Progress: 1,121 new words; rough stock retrieved

Monday was one heck of a busy day, and starting to write at ten o’clock at night is a certainly not ideal, at least for me. Still, some words were had, and I’ll be sure to start earlier today. I have to if there is any hope of reaching twenty-thousand words by Sunday.

On the construction front, I dug into my wood pile and pulled out enough rough-sawn red oak for the driveway gate. It was, of course, at the bottom of a stack that weighed a ton. I had to move hundreds of board feet of walnut, chesnut oak, hard rock maple, and a few exotic species, then move it all back again once the oak was recovered. I followed that up with going to the gym, so don’t let anyone tell you I’m not crazy.

I don’t have any current pictures of the wood to show, but you’re not missing anything. It’s just a stack of wide planks. Later today will be an opportunity to take before and after pictures, and that should be more interesting (for those who work with wood).

Been home from a long-ass road trip for almost two weeks now. Clothes are washed, the weeds in the yard pulled, the refrigerator restocked, and the daily routine back to normal (such as it is).

Time for a challenge.

To put this in some context, let me confess that I’m not a planner. I’d like to be a person who schedule their day, week, month, and year down to the nearest half-hour. I’ve even tried it now and again. But I can never bring myself to follow little squiggles on a calendar that I know are as arbitrary as waking each day and winging it.

Problem is, lack of focus often means lack of progress in a creative project. At my age, the last thing I need is a lack of progress. I’d like to accomplish a few things before the bell tolls, but I’m not taking the necessary steps. Too many things get in the way. Check that—I allow too many things to get in the way.

Thus, the challenge. I’m going to start off small hoping success in the next few days will give me the motivation to continue in the weeks ahead.

Even when other demands on my time poke their ugly heads out of the muck. Even if I end up traveling (which I will in early November). Even when everything and everybody wants a piece of me.

No pressure.

So here’s is what I’ve promised myself. By the end of this coming Sunday, I will have written twenty-thousand new words. It’s not much (at least by the standards of many), but I want to start small and build. A little under three-thousand words a day should be doable, even for me.

But that’s not all. I’ll also have finish the rough construction of a driveway gate similar to the one in the picture. I don’t know about you, but I’m a creative who likes to use his hands. There’s something calming about working with wood, especially when I’ve taken it from a standing tree to a board. The process takes a few years, so the necessary perseverance exceeds that of producing a novel. At least for me.

Each day this week I’ll post updates on my progress. Words will be counted. Gate preparation and build will be pictured. I’m sure my mental state will find its way into the mix.

Wish me luck.

The word mindfulness occupies a special place in a world awash with buzzwords and trendy hooks long on promises, but perhaps short on truth. Its core, mindful, means to be aware or conscious of something. Given this definition, mindfulness by itself can never elevate the way you experience and understand your daily life. Whether the goal is a refuge from the incessant noise in our media culture, the ability to focus and concentrate, or develop a sense of peace, mindfulness needs direction to put you on the path towards sanity, if not outright enlightenment.

So how does one cultivate mindfulness in a way that blocks the negative aspects of a harried life while amplifying the positive? The essayist Dinty W. Moore lays out a plan, of sorts, in his 2016 book The Mindful Writer (Wisdom Publications).

Title not withstanding, Moore’s book is useful for considering mindfulness across a wide spectrum of creative pursuits. All artists must, in Moore’s words, develop the skill of “… seeing with fresh eyes, thinking with an open mind, searching the nooks and crannies of any subject to find what has not yet been explored, or what might be explored further to shed some original light and engage…” the audience. If the artist’s job is to “look where you have to look,” no matter how joyous or painful the sight, then it must be accompanied by deliberate intent. Mindfulness, properly cultivated, can enhance a creative’s ability to do so.

Moore takes an unabashed Buddhist approach to mindfulness by referencing the four noble truths. He couches them in terms of the writing profession, but they are also applicable to the wider universe of artists:

1. The creative life is difficult, full of disappointment and dissatisfaction.

2. Much of this dissatisfaction comes from the ego, from our insistence on controlling both the process of creation and how the world reacts to our art.

3. There’s a way to lessen the disappointment and dissatisfaction and to live a more fruitful artistic life.

4. The way to accomplish this is to make both the practice of creation and the work itself less about ourselves. To thrive, we must be mindful of our motives and our attachment to desired outcomes.

A very Buddhist framework to mindfulness. If that was the entire focus, then it would have limited application to most artistic lives. Even if a creative could glimpse the path, the practical signposts are missing. Hence the bulk of the book—quotes from a wide range of writers and reflections on their meaning. It is this latter content that makes the little book worthwhile.

Moore divides the quotations into four sections. Below I’ve reproduced a sampling of the quotes, one from each section.

1. The Writer’s Mind. “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people,” by Thomas Mann.

2. The Writer’s Desk. “Catch yourself thinking,” by Allen Ginsberg.

3. The Writer’s Vision. “How do I know what I think until I see what I say,” by E.M. Forster.

4. The Writer’s Life. “Writing is a struggle against silence,” by Carlos Fuentes.

From selections like these Moore riffs on what it means to be a creative and guides the reader to a deeper understanding of the four noble truths. His observations, and the quotes themselves, apply to the painter, the sculptor, and the film maker. People in all the arts have chosen a difficult course, one where they know of their inability to articulate the ephemeral visions they catch even as they know they must try. It’s the only way to prevent the world from decaying into silence. 

There’s a reason not everyone is an artist, and it has little to do with ability—except for the ability to survive a deep dive into the human condition and what it means to be not just a created creature, but a creature capable of creation.

The book closes with a short section containing prompts for mindful writing, followed by an afterword. Here Moore restates his purpose and goal.

“The message of this small book is simple enough. First, don’t grasp too hard or you will choke off any creativity. Second, be open to the moment, the surprise, the gift of grace, or enlightenment. If you are not mindful, not attentive, you will fall victim to the first and fail to recognize the second. So be alert. Be deliberate. Take care.”

The words Moore chose for his book go a long way towards helping the artist achieve these goals.

Sundays are special. It’s a day for worship (if you are so inclined), to spend time with family and friends, to relax, and to reflect on life. But for me, Sundays are special in another way. It’s the only day of the week where I have a schedule.

Unlike most people in normal jobs, no outside force sets a writer’s daily activities. No one demands that we show up at a certain time, take breaks at a certain hour, or get a specified amount of work done. On the surface that sounds great. In reality, not so much.

Humans need schedules to perform at their potential. They need goals, deadlines, and accountability. But without an external force supplying these touchstones, the writer must create them. And that, my friends, takes an enormous amount of discipline. Discipline which, sad to say, I’ve lacked most of my life.

I so want to be a writer that’s read. Scribbling away in a journal is fine, and it comes with its own satisfactions. But it’s not the same as producing a story to entertain. For some reason, probably ego related, a published story seems more tangible. More of a real thing, even though in this digital world few people will ever hold one of my physical books.

The thing is, a story—short, novella, or novel length, it doesn’t matter—takes a tremendous amount of organization and general pig-headedness to complete. I read somewhere that only one novel gets finished for every thousand started. Not published, but finished so that it has a chance of being published. And the thing that keeps them from being finished is discipline.

The discipline to sit down every day and write. The discipline to grind away at the edits and rewrites. The discipline to wake up each day with the belief that today will be a great writing day, no matter how awful yesterday turned out.

Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of discipline. Not yet. I’m a work in progress. So I look for models. People in my life with discipline. Times in my life where discipline has somehow emerged from the general chaos that characterizes my normal day. And one of those times is Sunday.

I know what I will do, from waking to bed, every Sunday. Each activity occurs at roughly the same hour of the day. It lasts for a certain amount of time. And I go into it knowing what I want to achieve.

As a result, I rarely go to sleep Sunday night wishing for a do-over. I may not accomplish everything I set out to do, or perhaps failed spectacularly to accomplish anything, but at least I showed up at the appointed time and gave it the old college try.

No other day of my week is so orderly. But they need to be if I’m going to meet my writing goals. So, after all this time, I’m looking to Sunday as my model.

Pray for me.

I made a mistake. I told my friends I was writing a book.

The laughter of other, more seasoned, authors ripples through the cables to my fingers. But it seemed innocent at the time. Why wouldn’t I want to share the excitement of creating new worlds and the characters that inhabit them? Who better to support this quixotic quest than the ones who love me the most?

With hindsight, those were the wrong thoughts. Instead, I should have wondered how I’d hold up under a constant barrage of questions like:

Am I a character in  the story?

It doesn’t have any naughty language, does it?

When can I read it?

Why is it taking so long?

You’d think I’d welcome the interest. And, to be honest, I do. But it comes with a significant downside—performance pressure.

No, performance pressure isn’t relegated to the bedroom or athletic field (as an aside, are those two really different?). For me, facing constant questions about my writing slows down the work. I start second guessing every sentence. The anxiety it produces is overwhelming.

I know anxiety can be turned into a positive energy that motivates and drives you to optimal performance. But I’m not there yet. Instead, I start worrying about my process.

Why don’t I crank out stories at a quicker pace?

Do I have enough skill to produce a novel that grips the reader?

Is writing what I’m meant to do?

If I’d been smart and kept my writing on the down-low, I could putz away at my leisure. I’d write when I felt like writing, stare out of the window when I didn’t, and let the story develop in my head until it demanded to appear on the page. Add in sipping mint juleps on the veranda and you have the idyllic life.

Or, maybe not. Without the pressure to perform, to get the book finished and in print, I might never write a single word. After all, I’m a procrastinator. My skills in napping and daydreaming can’t be challenged.

But I don’t have that luxury. My friends are waiting for the story. And even when they don’t verbalize it, I can see the anticipation in their eyes.

So perhaps it wasn’t a mistake to blab about my ambitions. Instead of trying to kill me, as I sometimes claim, my brain knew I needed an external force to push me towards my goal.

Because who wants to disappoint their friends?