Art and Life

My Artist E-Circle is reading Julia Cameron's WALKING IN THE WORLD this winter. My favorite quote so far is this one:

“Our life is supposed to be our life and our art is supposed to be something we do in it and with it. Our life must be larger than our art, it must be the container that holds it….Rather than yearning to be full-time artists, we might aspire to being full-time human beings…art is the overflow of a heart filled with life.”

Live, Love, Laugh and Write!
Kathy-Diane

Heading into the Unknown

I always equate writing a novel with feeling my way in a dark room. As 2014 begins, and it's time to get back to the novel in progress (which is about as appealing as crocheting earmuffs from dust balls), I love this thought:

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen.

There will be something solid for us to stand on or WE WILL BE TAUGHT TO FLY.

-Patrick Overton

Off to face the dreaded blank page!

Kathy-Diane

Failure

 

Opened my daily planner to find this quote:

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -Samuel Beckett

I've learned gut-wrenching lessons from every failure.

Steve Jobs said: "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Better to be a happy failing fool than to have never had the courage to crack open the hollow shell of longing.

Never stop. Seriously. Just do not let yourself.  Dream.  BIG.

Why do we tell stories?

 

We've had a week of sun and each morning when I'm finished work, I head out to the deck with a pot of Chiai tea and a copy of "Writing asa Sacred Path" by Jill Jepson.While the sparrows eat the aphids on the golden hops vine and cardinals dart through the willows, I turn the pages and wonder over the gift of being able to tell stories.I don't why I'm a writer, but I'm pretty sure the obsession to put words on the page was tattooed in my DNA from day one. Here are a few abridged quotes:

Storytelling may seem too commonplace--even trivial--to be the key to a writer's spiritual path. But this is because , like all seemingly simple work...we fail to see how remarkable it is. When you try to analyze the feat of telling a story, it becomes an act of immense complexity and depth.

When you tell a story, you become what F. Scott Fitzgerald called, "part of the consciousness of our human race." Stories sculpt meaning; they shape how we think about the world; they provide framework for understanding our place in the Universe. Stories determine what we cherish, despise or ignore. Stories express the inexpressible.

Stories remind us that we are not separate, isolated individuals afloat in the cosmos, but part of the universal stream of life. Stories are gifts.

E. B. White: "As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be personally held responsible if even a small one were to be lost."

Lofty thoughts, right? It's true that writing is excruciatingly hard work, exasperating, nerve wracking, ulcer producing and much much worse. But when the vision inside finally begins to come into focus on the page, the feeling of satisfaction warms to the core like a golden benediction and, like birthing a child, I instantly forget all that came before. I always go back for more.

May your pages be dusted with 'enchantment' today. 

Happy Writing! Kathy-Diane

 

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.

ANSWERING THE CALL: Writers' Retreat

Answering the Call VIII: Releasing the Writer Within

A WORKING WRITERS’ RETREAT

WHERE: The Villa Madonna in Renforth, New Brunswick (just outside of Saint John)
WHEN: October 14, 15 and 16, 2011

FORMAT:
October 14, 2011:
5 p.m. Registration in foyer.

6 p.m. Opening Address: Answering the Call by Kathy-Diane Leveille
6 to 9 p.m. Meet and Greet Social

October 15, 2011: Full writing day.
7 to 9 p.m. Optional critique group

October 16, 2011:
11:00 a.m. Closing and wrap up.
1:00 p.m. Heading home after lunch and out by mid-afternoon.

FEE: $168.00 which includes single room and board.

All writers dream of getting a block of time for themselves to write. The Villa provides the perfect opportunity. Over the years, we've created touchstones within the weekend's framework that provide optional opportunities to connect with other writers to share work-in-progress and experience.  Rooms are single and private, so there is not excuse not to write.

E-mail shadowsfall@kathy-dianeleveille.com for more information.

"All of us can see ourselves in Leveille's characters. These are stories that speak to the complicated bonds we have with siblings and parents, who they were and who they are now and how we learn the truth of what we took for granted before."  -The Daily Gleaner

Thoreau

Thoreau writes eloquently of the deceptive appearance of TIME. It is quantifiable and measurable; however, beneath our need to contain it, TIME possesses an eternal, elusive quality.  I think this is also true of the well of CREATIVITY that exists within and without us. We barely dip beneath its surface,  but on occasion some of have been lucky enough, through pure clumsy accident,  to drink deep.

"TIME is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is the pebbly stars."

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Hafiz poetry

There was a lovely poem in my mailbox from my friend, poet and photographer, Sarah:

WE HAVE NOT COME TO TAKE PRISONERS

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom and
Light!

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift ~ versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Desmond Tutu

My e-mail artist circle wrapped up the last chapter of Julia Cameron's "Finding Water" last week. We shared a number of inspirational poems and thoughts with one another. This was one of my favorites:

"You are a child of my own heart

Seek out your deepest joy and you fill find me there.

Find that which makes you most perfectly yourself and know that I am at the heart of it.

Do what delights you

And you will be working with me,

Finding your life,

Hidden in me."

Desmund Tutu from "Made for Goodness"