Week 6: Clarity

Week 6. Day 7. Celebrate

If I could, I’d rock up with streamers and balloons and a marching band outside your window this morning, like a slightly annoying GIF. Because to me, nothing says celebration like a triumphant chorus outside your window at 6am.

But you might not thank me for that.

What does celebration look like for you?

Celebrating yourself and your creativity is a joyous, nurturing practice. Ten minutes sitting in the sun at the end of a good morning’s work can be a complete celebration if you allow it to be.

What ritual, ceremony or action marks celebration for you?

Take a moment to raise a glass to yourself. How would it feel to read some of the words you’ve written out loud? To enjoy the sound of them as they bounce around? Spend a little time reading over the list of achievements that you wrote yesterday. Allow yourself to notice each item and appreciate the energy that went into it. Too often our successes fly by without us noticing. Applaud yourself. That’s celebration.

I hope that you’ve found more joy and fluency in your creativity over these last weeks. I particularly hope that you’ve been able to notice and applaud your own precise brilliance – and that you will continue to cheer yourself on.

Know that you can return to these daily prompts at any time, either by calling on your inbox, or by accessing the website (remember, you can also go directly to the prompts if you prefer).

Today, as we wrap up the Immersion program, take time to celebrate – with or without a marching band. I’ll be here, cheering you on from the sidelines.

Your prompt for today:

The last time…

Week 6. Day 6. Contract with yourself

At the end of each Immersion class, we take a moment to clarify how we want to be, or what we want to do in the week ahead. In the years that I lived in Scotland I spent a great deal of time hiking up mountains with my partner. We’d fill a backpack with food, water, maps (and crampons if it was winter), and then set off with a destination in mind. Our intention would be, let’s say, to get to the top of Ben Lomond, or to climb the Cobbler. Halfway up, we might realise that our timing hadn’t been quite right, so we’d have to cut around the back. Or the snow had come early, so we’d have to stay on the ridge. At that point we might amend our goal.

 

Intention is a plan, but it adapts to circumstances, it allows for adjustment. And it builds on your experience.

 

Let’s begin with noticing what you’ve already done. Take some time today to write down everything you’ve achieved during the Immersion course. Write the longest, most detailed list you can, noticing everything you have achieved. Built a garden, picked up the guitar, wrote a limerick, wrote the verse of a song, wrote 20 handwritten pages, wrote every day, clarified your values, wrote a letter from the future, cleared the desk…. Notice even the smallest achievement, and put everything down.

 

 Now, to the future. Consider your Letter from the Future you wrote earlier. Come closer. Set a date, six months in the future. Think about who you want to be on that date.

 

What do you want more of? What do you want to be doing at that time? What will you have already done? Consider who you want to be, what you will be doing, and what you will have.

 

For instance, you might write:
 I am connected to my writing and my intuition, I listen to my instincts and I write each day, I have written three short stories and sent one out to journals.

 

Put this in your calendar or diary, on that date, six months from now.

 

What then will you need to be doing three months from now, to bring this to fruition? Mark this date in your diary, and again write down what you will have achieved by that date.

 

What are your habit and actions?
What have you already done?

 

So, in order to be that person, with those habits and those outcomes on that date, what do you need to do this week?

 

Write down one action that you can take in this coming week, after Immersion: Deep, to bring you closer to your three-month goal.

 

Your contract with your own creative self is to continue towards your intention, even if you adapt along the way. And no doubt you will adapt. Perhaps you’ll take the shorter back route, or else take the longer route along the ridgetop. It’s goal-setting with kindness and allowing for new information.

 

Commit to yourself. Take that one action this week and next. Pack your lunch and your map and don’t forget your hat.

Your prompt for today:

Some days, although we cannot pray…. (after Carol Ann Duffy)

Week 6. Day 5. Bring forth

No one knows much about the writer or writers of the Gospel of Thomas. Discovered (or rediscovered) in Egypt in 1945, the text was written anywhere between 60 and 250AD and purports to record the sayings of Jesus. One of the sayings contained in the text is surprising in that it feels like it could have been written ten years ago, not two thousand. It speaks to me about what we do as creators.

 

The lines read: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

 

In other words, speak the truth. Call it up. Let the story out. Writing it, speaking it, bringing it forth – this will help you thrive. Bury it, ignore it, silence it – this will do you harm.”

 

There is something within you, waiting to be written. Whether it’s a story, a song, an essay – there is something in you that is yours to tell. Your precise way of seeing the world, your experiences, your vision: bring it forth.

As we come to the final days of our program, take some time today to re-engage with that deep question: what am I desperate to write?
Not for the audience, not for the money, not for the lols.

What are you desperate to bring forth because you must – for you?

 

A crucial note on this process: it’s okay not to know.

 

Your own writing – the responses to the daily prompts or to your own images – provides a breadcrumb-trail. You feel your way, often in the dark.

 

Margo Lanagan says: “I NEVER have clarity on (purpose) in fiction. I find it out as I go. I know it when I hit it, and the writing is about casting about in the draft (and keeping that process enjoyable) until it feels close to my heart, until it’s thrumming with the important thing. But I don’t know what the important thing is until I’m well into the story. And even then, I only sort-of have a handle on it. And if I knew, and stated it aloud, and tried to write a story about it, it would end up being quite flat and bland and possibly moralistic. I know this story has to do with women freeing themselves and becoming themselves; and with older women inducting younger women into the patriarchy by keeping vital things secret from them; and it touches on ecological concerns very lightly at the edges, is about as close as I could come to the thing-I-need-to-bring-forth with my new novel.”

 

Keep following the path, dropping breadcrumbs, groping towards the trees, casting about, mixing metaphors.

 

In other words, it’s enough to think as hard as you can about what might be your deeper purpose, but sometimes the clarity only arrives with the writing and the reading and the rewriting and the cutting and pasting and reading some more – and even then, the path might still be a little unlit. But who doesn’t love a twilight stroll?

Your prompt for today:

The smell of vinegar

Week 6. Day 4. Find the gap

When I was 18, I waitressed for a catering company, and spent most weekends pouring champagne at swanky parties. One party, overlooking Sydney harbour, was a glamorous event attended by beautiful people of the kind I’d only ever seen on screen. At the end of the night, as the catering staff cleared the glasses, I found myself chatting with the host, a well-known screenwriter and director.

What I mean by “I found myself chatting with him” is “I waited until he was in the vicinity and then cornered him.”

It was late. The guests had all left, and I assume that this man simply wanted the catering staff to leave so that he could go to bed. If it were my party, that’s what I would have wanted. So when I earnestly told him that I wanted to be a writer and asked what I should do, he replied fairly curtly.

“Write.” He said. “That’s what writers do.”

The heart of the Immersion program is that daily twenty minutes or so, the prompts that I hope are training you back to an ease in writing. That practice of free, generative writing is the one that will continue to allow you to get close to your creative instincts. Write. It’s what writers do.

Consider today what kinds of processes have worked for you over these last weeks. Which
reflections and strategies had you unlocking words or images or plans? What writing prompts
sparked for you? What conditions and exercises got you writing? What will keep you writing?

Clarifying which processes spark you into writing will help maintain your depth over the coming months.

When you can, could you look again at your writing from the program, and ask yourself not just where the connections are – but where the gaps are? When you read over some of your words, are there implied ‘missing moments’?

In that page or two that you wrote about a woman who walked through a white doorway, is there a question about her ex-husband? Or that day you wrote about a child exploring a new city alone – is there a line that suggests the home she ran away from?

Over the next weeks, as you continue writing, return to these pages and fill in the gaps. Write the meeting with the ex-husband, the description of the home, the first day alone in the city.

Know that at the end of the program, you can return to Week One, Day One and begin the process all over again, finding new threads in your writing. Like rubbing condensation off a window, each time you come back to it, you will become clearer on the story you want to tell.

Your prompt for today:

Someone has woken in the night

Week 6. Day 3. Allies and Enemies

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott tells a story of her own writerly jealousy during a period when a literary friend was doing really well. It was a particularly hard period for Lamott, and the acquaintance phoned frequently, saying things like, ‘I just don’t know why God has blessed me with so much.’

 

As Lamott tells it (and you really need to read it in her own words – that combination of recognisable folly, crackling hilarity and moving truthfulness that is all her own) her jealousy was eating her up. So she went to her therapist, who said ‘Go ahead and feel the feelings.’

 

She spoke to wise writer and non-writer friends who read poems to her or made her laugh. And then she read a poem by Clive James (‘My Enemy’s Book is Remaindered’), which made her laugh with recognition, and the knowledge that she could use this feeling.

 

She writes, ‘I started to get my sense of humour back… and then I started to write about my envy… about how often I had longed for what other girls had.’ The envy, and the conversations, and the poems, and the fierce, terrible feelings – it is almost as though she is writing about a kind of battle.

 

Some days – some months – you will feel that everything is smooth and possible in your writing. And other months, or days, it will seem like sludge. That’s part of the process. But it can be helpful to know, to notice, where your allies are. And what your obstacles are.

 

Getting clear on both allows you to strategise. Who do you need to call when you’re in sludge? Who do you need to avoid at that moment?

 

This is a little audit that I often do with writing groups, writing friends and my own self: Take a piece of paper and create two columns. One should be headed Allies, and the other, Enemies (if you’d rather use less militaristic language, you could write Helpers and Hindrances or something similar.)

 

Begin with the Enemies column.

 

We’re thinking just about those things that are enemies to your writing. So, for instance:

 

  • Although your children might not be enemies in your life, their need for time and
    attention might be an obstacle to your writing. Perhaps they also inspire you, so you
    might want to put them on both lists.

 

  • Your sister might not generally be an enemy, but perhaps she sends out a little
    frisson of her own envy when you talk about your writing. So put her on the enemies
    list. You might want to add context (‘my sister when I talk about my writing
    community’).

 

Think of all the things that become obstacles to your writing – lack of time, lack of money, the school run, a demanding job. All of that. But also, perhaps: self-doubt, hunger, boredom, impatience with myself, television….

 

Be completely honest. And keep it private.

 

What can you do with this list? You probably can’t remove all your enemies – but being aware of them will help you neutralise the effects. Don’t talk to your sister about your writing community. Schedule in your viewing time. 

 

 And… use your allies. The Allies column will contain problem-solving clues for those days when you feel stuck in a loop.

 

In the Allies column, list all the resources, habits, people and techniques that might help you. You might include the neighbour who helps you out with babysitting, but you might also include tech tools, books and writers who inspire you. I passed this exercise on to some British writer friends and one of them, the brilliant novelist Louise Doughty, keeps ‘Polo Mints’ on her list of allies. The reason? She realised that she would often get up from her desk by telling herself she was hungry, when in fact she was simply having a moment of ‘grapple’ in her manuscript. The mints allow her to eat something, build in a pause, and stay at the desk.

 

Make your Allies column longer than your Enemies. There’s power in noticing the allies you already have, as well as considering new possibilities – the headphones that help you concentrate, the fact that a bath helps you get inspired, the walk near your house that resets you, the writing friend you can text to check in with, that quiet café that you could write in, your Immersion: Deep recordings and emails…

 

Write it all down. Keep your list of Allies somewhere near your writing space. When you hit a roadblock, check your Allies and ask yourself: who or what can I call on now? 

Your prompt for today:

He said to call any time 

Week 6. Day 2. Find your power

Imagine the force required to blast the universe into being. That’s the strength needed to create your own story.

Most of us are better at noticing our own flaws than we are at noticing our strengths. Yet celebrating what we’re good at allows us to make use of those strengths, play to them, plan around them.

Now that you’ve had almost six weeks of daily writing, I wonder if you can begin to name what you’re good at?

Once you acknowledge and own your creative strengths and own them, you can find your way more clearly.

Could you look at the list of strengths here, and consider how strong that quality is for you? Use a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being ‘this is not in my repertoire’ and 5 being ‘I’m excellent at this!’)
– Inspiration – great at coming up with new ideas
– Connection – making connections with your peers, offering and asking for help
– Intuition – in tune with your gut instincts
– Focus – really able to tune out the rest of the world and concentrate on the words
– Resilience – getting up again when an idea doesn’t work out
– Patience – sticking with an idea, sticking with yourself
– Courage – working with an idea in spite of obstacles, writing in spite of fear
– Flexibility – moving from one idea or form to another, trying a different approach
– Confidence – being able to back yourself!
– Clarity – knowing clearly what you want or what is at the heart of your writing
– Determination – getting back on that horse!
– Stillness – being able to sit with a project over a long period
– Calm – staying steady in the face of ‘these two imposters… praise and criticism’
– Willingness – being willing to try
– Playfulness – throwing a bit of silly in to see where it leads
– Curiosity – that power of asking ‘what if’?
– Contemplation – the power of wondering and considering
– Compassion/Empathy – being able to step into someone else’s shoes

Are there any others that I’ve missed?

What are your top three strengths? Write them in your journal. Or write them on a post-it note and stick it near your writing space.

Then, consider what you’ve written and discovered about your own creative voice over these last weeks. Can you notice what you are good at on the page? Have you discovered that you are great at funny lines, or at describing nature, or at listening to people speak and recording it on the page? Are you clear that, once started, you have a real ability to simply keep writing? Add those things to the list of strengths.

Say it out loud: ‘I’m good at describing place. I am excellent at creating dialogue. I have a knack for generating lots of first draft words and scenes…’

And when you begin your writing day, take a moment – just a little breath – to remind yourself of your strengths. Like activating a muscle group before a workout, it will keep you supported in your writing.

Your prompt for today:

Everything was different on the other side…..

Week 6. Day 1. What are your values?

Several years ago I mentored a brilliant writer working on a gorgeous novel. To her great
delight, a major literary agent offered to represent the novel. The writer – let’s call her Suzy
– was thrilled. Until the agent suggested a series of changes which would make the novel
‘more saleable in America’. Suzy wanted to work with this agent, and she very much wanted
her novel to be published. So she attempted to wrangle her delicate, nuanced novel and
reshape it into a New-York-friendly plot-driven commercial novel. She had what she wanted
– an agent – but she was miserable.

 

The problem? She’d signed up with the agent without clarifying her own writerly values.
We spent some time getting clear on what Suzy valued as a writer. As it turned out, she did
value engagement, but she didn’t value ‘distraction’ or ‘entertainment’. After some
reflection, she was able to go back to her agent and have a clear conversation about what
she wanted for her book. The novel was published and received a slew of rapturous reviews
from critics and readers who engaged deeply with the themes of the book. Crucially, she
published the book she wanted to publish – and began her career writing books that she values.

 

To get clear on what you want, you need to be clear on what you value.

 

As we near the end of Immersion: Deep, take some time clarify your own values. To get you
started, here’s a list of values – underline those that align with you. What matters to you?

Core Values

– Accomplishment                                                   – Participation
– Acknowledgement                                               – Peace
– Adaptability                                                           – Personal Empowerment
– Authenticity                                                           – Profit
– Aesthetics                                                              –  Recognition
– Appreciation                                                          – Respect
– Belonging                                                               – Security
– Change                                                                    – Self-determination
– Collaboration                                                         – Self-expression
– Communication                                                    – Self-management
– Community                                                            – Solitude
– Competition                                                           – Spirituality
– Comradeship                                                         – Stability
– Creativity                                                                – Status
– Education                                                               – Success
– Excitement                                                             – Support
– Financial                                                                 – Serenity Time
– Family                                                                     – Tranquility
– Flexibility                                                                – Uniqueness
– Fun                                                                           – Zest
– Freedom to Choose                                              – Sales
– Audience                                                                – Emotional truths
– Speaking the truth to power                              – Entertainment
– Helping Others                                                      – Distraction
– Honesty                                                                   – Passing time
– Humour                                                                   – Genre
– Independence                                                        – Inventing something new
– Influencing                                                              – Changing hearts
– Integrity                                                                   – Changing minds
– Intimacy                                                                   – Musicality
– Joy                                                                             – Readability
– Knowledge                                                              – Interrogating the past
– Love                                                                          – Imagining the future
– Intellectual stimulation                                        – Bringing characters to life
– Adventure                                                               – Inspiring others
– Beautiful language                                               – Playfulness
– Revealing the underbelly                                    – Articulating feeling
– Money                                                                      – Political interrogation
– Acclaim                                                                    – Compassion
– Legacy                                                                      – Truth

Add detail where you feel it’s appropriate—for example, ‘Success – my main metric of success is, to be published overseas’ or ‘Competition (healthy – avoiding tunnel vision about this)’

 

 Are there any others that I haven’t written down? Can you make a list of your top
five creative values?

 

When you’re flailing, uncertain of what direction to take (or what book deal to sign) – return
to your values. They are the foundation of your creative decisions.

Your prompt for today:

Write about a vision or a dream