Writing isn’t so difficult.  But getting the mental censor out of the way can be.  I love Dorothy Parker’s way of expressing it.  “I hate writing, but I love having written.”  This presents the dilemma that many of us feel.  As a full time writer I have to get over it.  When I sit down with a deadline, whether I love the subject matter or not, I’ve still got to get the job done.  Writing is like any other job.  Have you ever heard of anyone getting bricklayer’s block?  Or what about nurse’s block or CEO’s block?  You have to just get past the obstacles and get on with it. 

 

When you get a spark of inspiration for an idea, it’s accompanied with an energy – call it enthusiasm, creativity or whatever.  It rises up inside and you feel revved up and ready to run to the page.  But the mind butts in and the inner dialogue starts like this:   Censor:  “Do you really want to put that on the page?”  Your muse:  “Yes, it’s a great idea.”  Censor:  “Are you sure about that?”   Muse:  “Well yes.  It feels right.  I’m energized.  I love the idea.”  Censor:  “Oh you do do you.  But you know that’s been done before.”  Muse:  “But not like I intend to do it.”   Censor:  “Well you won’t do it as well.”   Muse:  “You think not?”  (Here the muse begins to listen to the censor even before putting a word on the page.)  Censor:  You might as well forget it.  Besides I’m tired.  I’d rather watch TV.”  Muse: “Well, maybe you’re right.  I can do it later.  I’m feeling tired too.”  And the spark of inspiration is lost to inertia and eternity.

 

What if the next time this happens you simply ignore the censor?  It will continue to chatter and give you all kinds of ideas that will probably not be constructive.  Let it chatter.  Sit down and just write.  Stick to your purpose and write on.  In the process the chatter will fade out and the creative ideas will flow in.  The censor can come in later when you’re ready to edit and rewrite, but not now.  Not yet.  If you don’t sit down and put words on the page, you’ll not have anything to work with later.  Just realize this is a natural part of the process.  By creating a routine where you make space for writing, the words will come and writing will transform into a sort of meditation.

 

Happy writing!

Copyright, Debra Moffitt, 2009.  www.debramoffitt.com

 

 

My latest article for a resource guide explores how experts use the labyrinth, an ancient spiritual tool, to foster creativity, help with reconcilation and release grief.  If we listen to the masculine, rational mind, we could easily ridicule and belittle these efforts.  But if we open up to new possibilities and to the mystical divine feminine, we begin to make the links.  All three of the experts are named Kathy or Cathy.  All three are venturing into new territory based on their own intution.  They know it works for them.  They trust in their inner guidance and move ahead. 

 

I’m rewriting a book and the tone is maturing since the first draft.  A few weeks ago I dreamed of an adolescent boy-man whose voice was changing.  He spoke in a clear, smooth, soft tone and then his voice would crack and he’d cringe with embarrassment at the screech.  This is how I feel now as I work through the rewriting process.  Sometimes the words come out eloquent and flowing like a symphony and sometimes they sound like childish ramblings.  It’s part of the process.

 

Other scenes appear in my dreams that relate to the rewrite.  I love drafting.  Words flow out on the page in interrupted joy and I feel charged with energy.  But rewriting sometimes seems like pulling teeth.  I feel frustrated with the process.  In a dream I see how important the process becomes.  I’m sitting at a table and someone hands me a salt grinder.  I twist it and large indigestible chunks of salt fall on my plate.  When I open the top of the grinder, I pull out a knife and spoon and a pen.  To make it edible, I  put the chunks of salt  back in to run them through again.  The pen signaled that the dream related to writing.  The utensils represented nourishment.  The first huge chunks of salt symbolized the first draft of the book.  Putting the salt back into the grinder is a good symbol for rewriting.  The rewrite is a refining process.

 

Dreams can give good instruction.  In another one, I’m with a writer friend.  She is tough, perseverant and very determined.  I feel tired and want to take a break, but when I go to the threshold of the studio, a child calls out to me.  She has a writing assignment and needs help to get out the words.  She’s new at this, still an infant.  I really wanted to take a break, but stop and help her.  We work together and by asking her questions, I draw the words from her one at a time.  The dream reflected my urge to take a break from the rewrite and it encouraged me to keep working with the creative child to draw out the gems.  It’s hard work and requires effort.  But without the rewrite, the writing will not be digestible for a reader.  

 

copyright: Debra Moffitt-Leslie, May 2009 www.debramoffitt.com

In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King writes about the source of his book, Misery.  He fell asleep on a plane and woke up from a dream with the situation for his novel.  He transferred it to a cocktail napkin and then during a sleepless night he wandered down to the main desk at his London hotel and asked for a quiet space to write.  The Brown Hotel offered him the desk where Rudyard Kipling wrote and died.  That dream planted a seed.  He paid attention and the rest is history.  A friend who's a best selling novelist told me that she dreamed the last scene to one of her books before it took full form.  "I wrote the whole book to that last scene," she says. 

 

Dreams are fertile ground for the creative spirit.  They serve up scenes or situations.  They propose solutions to challenges and they urge us to persevere even when we feel dejected and rejected.  In a recent dream, I'm helping a child learn to structure words.  She's my creative baby, my creative self.  Working with her required great patience, as working with any child might.  In the dream, I wanted to take a break, but kept on working to draw the words out of her.  I knew it meant to nurture my creative child and keep on writing though I'd lost some of the taste for it.  Discipline and determination will get the words into a polished form. 

 

In another dream someone handed me a salt grinder.  When I turned the grinder, huge, indigestible chunks of salt fell onto my plate.  I opened the top to put the salt back in it.  Inside the grinder I found a kinfe, fork and a pen.   I knew when I woke up that the process of rewriting (which isn't nearly as fun as drafting) will make the work palatable.  Without doing the grinding (rewriting and polishing), no one will consume my book or find nourishment in it. 

 

Do your dreams help you in writing and life?  I would love to hear some of your stories. 

 

copyright: Debra Moffitt-Leslie, April 2009 www.debramoffitt.com

 

Most writers look for good places to submit their material, but many of the interesting anthologies, contests and calls for workshop proposals are little publicized.  Here are a few places that may be of interest to writers.  At the International Women Writers Guild in NYC last weekend, I met two editors collecting stories for their anthology, LifeBytes...Real Stories of Online Dating."  They plan to follow it up with a series of LifeBytes books.  They want to know about your online dating stories and romantic cyber adventures.  For complete submission guidlines go to www.lifebytesbook.com

 

For Southern women or writers who focus on the South, Berry College holds an annual Southern Women Writers Conference.  The rolling campus dotted with trees and strolling deer makes an idyllic setting and provides a good opportunity to network with other writers.  While their call for presenters and writes just closed, an Emerging Writers Contest is open until June 15th.  It awards prizes in fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  For more information and registration visit www.berry.edu/swwc2009 

 

IWWG member, B. Lynn Goodwin of Danville, CA is seeking flash fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction that "mesmerizes the reader in 750 words or less" for the Fourth Annual Flash Prose Contest of Writer's Advice.  Entry fee is $10 and first prize will be $150.  Find out more at:  www.writeradvice.com

 

And just a quick reminder for those in the Charlotte area.  Journey into the Writer's Secret Garden II will debut on May 6th at the Cornwell Center at 6:30 pm.  This workshop is a follow up to the March series where we explored writing from sacred space, symbols and dreams as seeds for story and memoir, meditation and silence.  Part II came about thanks to the urging of several of the participants who wanted to continue the journey.  At the end of the first workshop we pulished a literary journal of participants' work and plan to do this again.  For more information contact the Cornwell Center at 704 927 0774 or contact John Bambach at jbambach@mpbconline.org.

 

Keep an eye out for more about the upcoming Writing and Wellness Connections Conference to take place in Atlanta.  Founder, Dr. John Evans, will be requesting proposals and papers for the event that brings together fiction, memoir and creative non-fiction writers and healthcare professionals.  While the latest information isn't up yet, this is the link.    http://www.wellnessandwritingconnections.com/  Dr. Evans plans to hold the next conference in spring, 2010

 

Copyright: Debra Moffitt Leslie, April 2009  www.debramoffitt.com

 

Dressed in tennis shoes, a baggy knit top and silver loop earrings, Natalie Goldberg reeks of the beat generation and quotes Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan as her idols.  She wandered the streets of Charleston a few days before her scheduled appearance at The Sophia Institute and looked more like a grandmother than a writer's icon.  Renowned for her best selling book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie combined 30 years of teaching with Zen Buddhist philosophy to create an intimate environment for the ninety participants. 

 

The hip New Mexico based author of the million plus bestseller, joked about the “southern writing gene” in her largely southern audience.  After many years in Europe, I’d only discovered Natalie’s work this summer and felt fortunate to be invited by the Institute’s founder, Carolyn Rivers.  Natalie put us to work immediately.  She presents writing, prompts like “tell me about where you live,” or “ I don’t remember...”  Many of the prompts focus on recalling details from the past like my mother’s hands or my love story, followed by fifteen to twenty minute writing sessions.  Anyone who stops finds themselves chided by Natalie who resembles a Tibetan master teaching mindful practices.

 

“This is a study in the mind,” Natalie says and insists that the hand keep moving. She describes the mind as being like a pearl in a silver bowl.  The pearl should continue to glide round and round unhindered, she says.  The aim is to continue the writing process nonstop, without censorship or mental editing. Keep moving forward.

 

Natalie declares that “writing is 90% listening.”  At the end of the writing sessions we split up into groups and read our work without comment or judgment.  Nothing of course is meant to be any good, but Natalie suggests some jewels may be found within it to develop later. She advises newcomers to continue to write in this free flowing way for two years before even beginning to think about structure. She describes this as a required passage for new writers to find their voice. 

 

My favorite advice includes slow down and “be dumb.”  Writers can’t take anything for granted, she says.  Not that the sun will shine or that the pavement on the street always looks the same or that the leaves are always an identical color.  To be dumb as she defines it means to awaken the senses to the world and look around as if for the first time.  We practice slow walking in rhythm with the breath in the inner courtyard splashed with rain and let life come at us.  And then we write some more.

 

I ask Natalie about the surge in interest in writing and particularly in memoir – the focus of one of her books and of this retreat. “There’s an explosion in writing because people want to know their own minds,” she said.  Her workshop uses writing to help do just that.

 

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt, 2009.  www.debramoffitt.com                 For other programs at the Sophia Institute see. www.TheSophiaInstitute.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those in the Charlotte, NC area in March, I'll present a month long series on the Journey into the Writer's Secret Garden at the Cornwell Center in Myers Park.  They reserved a cozy space for us in the lounge.

 

 

Goethe said that architecture is like frozen music.  In 1901, C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant in London wrote, Thought Forms and described a series of concerts played inside a church on an organ using music of Mendelssohn, Gounod and Wagner.  They “saw” with their sixth sense, ethereal structures form in the air above the exterior of the church.  The structures drawn in the illustrated book resembled beautiful, lightly formed buildings of varying colors dictinctly different for each composer.  The forms would linger there for sometime and then fade away.

 

This may seem fantastical and strange, but it reminds me of Goethe’s words.  Maybe Goethe saw music take form too.  Perhaps, if we could see with our inner eyes too, then we would be able to define the forms of emotions.  Desire for power would take shape as a heavy, oppressive structure like Milan’s train station built under Mussolini.  Envy and jealousy might take the shapes of demons on Notre Dame’s facade.  Protection would be symbolized in Mario Botta’s  Bergoase Spa or his church at Mogno in the Maggia Valley.  Playfulness might be represented by Renzo Piano’s Pompidou Center in Paris. 

 

William Blake wrote that if we could see things truly as they are, they would be infinite.  He too reveals a hidden life that most of us are unaware of thourgh his poetry. 

 

“It is well for us ever to bear in mind,” writes Annie Besant, “that there is a hidden side of life – that each act, thought and word has consequence in the unseen world”  If we stretch our imaginations and envisage this to be true, how would it shape our views of what we think, say and write and how we work? 

 

Here's the link to my latest article on architecture:  http://www.architectureweek.com/2009/0107/index.html

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt-Leslie, 2009.  www.debramoffitt.com

Two important tools helped me to develop my writing. The first is meditation and the second is dreams.  As an international business executive I believed that dreams and things that could not be seen and touched held little meaning or importance.  But once I made the committment to write fulltime, I began to wake up frequently and recall my dreams.  They not only had to do with my writing but also guided the way I was to live my life. That inner voice that sparked me to change paths when I considered jumping out the window in desperation continued to actively “speak” to me through symbols and images in dreams.  And in that other state of consciousness I was able to perceive and understand things about myself that my conscious rational mind refused to see. In the dream state my conscious mind with all of its defenses and constructs of who I thought I was and what I thought I should be doing remained inactive. Instead a vast new world of possibility became apparent.

 

Dee Niles showed up one night in a dream parking lot in front of my Antibes apartment.  A huge truck pulled up and began to unload baggage. This baggage was not small pretty neat or the type of luggage that I would like to travel with.  It was big dusty, stained, grimy. Dee stood there in the dream appalled at what was being unloaded at her feet.  I understood when I woke up that this baggage was hers but she denied it.

 

Poor woman I thought.  I’m glad that’s not me. Then I realized that she was a reflection of myself.  The baggage symbolized my personal baggage that may have once served me but now weighed me down.  It was time to do the work to let it go. I consciously accepted this task. Over the next months and years, my dreams began to show me the baggage I needed to eliminate.  As I opened the bags in my dreams and meditated on them at regular times during the evening, I learned that the bags contained fear, grudges, coffee addiction, co-dependency, and a series of other challenges.

 

One by one my night dreams guided me to face the contents of the luggage, do the work to get rid of it and let it go.  If I fell back into holding grudges and not forgiving people from my past, the next night as I would get on a dream plane I would find myself and weighed down with the huge crates that I could not travel with. This inner dialogue continued until this last exhilarating luggage dream arrived.  I am waiting in an airport café for a flight.  My guide it comes to get me; she says "are you ready ?"   I reached down under the table to pick up my baggage. But to my surprise I find one piece of carry-on luggage that is completely empty. I stand up with excitement and head for the plane. This marks the start of a new journey. This describes a little of the fantastic interplay that occurs when the dialog with the wisdom heart grows.  It illustrates how dreams and other levels of consciousness can inform writing.  And of course the better that we know ourselves and our own human nature the more able we are to write insightful and meaningful stories, essays and articles.      

Copyright: Debra Moffitt-Leslie, 2009  www.debramoffitt.com

 

 

The week before Christmas I had two deadlines.  My wrists and hands began to ache and burn.  Each keystroke sent a burning sensation shooting up my arms.  Friends said I must be suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.  For a writer this sounds like a death sentence.  I finished the work for Architecture Week and the essay for the anthology, All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality, strapped braces to both of my wrists and started to research my options.  

 

I can’t imagine not writing.  And so I have begun experimenting with voice recognition technology.  But the process is very different.  Writing for me takes place in silence.  The energy of thought passes through my hands without producing physical sound.  The thoughts and words arrive so quickly that they require little effort.  For this journal entry I am instead speaking aloud and patiently waiting for the words to appear on the screen.  I feel somewhat like a child learning to write all over again.  I know very little about this problem of carpal tunnel and plan to see a doctor and welcome input from anyone who has had a similar experience.

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt, 2008.  www.debramoffitt.com

A few years ago, I raised my hand in Buddhist philosophy class and announced to my Korean professor who’d been reading convoluted passages of Buddhist texts.  “I’m confused.”

 

He paused, smiled, content.  “It means you’re learning very much,” he said with his heavy, halting accent. 

 

This left me in an even deeper state of confusion.  I puzzled over his response.  All of my professors, students, friends – everyone had answers.  Answers about the French Revolution, about which rock bands ruled and the best places to find pizza.  But years later this is the one lesson that remained with me. 

 

When I feel anxious, uncomfortable and yes, confused, about what I’m doing or where I’m going those profound words of wisdom pop up again and again.  “You’re learning very much.”

 

In reflections, I’ve determined that the comfortable mind, the one that returns again and again to the same actions and reactions is like a trained animal.  It goes through the motions that it knows.  But when faced with something new, it must adapt.  It crawls out of the comfort zone, out of the usual blissful numbness of knowing into that dark gray area of uncertainty. 

 

“How can I return to the comfortable equilibrium?” I ask.  Change forces the mind to explore new territory and find a new approach.  Confusion is the result of not knowing – and looking for an answer. 

 

I like allowing the space of not knowing the answers and now recognize my state of confusion as a state of learning.   As I continue to write and work through my book, I’m moving into a new state, the one of Finish, the State of Completion.  What a blissful place to arrive it – and rest – if only for a little while.

 

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt, 2008    www.debramoffitt.com

 

At an ashram in Andhra Pradesh, India, I rushed to the telecom office to make a call to the outside world.  Useless to rush in rural India because everything rolls on at an ox-cart pace and it’s hard to run in leather sandals over the dusty road anyway.  I arrived at the tiny office across from the temple of the five-headed goddess, Gayathri and found a long line of people sitting in three rows of orange plastic molded seats.  I took the last chair at the end of the line. 

 

About eight of the twelve glass and wood phone booths still worked and English, Punjabi and Telegu could be heard indistinctly from booths.  When a new one opened up, the sari-clad woman at the head of the line moved out of her seat and the woman behind her moved into what had been her chair.  The whole line of people advanced in a ripple, like an ocean wave.  Every few minutes each person, down the four rows of chairs – two against the wall and two back to back – had to move up into the seat ahead of them.  It created human waves, rising and falling.  By the time the last person had sat down, the first one in line moved into a phone booth and the whole movement started over again.

 

I’d heard my teacher refer to humans as waves on the ocean.  Here was a tide flowing towards the old phones to call out. 

 

This system fascinated me.  No numbered tickets, no elbowing to the front.  Each of us sat in sweltering silence waiting for our turn to speak out to the world.  Perhaps it was a metaphor for writing, communicating and timing.  We have to wait for a space to open up, to clear up so that we can call out.  The timing and the message has to be right, and we're all interconnected.  When one person moves forward so do the others.

 

With the Gayathri watching over to control the five senses and bring in light, communicating becomes conscious, deliberate and peaceful.  Use the form of God that speaks to you as a focus for writing and devote the outcome to Him/Her.  The words that emerge from concentrating on the divine uplift, expand and facilitate exchanges in the world and bring peace and unity rather than division. 

Copyright Debra Moffitt, 2008.  www.debramoffitt.com

A friend took me to the art opening of Mary Edna Fraser’s latest silk batik.   Using aerial photos that Mary Edna shot from a family plane, she reproduces spectacular images of Carolina's coasts, icebergs, and my favorite included a shot of Europe with Italy’s famous boot, visible from the soul-blue of outer space.  (She used NASA photos for this one not her own shot).  She’s exhibited her work at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. and says she’s been flying with her father since she was two weeks old.  The colors of her palette express the softness of the Carolina coast light.   Her eyes sparkled deep blue.  Just one look in those eyes brings an overwhelming sense of peering into the heart of mother earth.  

 

“I dreamed I was wearing turquoise blue bell bottom pants,” she said during her opening.  In the dream she towered above the world and walked from place to place; from her aerial vista she reassured everyone that all would be well despite the panic and world weariness of the recent stock market madness, worry about economy, climate change and fear.  Mary Edna’s work intends to draw attention to the impact of human interaction on the global environment, but she does it in a way that uplifts and feeds the psyche with beauty. 

 

If all artists could use this higher perspective to serve, then the world would be a better place.  When art comes from the heart, it inspires good thoughts.  The word "inspire" is derived from Latin and means to infuse with spirit.  There’s a demand for art made from the heart, even though most of us are not aware that we hunger for it, it fulfils a deep yearning and nourishes the soul. 

 

I bought Mary Edna’s print of the edge of the earth looking down at Europe.  It sits next to the altar in my office as a reminder to keep a higher perspective on my work and life.   Thank you Mary Edna for reminding me to keep an eagle's eye view of life while sometimes dipping down to earth to make contact.

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt, 2008.  www.debramoffitt.com