The class played around with the third paragraph for a while. Not too long. Perhaps three minutes. That was enough. The third paragraph had energy but it wasn’t hot. It wasn’t half as hot as I knew Tom could be. I told Tom, “Yes, the third paragraph has energy. It’s good to fiddle with it awhile. It might help to plant a seed for the future in your compost pile, but you’ll come back to this one in a few weeks and it just doesn’t quite burn through. We’ve spent enough time on it. Let’s go on.” Shirley (a newcomer to the group) interrupted, “Wait a minute. What’s a Samurai?” Tom turned to her and spat out the answer: “Cut it out!”
So when you’re in the Samurai space, you have to be tough. Not mean, but with the toughness of truth. And the truth is that the truth can never ultimately hurt. It makes the world clearer and the poems much more brilliant. I’ve been in writing workshops where we have worked on a bad poem, criticizing it for twenty minutes. That’s ridiculous. It’s a waste of time. It’s like trying to beat a dead horse into running again. You can have the confidence that the writer of that poem will write other poems. You don’t need to think that if you don’t whip something out of the bad poem in front of you, the writer will never write again.
You can have the courage to be honest. “There’s some good stuff in here, but it doesn’t make it.” And go on. It’s a good process to be willing to just let go. Allen Ginsberg at Columbia University went up to his professor, the literary critic Mark Van Doren, and said, “How come you don’t criticize work more?” His response was, “Why bother talking about something you don’t like?”
During our writing there are times when we surface through the fog in our minds to some clarity—but not all the times that we become energetic in our writing mean that we have a valuable piece. No. They just mean we woke up, like on a Sunday morning after a late party Saturday night where we drank too much. Our eyes are open but we’re not very alert. It’s good to know where our writing is alive, awake, but it’s where our writing is burning through to brilliance that it finally becomes a poem or prose piece. And anyone can hear the difference. Something that comes from the source, from first thoughts, wakes and energizes everyone. I’ve seen it many times in a writing group. When someone reads a really hot piece, it excites everyone.
Be willing to look at your work honestly. If something works, it works. If it doesn’t, quit beating an old horse. Go on writing. Something else will come up. There’s enough bad writing in the world. Write one good line, you’ll be famous. Write a lot of lukewarm pieces, you’ll put people to sleep.
Rereading and Rewriting
IT IS A good idea to wait awhile before you reread your writing. Time allows for distance and objectivity about your work. After you have filled a whole notebook in writing practice (perhaps it took you a month), sit down and reread the entire notebook as though it weren’t yours. Become curious: “What did this person have to say?” Make yourself comfortable and settle down as though it were a good novel you were about to read. Read it page by page. Even if it seemed dull when you wrote it, now you will recognize its texture and rhythm.
When I reread my notebooks it never fails to remind me that I have a life, that I felt and thought and saw. It is very reaffirming, because sometimes writing seems useless and a waste of time. Suddenly you are sitting in your chair fascinated by your own mundane life. That’s the great value of art—making the ordinary extraordinary. We awaken ourselves to the life we are living.
Another good value to rereading whole notebooks is that you can see how your mind works. Note where you could have pushed further and out of laziness or avoidance didn’t. See where you are truly boring, how when you just complain in your writing it only leads you deeper into a pit. “I hate my life. I feel ugly. I wish I had more money. . . .” After you read your complaints long enough, you will learn to quickly turn to another subject when you are writing rather than linger too long in that complaint abyss.
Often while you are doing writing practice you have no idea whether you have written anything good or not. Sometimes I discover poems in my notebook that I did not know I had written. Our conscious minds are not always in control. On a day when I might have been subjectively bored while I was writing, it may turn out that I wrote a fine poem and didn’t know it till a month later when I reread my work.
I remember once writing in my studio and feeling good with a sense of well-being. I kept saying to myself, “What are you so happy about? You haven’t written anything good all day.” Four days later I was teaching a journal class, and one of my students belligerently challenged me to prove that I, too, “write lots of junk” in my notebook. I thought, “What I wrote in the studio that day will be easy proof.” I opened to that day’s writing and began to read. To my amazement it was a moving piece about time passing and a roll call of all the people in my life who had passed on, either by moving away or by dying. My voice actually opened up as I read it. I was astounded.
That day in the studio my conscious mind was frustrated and had no idea that I had written anything good, but below my discursive, critical thoughts that buzz around like a swarm of mosquitoes, my hand was busy recording first thoughts and writing a very present piece. This can happen. Some part of us can walk through the cloud of humming mosquitoes and touch a very clear place inside us. We can ignore the negativity and constant chatter of the internal critic and continue to move our hand across the page. Our conscious minds are busy with the mosquitoes, so they aren’t always aware that we are actually writing something good, but that day in the studio something was aware of it because I was humming the whole time. It is not unlike a mother who is constantly critical of her mothering, and yet you look at her children and see that they are happy, beautiful. She is doing a good job. Only in this case the mother (your discursive thoughts) and the good children (your writing) are both inside you and working simultaneously. The continuation of writing through all your discursive thoughts is the practice. A month later you recognize consciously the good writing when you reread your notebooks. At this point your unconscious and conscious selves meet, recognize each other, and become whole. This is art.
As you reread, circle whole sections that are good in your notebooks. They often glow off the page and are obvious. They can be used as beginning points for future writing, or they might be complete poems right there. Try typing them up. Seeing them in black and white makes it clear whether they work or not. Only take out the places where there is a blur, where your mind wasn’t present. Don’t change words, because in this practice you are deepening your ability to trust your own voice. If you were truly present when you wrote, it will be there whole. We don’t need to now have our egos manipulate our words to sound better or the way we want to sound: perfect, happy, on top of everything. This is naked writing. It is an opportunity to view ourselves and reveal ourselves as we truly are and to simply accept ourselves without manipulation and aggression. “I am unhappy”—don’t try to cover that statement up. Accept it without judgment if that’s how you felt.
Naturally, there should be a place for editing and revision, but when we hear the word editor, we think, “Okay. I let the creator in me go wild, but now I’m going to get back to the proper, conventional, rational state of mind and finally get things in order.” We bring out the man or woman in a tweed suit from the East Coast with a doctorate in literature who is critical of everything. Don’t do that. That person in the tweed suit is just another disguise for the ego that is trying to get control of things any way it can. There should be no place in your writing for the ego to manipulate things the way it wants and to become picky. Instead, when you go over your work, become a Samurai, a great warrior with the courage to cut out anything that is not present. Like a Samurai with an empty mind who cuts his opponents in half, be willing to not be sentimental about your writing when you reread it. Look at it with a clear, piercing mind. But it is human nature to want to intrude and butt in with picky mind, so give your ego something to do. Let it type up your work,
address the envelopes, lick the stamps. Just keep it out of your writing.
See revision as “envisioning again.” If there are areas in your work where there is a blur or vagueness, you can simply see the picture again and add the details that will bring your work closer to your mind’s picture. You can sit down and time yourself and add to the original work that second, third, or fourth time you wrote on something. For instance, you are writing about pastrami. Your first timed writing is good, but you know you have a lot more to say about the subject. Over a day, two days, a week’s time, do several more timed writings on pastrami. Don’t worry that you might repeat yourself. Reread them all and take the good parts of each one and combine them. It is like a cut-and-paste job, where you cut out the strong writings of each timed writing and paste them together.
So even in rewriting you use the method and rules of timed writing. This helps you to become reengaged in the work you wrote before. Attempting to reconnect with first thoughts is much better than standing in the middle of your mosquito swarm trying to swat at your discursive thoughts before they suck blood. It’s a much more efficient way to rewrite, and it bypasses the ego even in rewriting. This method of rewriting can be used for short stories, essays, chapters of novels. A friend who just completed a novel said that when she had to rewrite a chapter she would say to herself, “Okay. This chapter needs these elements, and it has to begin in the grocery store and end in the cemetery. Go for an hour.” The good parts from her timed rewritings of chapters were added to the original chapters to enrich and refine them.
Often you might read page after page in your notebooks and only come upon one, two, or three good lines. Don’t be discouraged. Remember the football teams that practice many hours for a few games. Underline those good lines. Add them to your list of writing topics, and when you sit down to practice you can grab one of those lines and keep going. Underlining them also keeps you alert to them, and often you unconsciously use them. All these disparate parts suddenly come together, and you will be amazed.
I Don’t Want to Die
SUZUKI ROSHI ESTABLISHED the San Francisco Zen Center and is the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. I have heard that he was a great Zen master. He died of cancer in 1971. When Zen masters die we like to think they will say something very inspiring as they are about to bite the Big Emptiness, something like “Hi-ho Silver!” or “Remember to wake up” or “Life is everlasting.” Right before Suzuki Roshi’s death, Katagiri Roshi, an old friend, visited him. Katagiri stood by the bedside; Suzuki looked up and said, “I don’t want to die.” That simple. He was who he was and said plainly what he felt in the moment. Katagiri bowed. “Thank you for your great effort.”
Katagiri Roshi has said that when a spiritual person stands in front of a great art masterpiece, she feels peaceful. When an artist sees a masterpiece, it urges her on to create another one. An artist exudes vitality; a spiritual person exudes peace. But, says Katagiri, behind the peace of the spiritual person is tremendous liveliness and spontaneity, which is action in the moment. And an artist, though she expresses vitality, must behind it touch down on quiet peace; otherwise, the artist will burn out. Unfortunately, we have many examples of artists who have burned out through alcoholism, suicide, and mental illness.
So while we are busy writing, all the burning life we are eager to express should come out of a place of peace. This will help us and keep us from jumping around excitedly in the middle of a story and never quite getting back to our desk to finish it. Someplace in us should know the utter simplicity of saying what we feel—“I don’t want to die”—at the moment of dying. Not in anger, self-recrimination, or self-pity, but out of an acceptance of the truth of who we are. If we can hit that level in our writing, we can touch down on something that will keep us going as writers. And though we would rather be in the high hills of Tibet than at our desks in Newark, New Jersey, and though death is howling at our backs and life is roaring at our faces, we can just begin to write, simply begin to write what we have to say.
EPILOGUE
I FINISHED TYPING Sunday night at eleven. I said to myself, “You know, Nat, I think the book is done.” I stood up and was very angry. I felt used. (“Used by the muse,” as my friend Miriam said later.) Suddenly I didn’t know what the book was about; it didn’t have anything to do with my life. It wouldn’t find me a lover or brush my teeth in the morning. I took a bath, climbed out of the tub, dressed, walked alone at midnight to the Lone Wolfe Café in downtown Santa Fe. I ordered a glass of white wine and two scoops of toffee ice cream. I looked at everyone, spoke to no one, and kept smiling: “I’ve finished a book. Soon maybe I can be a human being again.” I walked home relieved and happy. The next morning I cried. By the afternoon I felt wonderful.
On Tuesday I told my writing class: “The book took a year and a half to write. At least half of the chapters came out whole the first time. The biggest struggle was not with the actual writing, but working out the fear of success, the fear of failure, and finally burning through to just pure activity.” The last month and a half I wrote seven days a week. I finished one chapter and began another. That simple. The parts of me that were screaming for Häagen Dazs ice cream, for friends, for daydreaming, I did not listen to.
Anything we fully do is an alone journey. No matter how happy your friends may be for you, how much they support you, you can’t expect anyone to match the intensity of your emotions or to completely understand what you went through. This is not sour grapes. You are alone when you write a book. Accept that and take in any love and support that is given to you, but don’t have expectations of how it is supposed to be.
This is important to know. We have an idea that success is a happy occasion. Success can also be lonely, isolating, disappointing. It makes sense that it is everything. Give yourself the space to feel whatever you feel, and don’t feel as though you shouldn’t have a wide range of emotions. Katagiri Roshi once told me, “That’s very nice if they want to publish you, but don’t pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.” Two days ago I told my father, “I’m going to jump off the Empire State Building.” He said, “Do you have to pick such a high building?” I tell myself, “Natalie, this book is done. You will write another one.”
AFTERWORD
An Interview with the Author
Q: Do you think there’s a connection between place and the inspiration to write?
I think land and environment are very important. Often, for instance in a novel, place is the third character. It’s palpable in really good novels. But I don’t think you have to be in a gorgeous place to write. I don’t think you have to be in your heart’s song. I think you just have to be where you are. In other words, if you’re in Cincinnati, if you can really eat Cincinnati, know the streets and the weather, the trees, how the light looks at the end of your workday, that’s what’s important. Now, for me, I had a great love for Taos. It was almost a lover. And it was actually painful because I couldn’t always be there. And, especially at the beginning, I couldn’t make a living there. And yet Taos was my passion. But once I got to live there fulltime, as I do now, then I remembered Katagiri Roshi, my Zen teacher, saying, “Even paradise gets stinky,” and he was right. When you know a place well, it’s a place. You might love it deeply, but it’s a place that has good and bad things. But having this place gives you a freedom to go anyplace and appreciate and love other places. Which wasn’t true for me before, because I was always fighting where I was, because I wanted to be in Taos.
Don’t do that to yourself—“I am here, but I should be there.” It was torture for me. Wherever you are is the place to be writing from. Don’t use the excuse that you are not in the right place. There is no perfect place. Just pick up your pen, record the details of where you are. Writing will show you that you are in the perfect place right now. Land is the earth. Earth is your life, moment by moment.
Q: What are the “I can’t write because” excuses that you hear the mo
st?
People offer me thousands of excuses about why they can’t write. “I’m afraid to let myself out.” “I’m afraid to follow what I really want.” “I can’t do it now but it’s my deepest dream.” “I can’t do it now because I have a family.” “I have to make a living.” “I am scared that I’m not good enough.” “I’m afraid my father will kill me if I write about him.” I don’t pay attention at that level. All I see is that they are using some excuse, that they want something and they are not stepping forward and taking hold of it. Over the years what I’ve watched is that people don’t let themselves burn. They don’t let their passion be alive and then feed it. But I don’t listen to their excuses. After a while it’s boring. Just like my complaining is boring. It’s monkey mind. It doesn’t really matter what the excuse is. I can hear you saying, “Well, but isn’t it true? What if they do have six children and they need to feed them and they need a job?” Absolutely. But if they burn to write, they also have to find time to write, even if it’s one-half hour a week. They can’t put it off till they’re sixty. They might die at fifty-nine. You have to somehow address your whole life. We can’t put things off. Now, you could say, “Well, Natalie, you don’t have children. You don’t have this. You don’t have that.” It’s not about that. I remember being in a group where a woman was saying, “Oh, I feel so lonely”; you know, “I have so many kids and I have a husband and I’m so busy but I still feel lonely.” And I said, “That’s odd. I don’t have any of that and I feel lonely.” I think it’s the human predicament. We give a lot of names to our excuses, to the reasons we don’t want to write or we’re afraid to. Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I’m sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it’s only for ten minutes. That’s okay. To write feels better than all the excuses.