Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within

  Costa’s Coffee Shop in Owatonna, Minnesota, across from the Louis Sullivan Bank. The orange booths and the Greek salads with too much oil.

  Snyder’s Drugstore, where Jim told me he loved the ham sandwiches. . . .

  Also, please note: don’t forget to try writing in laundromats.

  The Writing Studio

  IF YOU WANT a room to write in, just get a room. Don’t make a big production out of it. If it doesn’t leak, has a window, heat in the winter, then put in your desk, bookshelves, a soft chair, and start writing. Too many people decide they have to paint the walls, then buy wall hangings, a special desk, reupholster a chair, hire a carpenter to build walnut bookshelves, shop for a superb rug. “After all, this is my special room.”

  It becomes another trick to avoid writing. I have watched friends who made perfect spaces and then couldn’t bear to go into them. They felt more comfortable writing at the kitchen table. It’s hard to sit in an exquisite space and rub against our imperfections which writing brings up. We make these exquisite rooms of silence and then long to write in noisy, chaotic cafés. Many of us make beautiful, orderly gardens in the summer and then wish we were in the woods where there are fallen trees, bugs, and apparent wild disorder. It is natural in our studios to have books lying open, at least one cup half filled with old black tea, papers spread out, piles of unanswered letters, a graham cracker box, shoes kicked under the desk, a watch with a broken second hand lying on the floor.

  Zen teachers talk about our rooms as an indication of our state of mind. Some people are afraid of space and so fill every nook and cranny. It is analogous to our mind’s fear of emptiness, so the mind constantly stirs up thoughts and dramas. But I think it is different with a writing space. A little apparent disorder is an indication of the fertility of the mind and someone that is actively creating. A perfect studio has always told me that the person is afraid of his own mind and is reflecting in his outward space an inward need for control. Creativity is just the opposite: it is a loss of control.

  It is good to give ourselves a writing room and a place to put our writing tools, but we should know ourselves well enough not to become lost in interior decoration. I remember the first studio I rented for seventy-five dollars a month. It was a big room on the third floor of someone else’s house. It had unfinished floors and three windows. With the owners at home, I had to befriend a Doberman pinscher for three days before the dog would let me in the house when no one else was there. But even with that, it was very important for me to have a place all my own to write in and in another part of the city. It meant I took myself seriously. A year before that I had agonized over spending forty-six dollars for a tape recorder to practice reading poetry aloud, and I would never think of spending the money for an electric typewriter. As I developed and my commitment grew, I was more willing to spend money for writing. Creating a writing space is another indication of your increased commitment.

  Please note, though, that just last week I met Meridel le Sueur in Taos, New Mexico. She is a writer in her eighties who has written several novels, short stories, poetry books. She said she lives nowhere now. She visits people, stays in their homes, and writes wherever she is. She just came from California, where she visited her daughter, and was now going to stay with friends in Taos and write there. She asked if there was a place she could purchase an old manual typewriter for about thirty dollars. After she finishes with it, she’ll give it away, as she does in each place she visits, so she doesn’t have to lug it with her to her next destination. So much for writing studios!

  A Big Topic: Eroticism

  YOU MIGHT HAVE some large topic that you really feel the need to write about, for example, “Love and Eroticism.” With a big topic such as this, there is always the chance of becoming philosophical and abstract and usually long-winded, boring, and never getting closer to what you need to say. “Ah, yes, eroticism. I believe it has to do with sexual instincts and behavior. . . .” Underneath, while you write you are a little nervous, not knowing how to get to what you really need to say and also a little afraid to get there. Relax.

  Always begin with yourself and let that carry you. Eroticism is a big word. If you are nervous, look around the room. Begin with something small and concrete—your teacup in its saucer, the thin slice of an apple, an Oreo cookie crumb on your red lips. Sometimes you have to begin far away from the answer and then down-spiral back to it. Writing is the act of discovery. You want to discover your relationship with a topic, not the dictionary definition.

  “Where do I come from?”—a student in New Mexico addressed this in a timed-writing exercise. She began by writing about something that had just happened—visiting a friend in the maternity ward. She wrote the details of the visit and how she made the husband, wife, and new infant a Thanksgiving dinner. All the while you felt her humming with the original question. In the middle of the turkey dinner in Santa Fe she switched to Brooklyn, her birth, and her mother. You can’t always attack a topic; sometimes it takes a while to come to it.

  Katagiri Roshi said about couples, “You should walk side by side, not face to face.” That is how we should approach what we need to say: not head-on and aggressively, but with a little side dance. If you feel erotic and write about eating a melon, though you never mention the word, we will read it and feel erotic too.

  But do not think this means you can’t become brazen if that’s what you need to say about eroticism. Only, if you remove your clothes immediately and plunge into the water, it may be too cold. You’ll jump out again, saying, “It’s too big a task.” Approach eroticism from across the shore, fully clothed, and take your time swimming across the river. If you start taking off your shirt and pants slowly as you swim, by the time you get to the other side you’ll be naked—brazenly erotic, the way you always wanted to be, but you won’t be so frightened or embarrassed by it. You took your time getting there; you are on the solid ground of the other shore and we did the crawl along with you. We’re willing to listen to anything you have to say. Now go ahead, get wild.

  Also, you might try to approach a big topic from another angle. Break the topic down into its different aspects. If the word eroticism makes you balk or leaves you tongue-tied, make it more intriguing. Try these:

  What makes you hot?

  List all the sexual fruits you know.

  What do you eat when you’re not in love?

  What part of your body is the most erotic?

  “The body becomes the landscape.”—Meridel le Sueur

  What do you connect with?

  The very first time you felt erotic.

  If you don’t know what erotic is, write as though you do. Okay. You have ten minutes. Choose one of the above and write. Remember to be specific. Go. Keep your hand moving. Don’t edit.

  A Tourist in Your Own Town

  WRITERS WRITE ABOUT things that other people don’t pay much attention to. For instance, our tongues, elbows, water coming out of a water faucet, the kind of garbage trucks New York City has, the color purple of a faded sign in a small town. I always tell my elementary school students, “Please, no more Michael Jacksons, Atari games, TV characters in your poems.” They get all the attention they need, plus millions of dollars in advertising to ensure their popularity. A writer’s job is to make the ordinary come alive, to awaken ourselves to the specialness of simply being.

  When we live in a place for too long, we grow dull. We don’t notice what is around us. That is why a trip is so exciting. We are in a new place and see everything in a fresh way. I have a friend who lives in New York. The last time she’d been to the Empire State Building was in fifth grade when her public school took her there. When friends came to visit from Minnesota, of course, they wanted to go to that great skyscraper. She was thrilled to go to the top again, though she would never have done it on her own or cared about it.

  A writer is a visitor from the Midwest to New York City for the first time, only she never leaves the Midwest; she sees her own town
with the eyes of a tourist in New York City. And she begins to see her life this way too. Recently I moved to Santa Fe, and since there were few writing jobs here, I worked as a cook part-time in a local restaurant. Waking up at six on Sunday to cook brunch all day, I questioned my fate. At eight A.M. I was busy cutting carrots at a diagonal, noticing the orange of them and thinking to myself, “This is really very deep.” I fell in love with the carrots. I laughed. “So this is what has become of me! Too easily satisfied with so little.”

  Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list at least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article.

  Write Anyplace

  OKAY. YOUR KIDS are climbing into the cereal box. You have $1.25 left in your checking account. Your husband can’t find his shoes, your car won’t start, you know you have lived a life of unfulfilled dreams. There is the threat of a nuclear holocaust, there is apartheid in South Africa, it is twenty degrees below zero outside, your nose itches, and you don’t have even three plates that match to serve dinner on. Your feet are swollen, you need to make a dentist appointment, the dog needs to be let out, you have to defrost the chicken and make a phone call to your cousin in Boston, you’re worried about your mother’s glaucoma, you forgot to put film in the camera, Safeway has a sale on solid white tuna, you are waiting for a job offer, you just bought a computer and you have to unpack it. You have to start eating sprouts and stop eating doughnuts, you lost your favorite pen, and the cat peed on your current notebook.

  Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

  Finally, there is no perfection. If you want to write, you have to cut through and write. There is no perfect atmosphere, notebook, pen, or desk, so train yourself to be flexible. Try writing under different circumstances and in different places. Try trains, buses, at kitchen tables, alone in the woods leaning against a tree, by a stream with your feet in the water, in the desert sitting on a rock, on the curb in front of your house, on a porch, a stoop, in the back seat of a car, in the library, at a lunch counter, in an alley, at the unemployment office, in the dentist’s waiting room, at a bar in a wooden booth, at the airport, in Texas, Kansas, or Guatemala, while sipping a Coke, smoking a cigarette, eating a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

  Recently, I was in New Orleans and went to visit a cemetery where the graves are aboveground because of the water level. I brought my notebook, sat on the cement leaning against the thin shade of a tombstone in the thick heat of Louisiana, and wrote. An hour had passed when I looked up again. I thought to myself, “This is perfect.” It wasn’t the physical accommodations that were perfect, but when we are in the heart of writing it doesn’t matter where we are: it is perfect. There is a great sense of autonomy and security to know we can write anyplace. If you want to write, finally you’ll find a way no matter what.

  Go Further

  PUSH YOURSELF BEYOND when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

  I remember one student whose mother had died of cancer. She would write one side of a page about it—simple, good prose—and then she would quit. When she read those pieces in class, I always felt there was more and told her so. She smiled and said, “Well, the ten minutes were up.” Write to the eleventh minute if you need to. I know it can be frightening and a real loss of control, but I promise you, you can go through to the other side and actually come out singing. You might cry a little before the singing, but that is okay. Just keep your hand moving as you are feeling. Often, as I write my best pieces, my heart is breaking.

  When I teach writing to young kids, many times they will write short stories with very complicated story lines, and instead of pushing themselves to resolve the story, they use the trick “And then I woke up!” When you continue to stop yourself from going all the way in your writing and coming to a deep resolution, it’s not a dream you wake up from, but you carry the nightmare out into the streets. Writing gives you a great opportunity to swim through to freedom.

  Even if you have pushed yourself and feel you’ve broken through, push yourself further. If you are on, ride that wave as long as you can. Don’t stop in the middle. That moment won’t come back exactly in that way again, and it will take much more time trying to finish a piece later on than completing it now.

  I give this advice out of pure experience. Go further than you think you can.

  Engendering Compassion

  I AM ON a Greek island right now: the Aegean Sea, cheap rooms on the beach, nude swimming, little tavernas where you sit under dried bamboo sipping ouzo, taste octopus, watch the great sun set. I am thirty-six and my friend who is with me is thirty-nine. It is the first time either of us has been to Europe. We take in everything, but only halfway because we are busy always, always talking. I tell her about my dance recital when I was six years old in a pink tutu; how my father, who sat in the front row, broke down weeping when he saw me. She tells me how her husband in Catholic school in Nebraska came late for a play that he was the star of and how the nuns had all the schoolchildren on their knees praying that he would appear.

  On Tuesday I decide I need to be alone. I want to walk around and write. Everyone has a great fear in life. Mine is loneliness. Naturally our great fear is usually the one most important to overcome to reach our life’s dreams. I am a writer. Writers spend a lot of time alone writing. Also, being an artist in our society makes us lonely. Everyone else leaves in the morning for work and structured jobs. Artists live outside that built-in social system.

  So I have chosen to spend the day alone because I always want to push my boundaries. It’s noon, very hot. I am not going to the beach and everything is closed here at midday. I begin to wonder what I am doing with my life. Whenever I get disoriented or not sure of myself, it seems I bring my whole life into question. It becomes very painful. To cut through, I say to myself, “Natalie, you planned to write. Now write. I don’t care if you feel nuts and lonely.” So I begin. I write about the nearby church, the boat in the harbor, my table in the café. It isn’t great fun. I am wondering when my friend will return. She doesn’t come back with the five-o’clock boat.

  I can’t speak Greek. I am all by myself and notice my environment much more acutely. The four old men at the next table take the long string out of the back of every green bean they have piled on the table. The one facing the ocean argues with the man to his left. An old woman in black near the wharf bends to pull up her long stocking. I wander to a beach I didn’t know before and begin reading Green Hills of Africa on a sand bar as the sun sets. I notice a taverna that sells fresh tuna. I am attempting to connect with my environment. I miss my friend very much, but through my panic I break through to a kinship with the sand, the sky, my life. I walk back along the beach.

  When we walk around Paris, my friend is afraid of being lost and she is very panicky. I don’t fear being lost. If I am lost, I am lost. That is all. I look on my map and find my way. I even like to wander the streets of Paris not particularly knowing where I am. In the same way I need to wander in the field of aloneness and learn to enjoy it, and when loneliness bites, take out a map and find my way out without panic, without jumping to the existential nothingness of the world, questioning everything—“Why should I be a writer?”—and pushing myself off the abyss.

  So when we write and begin with an empty page and a heart unsure, a famine of thoughts, a fear of no f
eeling—just begin from there, from that electricity. This kind of writing is uncontrolled, is not sure where the outcome is, and it begins in ignorance and darkness. But facing those things, writing from that place, will eventually break us and open us to the world as it is. Out of this tornado of fear will come a genuine writing voice.

  While I was in Paris I read Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. In the second-to-last chapter Miller rages on about a school in Dijon, France, where he is stuck teaching English, about the dead statues and students who would become dentists and engineers, the cold bone winter and the whole town pumping out mustard. He is furious that he must be there. Then right at the end of the chapter, he sits, late at night, outside the college gates in perfect peace, surrendering himself for the moment to where he is, knowing nothing is good or bad, just alive.

  To begin writing from our pain eventually engenders compassion for our small and groping lives. Out of this broken state there comes a tenderness for the cement below our feet, the dried grass cracking in a terrible wind. We can touch the things around us we once thought ugly and see their special detail, the peeling paint and gray of shadows as they are—simply what they are: not bad, just part of the life around us—and love this life because it is ours and in the moment there is nothing better.

  Doubt Is Torture

  A FRIEND OF MINE was planning to move to Los Angeles with the hope of connecting with the music industry. He was a musician and songwriter, and it was time for him to follow his aspirations. Katagiri Roshi said to him, “Well, if you’ve really decided to go, let’s see what your attitude is.”