Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron reminds me to do three basic things that I have always found useful as a writer. They are: 

MORNING PAGES

Morning pages are a three-page free-write first thing in the morning. This is not a journal as such, because the word journal implies a thoughtful record of activities or feelings or intentions. The Morning Pages are much more of a purge of surface thoughts, a brain drain, a throwing up on the page kind of thing. Imagine blowing the foam off the top of a mug of bear so you can get down to the beer. Whatever comes into you mind, you write it down without regard to spelling, punctuation, or any other mislick that would ordinarily require correction.  Just keep moving forward. Don’t reread your pages for at least a few weeks, if not months.

I find that as I do morning pages, things occur to me that I need to remember in the short term, like what I need at the grocery or that I need to schedule an appointment or mail a contract or meet a deadline.  For these thoughts that do require immediate  tracking, I keep a large, lined  Post-it Note handy. When those timely things pop into my head, I move my hand to the side, never stop writing, and simply write that thing on the Post-it Note. Then I move back to the notebook and continue my Morning Pages. When I’m done with my Morning Pages, I also have a start on my to-do list that sticks right onto the face of my date book.

I find that when I do the morning pages regularly, even though they require about 15 minutes of my valuable morning time, I am much more productive and creative and efficient with my other writing and my life in general. Returning to the Morning Pages is one of my 54 resolutions for 2010.

ARTIST DATE

Cameron also suggests a weekly Artist Date, something you do alone, no matter how tempting it is to include someone else.  It might be to go for a boat ride, or see a film, or visit a library or museum or gallery, although the date doesn’t need to pertain directly to art. You might take a drive on a beautiful mountain road without any noise other than the car and your own breathing. The point is to be alone and fill your creative well. Maybe let some new ideas or words float up to the surface, although you don’t need to write at all on your date.

On the way  home from the Fearrington Folk Art Show, William and I spent the night in Asheville. On Tuesday morning, we got up and over breakfast selected three galleries to visit. Granted, we were together and not alone, but even so, visiting this unfamiliar galleries one after the other, each of us meandering at our own pace, occasionally commenting to the other person about something, made for a good substitute artist date. When we were done and rolling down Highway 70 West, we felt better, we felt energized, we felt our creative juices starting to flow. It wasn’t about taking someone else’s ideas, but about being surrounded by the results of so much creative energy. That in itself was energizing. Letting our imaginations run wild was also rejuvenating, particularly after such a tiring week.

WALKING

Charles Dickens used to walk for hours each day before her wrote. Australian aborigines go on Walkabouts for spiritual enlightenment. Walking alone can be a contemplative exercise.

My neighbor Janice Lynch and I try to walk early in the morning when the weather is good. When we do, we cover about 3 miles on a good day, 1.5 miles on days when we’ve got something else to take care of in the morning, or if we’ve been avoiding walking and need to rebuild our stamina. But this isn’t really the kind of walking Cameron is talking about. She isn’t talking about speed walking or exercise with intention or getting your pulse rate up. She’s talking about moving around with your imagination in tow, moving through space and paying attention to what’s around you, letting that attentiveness fill our creative well. How often we work out problems while we’re walking. Why not walk out a problem with or walk into the front do or a novel or a poem or an essay while walking by yourself leisurely. Fiddle with a troublesome line, recall a childhood memory you want to give your character, figure out the puzzle of a particular plot point, or don’t think about anything at all and see what bubbles up when you are moving through the world on your own. with a troublesome line while walking it out.

Together or separately, these three activities are good for body, mind, and spirit. After a month of regular practice incorporating these art and imagination-related activities, it will be interesting to see what differences you can detect in your other habits and your work.

Suggestion: Open your date book and schedule an artist date for next week. On a different day, schedule a leisurely walk. 

Suggestion: Buy yourself a speckled notebook and put the beginning date on the cover, the date you begin writing morning pages. When you’ve filled up the notebook in short spurts of brain-drain writing, put the ending date on the cover as well and get yourself a new notebook.

Writing exercise: Make an artist date with yourself. Spend the afternoon noticing things. Make a list. Now, let your character spend time in the same place you did, noticing the same things, but give him or her a different reason for being where you put them. How can you add tension to this scene for your character that might make your reader worry?

Scene Storm Word List pulled from the novel Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates, as we return to the water theme I wrote about last week:

shift

abandon

forefinger

festoon

pucker

memorize

masthead

slap

baptismal

swear