Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don’t make it any harder on yourself.
Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.
Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It’s like drinking water.
Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.
First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don’t want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don’t get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper.
Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there’s another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.
If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.
Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don’t think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.
Let yourself live in something that is already rightfully yours – your own wild mind.
When you write a memory, it isn’t in the past anyway. It’s alive right now.
The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living rooms and porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world.
You have to let writing eat your life and follow it where it takes you. You fit into it; it doesn’t fit neatly into your life. It makes you wild.
What crannies of untouched perception can you explore? What autumn was it that the moon entered your life? When was it that you picked blueberries at their quintessential moment? How long did you wait for your first true bike? Who are your angels? What are you thinking of? Not thinking of? What are you looking at? Not looking at?
It’s pretty nice to be talented. If you are, enjoy, but it won’t take you that far. Work takes you a lot further.
OK, now write for ten minutes, keep the hand moving, tell me what you carry.
In other words you disappear, you become one with your words, not separate, and when you put your pen down, the you who was writing is gone.
Don’t worry, no one ever died of it. You might cry or laugh, but not die.
Style requires digesting who we are.
14294Inspiration means breathing in. Breathing in God. You actually become larger than yourself and first thoughts are present.
Let some of the good writing go. Don’t worry. There’ll be lots of it over time. You can’t use all of it. Be generous and allow some of it to lie fallow. What a relief! We can write well and let it go.