Fling yourself!

"If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches...

 

...and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one...he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent."

 

- Honore de Balzac

Inspiration from RUMI

If your writing is calling you to a wounded place you don't have the courage to probe because it's too raw, honest and painful, contemplate these words from RUMI:

With this pain,

You are

digging a path

for yourself. 

 

Trust the process.  I find writing, like a GPS for the soul, often leads me to higher ground.  Be brave!

 

 

Kathy-Diane

No more excuses?

 

As writers, we'll often find any old excuse to delay putting pen to page. When you work at a desk job, one excuse that seems full proof is that you just can't squeeze in the time.

Not so. In "The NightTime Novelist" Joseph Bates lists authors who held day jobs and wrote at night: Franz Kafka worked at Workers Accident Insurance in Prague...Stephen King taught high school English...John Grisham worked as an attorney...William Faulkner did a stint as a postmaster.  

There's more: Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorn. 

In fact, according to Bates, there are "only a handful of writers working who make their living solely by their fiction."

Guess it's time to cross that excuse off the list. Take that procrastination!

Happy writing! Kathy-Diane

"Roads Unravelling sends the reader off the beaten path and down an honest dirt-road trek...a great piece of Canadian literature." -Lesley Choyce author of Clear Cold Morning

 

For Writing and Life

 

From Sylvia Fraser's "The Green Labyrinth:

"Perform in humility, just as birds accept that air is their vehicle."

Reading this quote from an Amazonian shaman, got me pondering: As a writer, what is my vehicle?

There is a mystery, something larger, more expansive and powerful than myself that sustains my imagination, sparks my creativity, transforms words into wonder when they bloom on the page...

I don't need to dissect this unknown, quantify it or squash it into a neatly labelled box.

I only need to put my pen to the page.....marvel with rising joy and rumbling fear...and be always, bone-deep, astonished and grateful.  

The Tao

On of my favorite verses from Wayne Dyer's "Living the Wisdom of the Tao:"

6th Verse

 

The spirit that never dies

is called the mysterious feminine.

Although she becomes the whole universe,

her immaculate purity is never lost.

Although she assumes countless forms,

her true identity remains intact.

The gateway to the mysterious female

is called the root of creation.

Listen to her voice,

hear it echo through creation.

Without fail, she reveals her presence.

Without fail, she brings us to our own perfection.

Although it is invisible, it endures;

it will never end.

"I pay attention to my inner callings and apply my uniqueness to everything I undertake."

Writers who CARE: the 50/50 Project

I was so pleased to get the opportunity to talk about Writers who CARE: the 50/50 Project on CBC Radio's "Close to Home" show. Host, Carmen Klassen, called from Halifax wanting to know more about how the project works. The money we are raising is going to the Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world. Thanks to all the talented writers who have volunteered their time and talent to do critiques. If you'd like to hear more about this project with CARE International to raise money for the crisis in the Horn of Africa, listen to our chat at CLOSE to HOME.

Feeding the Lake

Here's an excerpt I shared at the last Answering the Call writing retreat from Madeleine L'Engle's "Walking on Water:"

If the work comes to the Artist and says, "Here I am, serve me," then the job of the Artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist's talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, "Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake."

I have never served a work as it ought to be served; my little trickle adds hardly a drop of water to the lake, and yet it doesn't matter; there is no trickle too small. Over the years, I have come to recognize that the work often knows more than I do. The great artists, the rivers and tributaries, collaborate with the work...Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly, than he knew; Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend.  When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, the Artist listens.

BUT we MUST work every day, whether we feel like it or not; otherwise when it comes time to get out of the way and listen to the work, we will not heed it.