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.

I spent the vast majority of my working life as a professional economist. All day, every day, I worked with figures in spreadsheets that were in the millions, if not more. I talked with business owners rich in dollars, but poor in happiness and satisfaction. Interestingly, the entrepreneurs going bankrupt weren’t, on the whole, any less happy.

But I digress. One thing that happens to economists is they get a warped view of money. Maybe it happens to others dealing with large bankrolls, but I can only speak from my experience.

On one end of a spectrum are most economists. They value money a little too much for their own good. It becomes an end, as if having money somehow protects you from the vicissitudes of life. A security blanket made of paper and ink if you will. Money becomes more than a medium of exchange to get the goods and services you require. It becomes something to seek with all the skill and effort you can muster, damn the torpedos or the family. An idol in the Church of Molech.

On the other end of the spectrum, a few economists lose all respect for money. It becomes nothing more than a play token that, while necessary, is not important in their lives. It’s why the saying “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money” is such a quintessential economist quip.

This latter approach, toward which I lean, is born of a life-time of luck and privilege. Yes, I budget, tracking the comings and goings of money like a teller at the bank, but it seems so unreal. Like I could just as easily be counting stones or seashells—which, come to think of it, I would if born in another era and culture.

In short, I don’t worry about whether I’ll have enough to live out my life in comfort, even though as it stands I won’t. I trust that more will come my way, probably because it always has as long as I put in the work.

That is why I spend so much time, with no immediate hope of renumeration, at developing the craft of writing. In academics, you learn to invest early and often, hoping somewhere down the line the payoff will come. Most people around me don’t understand this approach. They require a short-term payback, not just as compensation for hours worked, but also as a validation of their effort.

Writers are a different breed, much like the small group of economists who look somewhat askance at money. Sure, they’d like to get paid for their art, but deep down, most know they won’t. At least not now. If enough books are written, then later. When the skills are honed, and the backlist  large enough to think about marketing.

The ability to delay gratification doesn’t make a writing vocation more virtuous than any other. Most writers will pursue other forms of employment to make ends meet, thereby turning their art into an avocation. Maybe that is what it should be, right from the beginning.

It’s what I did, at least until I gained a big enough financial cushion and a wide enough range of experiences to think I might make a go at this thing called “writing for a living.”

If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

– Ray Bradbury, as quoted in Advice to Writers, Jon Winokur, 2000

Rising tension, climax, and resolution of the conflict. These are the building blocks of a story scene. On a larger scale, they form the structure of the last act. The act where primary conflicts get resolved. The act in which the protagonist comes to the end of the journey.

I like to think of my life from the perspective of a three-act story. In particular, I like to imagine myself as both the author and the protagonist. I gain comfort from assuming that I can mold the story even as I live it. Maybe I can’t choose all the conflicts I will encounter. The ultimate author of life has that power. But, regardless of their origin, I do have a choice of how I will react to conflict.

In hindsight, the conflicts in my life story were pretty small. Perhaps even mundane, whether or not I thought of them that way. More importantly, they only occurred in certain life scenes. They didn’t continue through the entire arc of the story.

Those kinds of conflicts do exist, but I don’t have any big, major drama following me through the years. For those that do exist, I rest my mind on the existence of free will. I can decide how to react to the conflicts, both small and large. I can decide how to resolve them, or even if I want to resolve them. I may not determine the outcomes of the resolutions. But I can be active in the resolution process.

Maybe I’m being too dramatic, but my life is entering its final act. The first act centered on my rise to adulthood. That took a quarter of a century. I looked like an adult sooner. I acted like an adult sooner—sometimes. But adulthood didn’t come until I shifted to focusing on the needs of others. I was lucky. Not everyone makes that shift.

The second act of my life contained scenes common to the careers, marriages, and child rearing of many people. This act had its share of conflict and tension. It always will when you include other characters in your story. Characters with conflicting, or even complimentary, dreams and goals. This second act had its moment of despair where the protagonist (me) could have lost the war. Instead, I was lucky and, with the help of those around me, won the conflicts with my antagonists. Not everyone is so blessed.

Now comes the third act. The act where the character arcs and conflicts are all concluded. After all, this isn’t a serial. No cliffhangers in this story. But the journey to the end unwritten. I know there will be conflicts to come, although age and experience should put them in proper perspective. Hopefully.

The last thing I want is to get small and petty in this last act. I want to get large and magnanimous. I want to finish this race larger than life. Or, at least, larger than my life so far.

How can I achieve this goal? I hope to find the answer. Some of it lies in being true to who I am as an individual. It also depends on understanding my weaknesses and my strengths. You’d think, by this time, I would clearly understand who I am. But changing situations and conflicts lead to changing perceptions of myself. It can be jarring to look back on your life and see how much you changed. And not always in a positive direction. I hope to keep moving in a positive direction in this last act.

So, the road opens ahead, and I have enough freedom to determine where that road will lead. The journey takes place one day at a time, and each day I will learn something new and extraordinary. I will also remember things forgotten. Given grace, compassion, and planning, I will accomplish things that will benefit others. It’s now time to expand my horizons. It’s time to increase my contributions.

It’s time to matter more than I ever have before!

Once upon a time—in a life far, far away—I worked at a major university which shall remain nameless. A plum research and teaching job with the full trappings of sinecure. Well, not exactly. One had to work, sometimes insanely hard. Not hard as in steel mill hard, but as in eighteen-hour days for weeks and months on end. Almost everyone in academics does that pre-tenure, but for some of us the habit is so ingrained after five, six, or seven years (however long it takes for promotion to come along) that escaping the routine seems impossible. In fact, most never even think of escape.

I retired over three years ago, and still a day doesn’t end without me thinking about the first sentence of the Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

I don’t know what it is about the academic mind, but somewhere along the line you get trained to view the glass as simultaneously half-empty and half-full. Sounds perfect, right? The corollary of never too high or too low.

In reality, the academic mindset leads to all kinds of perverse behavior. Never being satisfied with the work you do unless you are for a brief period. Feeling like nothing you do or say improves on the current state of affairs (especially in the classroom), until a student you’ve mentored wins a prestigious award.

Constantly being on this kind of seesaw is maddening, and one reason I took early retirement. So what do I do? I take up writing, possibly the only activity fraught with more self doubt and second-guessing than being a faculty member.

Some people never learn.

I’m an on and off gym rat. I like the way exercise makes me feel, but sometimes the responsibilities of life get in the way. Still, I always seem to cycle back to throwing iron around, usually when I’m so tired and out of shape that I have to do something. Heading back to the club after a prolonged break leads to some pretty painful days as my muscles readjust, but after a week or so I’m good and wondering why I stopped, no matter what intervened. After a month, I can’t imagine not going every day.

My experience with writing is similar. I’ll be in a good place, getting down the stories and humming along, when sickness or family needs force me to put down my pen for a few days. Next thing I know, it’s been a week, two weeks, maybe a month and I haven’t written a thing. Getting back into the writing chair is painful, an ugly combination of anxiety, self loathing, and fear.

But I do it. The words come in drips and drabs. They are awful, or at least that’s the way I view them. Almost like I never constructed a coherent sentence in my life.

I get back into a rhythm. Ideas come and move from my brain to the paper with increasing ease. Soon I can’t remember why I stopped writing. It seems as natural as breathing, and just as critical to my existence.

Some people like to cook. Some people like to eat. Many like to do both.

I am one of the many.

I don’t recall when I first tried my hand at food preparation, but I do know that I was cooking on a regular basis by the time I was twelve. Both of my parents worked, so when us kids (including my brother and sister) returned from school a snack was in order. If my parents wouldn’t be home for a while (this in an age when kids alone in the house didn’t prompt calls to social services), I might try my hand at preparing something for dinner. I learned by doing, along with a healthy dose of mentoring by my Polish mother.

Fast forward a few years and I’m in college, out of the dorm, and living in an apartment where my roommate’s idea of haute cuisine is a salami and cheese burrito. So I cook.

And I experiment. I don’t recall ever using recipes. I’m sure I did, especially for baking, but it doesn’t take too many years of cooking every day before you lose your fear of mucking it up.

After many decades of winging it in the kitchen, I’ve become something of an extemporaneous whiz. Open the refrigerator, see what’s there, and make a meal out of it. So what if the ingredient combinations are strange? Why not have pickles in an omelet, or a bacon, chicken, asparagus burrito with artichoke sauce? And don’t even get me started on the many sweet, savory, and spicy ways you can churn out fruit dishes.

My writing takes its cue from the kitchen. I’ll freely combine, mash, and even smash genres together, just for the fun and surprise at what comes out at the other end. Sometimes it’s complete garbage. But that’s to my eye. Another reader may love it. Which is a whole different question—should I write for myself, or for the reader? At the moment, I’m writing for myself, as the readers are few and far between. I hope to continue writing for myself even if, by a stroke of luck, I one day have readers lined up to get my latest book.

Then again, I’m a people pleaser. I could get trapped on a treadmill, writing the same kind of story repeatedly. A lot of big name writers are on that treadmill. Some don’t mind. Others desperately want to get off, but their fans won’t let them. Nor will their publishers. Nothing traps a writer faster than money.

But having too many fans is a worry for tomorrow. Until then, I’m going to open the word bag every day and see what kind of ingredients I have to work with. Then I’ll whip up a creation that, although odd, is nonetheless a taste treat.

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?