmetology (About make-up and hair.)
I studied metaphysics and came to some understanding about where I was regarding religion and such subjects. I wrote about Africa, and I made up stories. Then, somewhere in the midst of it all, I became involved with horses and self-published a book called, It’s Hard to Stay on A Horse While You’re Unconscious, that no one can manage to spit out the title. To my detriment, I was rebelling against the need for short titles. However, it was pertinent, and in Hawaii, Mrs. Chiropractor got it right off the bat. You can’t navigate life too well when you are unconscious.
The unconscious part is both philosophical and literal. Sierra, my mustang, once knocked me in the nose, and I didn’t know what happened until I woke up on the ground. And there followed a week where I had racoon eyes.
I’m still trying to learn how to write. I still can’t keep my fingers on the correct keys, but so what. You plunge ahead, right?
So, Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) was correct when she said, “Writing will take you where you want to go.”
To pass on information such as this in case you missed it.
It came from a reader.
Thank you. Thank you.
Ivermection and Cancer
And when my daughter and her family caught Covid 19, I wanted to purchase Ivermectin, and already had a prescription.
The pharmacy refused to fill it.
You figure.
https://templetonwellness.com/articles/covid-and-cancer-ivermectin-connection/