Radical Writing Advice

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I have stacks and shelves and magazines and files and, now, e-documents (books, articles, links, bookmarks, blogs, quotes) of advice for writers. I've been to some writers' conferences and writing workshops and have been (still am) in writing groups. My first Associate's degree was Liberal Studies with a focus in Journalism/English. My second two-year degree was in Sign Language Interpreting - so it doesn't really relate to writing; well, maybe it does if you look at it as a communications and linguistic degree. Then I went for a BS (I love that!) degree in Liberal Studies, with emphasis in Writing and Theater. I've written for newsletters, edited newsletters, had some poetry published, a few short stories and essays, and some flash fiction - including an ultimate short fiction of only 50 words. I also have a creative nonfiction/memoir in revision and a novel in revision.

My point is, I have many resources, education, and experience in writing. In what it takes to be a writer.

So I can say with confidence that I do have advice for other writers.

Right now, if you only listen to me about one thing, listen to this:

Find what works for You.

That's it.

I have read articles and listened to successful authors tell me that I must write daily and blog frequently in order to be successful. I've been told that writing is a solitary act and one must have expansive time alone in order to write. I've been told that a real author's books are picked up by agents who convince publishers to print them. I've been told that setting aside specific writing time is the way to go and daily writing becomes dry and habitual, uninspired. I recently have been reading that frequent blogging is not a good idea; it overwhelms or saturates your audience : slow day, pace it, spread it out. I've read or heard that writing in community is the most beneficial; keeps the words alive.

Finish the book before you pitch. Only finish the first few chapters before you pitch, don't waste your time. Contact an agent with a proposal, then write the article. Only send queries on what you know. Query about things you're interested in but don't necessarily know a lot about, but can research.

Write what you know. Don't reveal too much about yourself. Be honest. Don't lie. Make it up if you have to. Tell the truth. Fictionalize to make it engaging.

I am not saying there isn't good advice out there. There is. And there is a lot of it. What I am saying is that there is a lot of conflicting advice out there.

If you want to get published by one of the Big Six (or however many are left now), then look into what they require. Who has the connections to get you into their doors. And do it.

If you want to write memoir: read a few. See who you like. And by "like" I don't mean just to click "like" in Google+ or on Facebook or whatever social networking tools/sites you use. I mean to check out some styles of writing, content in their stories, read their articles or blogs. Read what they do and read others who read or follow them. Where do they publish? Who works with them? Read what those authors say about writing memoir.

If you are more into small presses, read some. Find an independent bookstore or a local coffee shop with zines and related material. What is there? Who publishes it? Where are they? Read them. Read about them.

If you want to do freelance writing, poke around in different publications you're interested in writing for or which you read regularly or support. Who is writing for them? What do they have to say about publication as a freelance writer? Where are their blogs or books of syndicated articles?

Find what you like. Read it. Read about it. Read about who writes it. Read the writing of those who write it or publish it or represent it.

I believe that this is how you will be a successful writer. You are your best tool. If you need to polish up your grammar, do it. If you need to enlarge your vocabulary, register for a class or find language partners and work together. If you want to write a mystery about the desert but you live where it's cloudy + rainy + green 350 days of the year, take a couple weeks off or 5 days and take a trip; experience the dry the heat the golden landscape. If you want to be indie published, find the zines and the books and read them, find the authors, look at the variety of publications. If you like to write rants and raves and vent your opinion, find bloggers with similar styles; subscribe to them; read them; contact them.

If you try to mimic someone who is not like you, it may fail. It will probably be hard. Part of you may rebel and you won't enjoy it and you may quit.

Don't quit. Look at your options. Have a sit-down meeting with yourself to see what is in your heart. Do that. Follow your heart. You writer's heart.

Trust your writer's heart.

If you're the next Stephen King, then read what he has to say about writing. I am not the next Stephen King, but I do recommend his book, "On Writing." It is one of my all-time favorite books on writing.

If your writing style is like Ariel Gore, the ultimate hip mama rebel writer, then read her book "How to be a Famous Writer Before You're Dead." Again, I recommend reading it anyway, for pretty much anyone. Definitely recommend to the indie-leaning writer. And you can check out her Literary Kitchen class offerings: online and in person.

More spiritual or zen-like? Try Natalie Goldberg or Dosho Port. Definitely listen to "Zen Howl," which is only available on CD and is by both Natalie Goldberg and Dosho Port. For general spiritual writing in the Buddhist direction, read some Pema Chodron. Or read that just to help calm and give perspective on life.

Speaking of Zen, I recently read Dinty Moore's new book, "The Mindful Writer." Great nuggets of useful information, insight in there.

A poet? Try Judith Barrington, who also has a book on writing memoir.

Spoken word? Look up Queen Juliana, Juliana Luecking. She's in New York and has some great videos up on YouTube and Vimeo and some pieces on CD.

Looking for some editing and publication preparation information? I recommend Jessica Page Morrell. She has some great books and a blog. And she presents workshops.

Bonnie Hearn Hill (who has a great YA series, StarCrossed, as well as numerous mysteries worth reading) has books on a number of writing issues and recently co-authored a book on e-publishing, which can be found for the Kindle or cloud reading on Amazon.

I could give you a long list. But why? Look around at who you like. Who speaks to you as a reader. Read them. Read what they say about writing. Read what others say about them. Read editors, agents. Find their blogs. Find small presses blogs and websites. Take a class on letterpress (IPRC if you're local has some great classes and an certificate program with a fast approaching deadline) or publishing software.

Look around.

Find what you like.

Look inward.

Find what you like.

And do it.

Again, one simple rule:

Find what works for You.

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Patience is Always Worth the Practice

I am generally a very patient person. Until it runs out. It's generally little things which accumulate and become a bigger thing in my mind and I feel that I can't stand any more.

It may be the twelfth time the cat jumped on my tender tummy in two days, which was still sore from the previous Saturday's foodpocolypse or stomach flu, I'll never know which it really was. Or the repeated speeders on Highway 26 which pass me by like I'm crawling along the shoulder even though I'm going a touch over the posted speed limit and then cut in front of me, too close, it's raining, it's foggy, it's scary. Or the caller who won't give up and there are 20 redials. Or. Well. Anything which is bothering me at the given moment.

Really, I am patient. But not always.

So a few days ago I found myself being impatient : with a client, with my schedule (and who's fault is it that I have a messy schedule? oh, mine), with me, with my partner.

I realize I needed to re-find my patience. Of course I had to look online to see what I could find about "finding patience" and, yes, there was a list of sites to read through.

This is only one from one of my favorite magazines, Tricycle. I decided that most of us probably have moments of needing to find patience, that I wasn't alone. So why not share.

Finding Patience

How to survive a traffic jam—on the road, or in the heart

by Michele McDonald

When I was a child, I was told many times, “Be patient” or “Patience is a virtue.” I would relate to these words in much the same way I would to the order “Eat your spinach.” To me, “Be patient” meant “Grin and bear it,” or that I should repress my feelings about the disagreeable aspects of life. This is not what is meant by patience from the Buddhist perspective, however.

 Patience, or khanti, is the sixth of the ten perfections, or paramis...

[click on the title above to read the entire article]

Tonglen - or Tong Lin - for Healing

Pema Chodron has many teachings - I almost typed Buddhist teachings, because she is and the teachings are. But I believe her teachings are not just for Buddhists; and I think she would agree, but I can't be certain except in my heart. There are many books of her teachings and videos. She is wise and compassionate.

I have subscribed to an email list which sends out weekly excerpts of her teachings. Some of these I have in the books I own or have read elsewhere. And sometimes just the perfect teaching shows up in my email inbox.

Today as I searched for a video to post, I thought of her. One of the videos which came up was the one below - about Tonglen (the spelling I've usually seen - although here they spelled it Tong Lin). This is something I needed right now and I need to share this with my readers, too.

She explains what Tong Lin is for those who don't know and then you will do it. It's simple. It's powerful.


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Being Unapologetic for Following One's True Path



Thien Mu Pagoda grounds, Hue

photograph by Penelope Gan



Earlier I wrote about my struggles to keep with writing my story my way. As I was putting the pieces together for a contest submission, I was looking at what I'd written, what had yet to be written, and how I wanted the story to flow.

I thought about the contest's sponsors: tried to anticipate what they would be looking for. I thought about what other people have deemed worthy literature. Or worthy of publication. Of what an acceptable structure or format would be, how the parts must be chronological or avante garde or traditional or new. That was the hardest one: thinking I had to come up with something totally unique that no one had ever done before or would ever do again and that would be the "wow" that would win me the contest.

Then I thought - wait. It's my story. I'm telling it my way.

And Bonnie Hearn Hill said, yes, to just write. To not edit and to tell my story right now.

So I wrote.

And when it was time, I put the pieces together as I wanted to tell them.

Then today I was talking about this process. Not this exact process with the book, per se, but the whole process - the process of staying with my truth. Even when it hurts. Even when people tell me it can't be done or it's a bad idea or suddently abandon me without even a so-long. Staying with it because this is what I was meant to do, what I enjoy doing, the path I've been wandering along most of my life and it has deepened and strengthened.

And learning not to equate being on my true path with people leaving; which they have, but it's not a cause and effect relationship. Being in my confidence and my truth is being in the flow and in that I get to take pleasure and in that I know I am on my path. I had a good conversation today about this today.

Today I am not giving up - I know, I didn't tell you yet that yesterday I considered it. Really.  I was in "the black hole" and feeling like all this effort was for nothing and nothing would ever change and I should just stop now. Stop writing, stop trying to change, stop trying new physical adventures and fun. But I didn't; and the truth is that now, even when I sometimes dip over the edge of that hole, I'm not in the hole and I keep a forward momentum - even if I have to plug my ears and shut my eyes and say "lalalalala" to keep going.

Today I had a great conversation and did some energy work with mudras (thank you, Pamela). Today I am letting go of old hurts that are not mine to carry. Today I am saying that I am doing what is right and am on my true path. And it feels good. If people leave or people naysay or people try to pull me into their black holes, I can remember today's conversation and remember how I feel right now.

I am on my path and I'm not saying, "sorry." Because this is real.

And I do have the 119 pages of the manuscript ready to go. I'm typing in my outline and project overview right now. I have a very rough brief bio written and a three-sentence project description. It is almost ready to go. And then I will get back to writing the few unwritten pieces and editing the rough pieces. And I will return to editing the novel and writing new short stories.

picture of Koh Tao from TripAdvisor

Quote from Pema Chodron

Today's Pema Chodron quote in the weekly email, Heart Advice through Shambala,  is excerpted from her book, Comfortable with Uncertainty. I have this book; I haven't read it for a long time. Seems it's time for me to take it off the shelf and read some of it again.

POINTED TOWARD THE EARTH

Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all others behind. Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.

On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear.

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Tricycle's Daily Dharma for 2/13/11

Tricycle Daily Dharma
 

The Bodhisattva Vow: Activism 101

Activism is part of Buddhist mind. The Bodhisattva Vow is Activism 101! You work to alleviate the suffering of other human beings, right? Isn’t that the point? Obviously you need to get your own trip together first, and there’s the rub. We have this precious human birth and freedom, and yet with so many of us who are privileged in this way, there seems to be an incapacity to get beyond our minor aches and pains.

—Anne Waldman, “Radical Presence”

Tricycle Daily Dharma from 11/14/10

... passing it on ...

Accept Where You Are

In human life, if you feel that you have made a mistake, you don’t try to undo the past or the present, but you just accept where you are and work from there. Tremendous openness as to where you are is necessary. This also applies to the practice of meditation, for instance. A person should learn to meditate on the spot, in the given moment, rather than thinking, “. . . When I reach pension age, I’m going to retire and receive a pension, and I’m going to build my house in Hawaii or the middle of India, or maybe the Gobi Desert, and THEN I’m going to enjoy myself. I’ll live a life of solitude and then I’ll really meditate.” Things never happen that way.

      by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Transcending Madness

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thought: Tricycle's Daily Dharma for 9/21/10

Befriend Who You Are

Lovingkindness—maitri—toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy, we can still be angry. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

 by Pema Chodron, "We Can Still Be Crazy" (Winter 2002)

Thanks to Tricycle for sending this thought out into the universe.

from Tricycle Magazine

Being fully present. That is one of the gifts I received in the Grand Canyon a couple weeks ago. How fitting today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle Magazine: being present and removing the barriers to interconnectedness.

July 21, 2010
Tricycle Daily Dharma

Uproot the Core Problems

In the Buddhist path we are bringing together our actions, our view, and our practice. It is a balance of awareness, insight, and action, working harmoniously together. In that way our energy is no longer divided or scattered, but we are fully present in whatever we do. That is what it means to be a genuine human being.

In Buddhism, the point is not simply to be accomplished meditators but to change our whole approach to life. Meditation is not merely a useful technique or mental gymnastic, but part of a balanced system designed to change they way we go about things at the most fundamental level. In this context, it is a way of exposing and uprooting the core problems of grasping and ego-clinging that separate us from one another and cause endless pain.

-Judy Lief, "Is Meditation Enough?" (Spring 1997)Read the complete article here. 

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"Be Patient"

words of wisdom from tricycle's daily dharma today:

When you plant seeds in the garden, you don’t dig them up every day to see if they have sprouted yet. You simply water them and clear away the weeds; you know that the seeds will grow in time. Similarly, just do your daily practice and cultivate a kind heart. Abandon impatience and instead be content creating the causes for goodness; the results will come when they’re ready.”

- Tibetan Buddhist nun and author Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, "Meditator's Toolbox" (Fall 2007)

from Tricycle: today's daily dharma

Tricycle

Daily Dharma

Our Deepest Well-Being

Our society provides no curriculum or schooling on how to notice love or to recognize the many people who have transmitted its life-giving power. Most of us haven’t been taught that to receive love deeply and transmit it wholeheartedly is a real human possibility, that it can be learned, and that to do so is the key to our deepest well-being, our spiritual life, and our capacity to bring more goodness into this world.

—by John Makransky, ‘Love is All Around’ c.

click on the article's title to read it in its entirety

practice: tonglen

We don't have to live in fear
nor do we have to
ignore the crises
as if they didn't exist.
We can help ourselves, our country, all beings of the world
with breath.

The following article explains the Buddhist practice of
Tonglen
written by Pema Chodron
as published on Shambala.org.

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean —you name it— to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.

The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.

At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.

People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.

Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we being to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.

Tonglen can be done for those who are ill, those who are dying or have just died, or for those that are in pain of any kind. It can be done either as a formal meditation practice or right on the spot at any time. For example, if you are out walking and you see someone in pain —right on the spot you can begin to breathe in their pain and send some out some relief. Or, more likely, you might see someone in pain and look away because it brings up your fear or anger; it brings up your resistance and confusion.

So on the spot you can do tonglen for all the people who are just like you, for everyone who wishes to be compassionate but instead is afraid, for everyone who wishes to be brave but instead is a coward.

Rather than beating yourself up, use your own stuckness as a stepping stone to understanding what people are up against all over the world.

Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us.

Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.

You can read the article in its original form
on the Shambala.org website by
clicking on the title of the article below
The Practice of Tonglen .