Bowing to Writing Difficulty

One of my most important writing practices is bowing to difficulty.

As I end a session at the desk, after I've stored my notebooks and pens and closed the laptop, I bow deeply. I acknowledge the opaque black plastic of the closed laptop lid. 

It doesn't matter if the session was seemingly productive, resulting in new writing or a completed document. It doesn't matter if the session was seemingly non-productive, resulting in a phrase or two or perhaps no increase in word count whatsoever. I bow to difficulty; I bow to non-difficulty. It's all the same.

This practice is as important to me as anything I do to start the morning writing session. Or anything I do during the writing session. I would even venture to say that bowing to difficulty is as important as having the discipline to return to the desk. Why? 

The practice of bowing to writing is an exercise in acceptance and equanimity. I express my gratitude to the writing experience for what it is, without sorting it into categories of usefulness, non-usefulness, favorable, unfavorable. The experience is free of my evaluation, free of clinging, free of suffocating ego and ambition.

The practice of bowing allows me to continue to focus on the present moment of writing and work on avoiding future- or outcome fixation. Bowing to writing, no matter what, means the moment (and not the product) is the star of the hour.

Finally, the practice of bowing lets me establish the end note for the session. Bowing lets me take charge of "writing affect" (the emotions we have about the act of writing). Bowing allows me to steer my internal talk about writing toward gratitude, calm, and happiness and away from bitterness, frustration, and writing unhappiness. By purposefully shaping how a writing session ends for me emotionally, I am more inclined to return to the desk the next day.

The practice of bowing must be sincere: I honor whatever writing has happened in the moment.

Here's what I wrote about "Bowing to Difficulty" in my recent book, Prolific Moment (page 140):

"An easily initiated practice in accepting writing affect is "Bowing to Difficulty," in which writers close a writing session by bowing (physically or mentally) to their desk, laptop, notebook, or other writing materials for the challenges presented during a session. It's a variant of a remark I once heard a scientist make during a radio interview about his process of returning over hundreds of days to his lab to perform an experiment without success: 'Another day, another fail.' Eventually, he obtained interesting results (and was interviewed on National Public Radio), but success wasn't guaranteed--a lack of control that in itself constitutes a potent form of difficulty for many writers. To work without expectation of outcome or product and without expectation of ease is a trademark skill of a mindful writer who is comfortable enough with uncertainty and detached enough to perceive variability. A writing moment or hour passes: it contains the failure of seemingly insufficient quantity or quality. It's a matter of indifference, since the basis of success is the ability to perceive the writing moment and not whether the writing moment yielded appreciated material..."

* image from Taoism about com

Writing Is a Mild Happiness

fotoedge

Not enough attention is paid in and out of the classroom to the emotional experiences (let alone physical—that's for another day, another post) of people as they write. Emotional states are the single most powerful incentive for people to consistently continue to write, especially when they're no longer students. Writing-related emotions are more powerful than deadlines or even ambition.

Teachers often talk about writing as a matter of struggle, of working hard and of encountering the difficult. Of course, writing has all of these qualities, but how gentle is one's slope up that difficulty? What's the angle on your mental treadmill?

No more potent an incentive to return consistently to the writing desk exists than when writing is a mild happiness. This emotion is key to building discipline as a writer.

MILD:

Avoiding extremes, binges, ups and downs, and manic relations to the ability to write. Don't celebrate anything about writing ability, and don't mourn anything either. In his marvelous but unfortunately under-discussed book, How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure, Robert Boice describes the importance of making motivation to write "more internal"; in fact, growing this internal motivation should be one of the goals of a writer

—as much a project as completing a book or even "writing everyday." Boice turns our attention to the emotional states we experience when writing and specifically asks us to seek a calm approach, a "mild happiness."

Crazy deadlines, all-nighters, adrenalin-pumping procrastination, and writing binges may bring a temporary burst of writing high, but the writer will shortly suffer a let-down: emotional, cognitive, and physical. It's like relying on too much Red Bull: feels good in the short-term but will only cause problems, tiredness, and dependency in the long-term. Some people struggle to avoid states of hypergraphia (being unable to stop writing)—as the neurologist Alice Flaherty so well documents in The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain.Other people induce this state in themselves--when it never had to be an option.

That common technique of waiting until last minute to start a project only seems beneficial. As Peter Elbow has pointed out, this method helps to kick a tricky audience out of your head because you simply can't afford to ponder them: it's "do or die" time. In a paradoxical way, waiting until last minute increases mindfulness because it allows the writer to focus on themselves while composing

—and not some distant audience. However, this method is unreliable (it won't always work and then you're stuck with an incomplete task or failure). Waiting until last minute also does damage by forever linking the act of writing with anxiety, sleep deprivation, and immobility: it makes writing become an unnatural and energy-expensive act, too separate from the normal give and take of everyday moments.

On the other hand, mild happiness resembles the state of equanimity which Sharon Salzberg has described as the ability to allow things to be as they are by putting large space around events and observations. Equanimity is about our stance on external events--how we relate and respond to them—whereas maitri refers more to how we relate to internal developments arising inside ourselves.

As applied to writing, equanimity means watching each moment during the writing experience and allowing it to be what it is. It means not overly valuing the ability to write. It means accepting a productive session as much as accepting a session in which you typed nothing. It means that when time's up on your writing session—you need to get to work or your kids are starting to leap out of their bunk beds—you just move on with ease. You know you've got other interesting things to do with your day. If you don't work with external constraints, set the limits on your writing session simply for the purpose of practicing that mild stance.

HAPPINESS:

Happiness in writing comes then as a result of that equanimity—because it means we are practicing acceptance, being gracious and generous toward ourselves (and we all know how harsh writers can be on themselves). It means that every writing moment can be a low-stakes moment: exploratory, safe, private, secluded. We are happy that we can be so kind to ourselves. With this perspective, there is absolutely no reason to feel uneasy about writing and no reason to dread it.

Basically, a writer needs motivation to continue and that involves accumulating positive associations with writing. This is far from a trivial matter: so much about writing seems linked with unpleasantness.

Early on in graduate school at the University of Iowa, I forced myself to spend hours each summer day meditating on the single image of a still-life. It was so painful that part of my brain literally started to twitch. The consequence? Did I get any writing done that summer? When September rolled around, I "discovered" several typed poems I had no memory of actually writing. Apparently, the experience was so painful that I'd blocked the actual writing entirely out of my consciousness. A few years later, I worshipped Martha Graham and pushed myself through strenuous acts of deprivation in order to finish poems. None of this was as sustaining to my writing life as the gentle and accepting approach of mindful writing.

So the question a writer needs to ask if he or she is struggling with writing is this: What would it take to bring pleasure into writing for me? No matter the answer... now matter how seemingly trivial and possibly even child-like, it's your answer. For instance: I could use crayons. I could write for only minutes right now and then go for a walk. I could copy the same passage over and over. I could freewrite about something that's troubling me rather than working on my article.

Pleasurable experience needs to be built into the curriculum whether in the classroom or in the self-teaching of your study (if you are no longer a student). Mild happiness is a learning outcome as valuable as "improve critical thinking skills" or "understand the social dimensions of written communication" or any of the bulleted statements found on syllabi. 

The Gray Rock: Ambivalence and the Writing Process




Christine Little-English

 

The ability to write will lead to an ambivalence about doing it.

This phenomena is positive since it means that there isn’t a sharp dualism in the act of writing. It is neither terrific nor frightening to be engaged in writing; to write constitutes neither a success nor a potential failure. Writing is simply an act one does, something I am doing. It is a motion in time. It is as beautiful and as basic as mindfully breathing.

It is an ambivalent productivity.

The trick about experiencing this state of ambivalent productivity is that you can become doubtful of the writing because it doesn’t contain that outburst of joy and relief you might expect. You might even want those emotional sensations as a sort of reward for all your struggle. Additionally, you can start believing that what you're writing is worthless or boring because some excitement is not accompanying the ability to write. Your perception of the content of your work can be negatively affected.

It is crucial to not expect that a sensation of thrill will accompany your sudden ability to write.

It’s especially important to remember this idea after a period of time has passed in which you were (seemingly) unable to write anything.

Another quality must fuel the ability to continue the writing project: the acceptance of the way things are being expressed and a belief in the goodness of that communication. If you are entertaining the added thought that you expect a thrill, you are detracting from the writing. Any thoughts of ambition, excitement, or even disappointment are extraneous material which lessens a concentrated experience of writing. Zen master Suzuki wrote, “when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire.”

Sometimes after a difficult stretch in which writing does not happen to my satisfaction, I have had to remind myself that what is important is to not become excited about this reappearance of my ability to write.

Instead, I should use equanimity and see how in the moment, writing is the necessary thing to do. By necessary, I do not mean that writing is special or virtuous, but instead that it is the activity which is just happening right now. Its happening is linked inextricably with that moment.

When we realize the naturalness of writing to the particular moment in our lives, we are completely absorbed by the task. We forget all worries, personal or those explicitly related to our writing goals. Hours pass. Writing hardly exhausts us because we are so at peace with it. To be exhausted by writing would be as nonsensical as being tired from just sitting in a chair.

Choices arise naturally, such as whether to add this sentence or delete that adjective.

Our hands feel warm leaning on the alphabet of the keyboard. It is often at such writing moments that totally unexpected new material and ideas arise. This is when we start to feel “inspired.” We can begin whole new creative directions after achieving ambivalence and calm in writing.

The risk is that we can overvalue this calming process in itself. We can falsely fixate upon trying to achieve calm as a vehicle to write. When writers rely on routines or addiction in order to stimulate a prolific experience, they are essentially trying to recreate that inner calm and ambivalence. To do so will inevitably cause the opposite effect, leaving the writer blocked and frustrated.

Stop Dualistic Thinking, Become Prolific

 

Simply stop thinking dualistically about writing and sit back and observe what happens. 

            Contrary to usual belief, wanting to write is not good, beneficial, or commendable. Wanting to write does not hold a positive or negative impact on others or on oneself.  Furthermore, writing everyday with terrific discipline, is neither positive nor negative, and finishing or publishing a text is also neither a positive or negative experience.

            Much energy is expended in trying to coerce ourselves or others to write because we perceive the W word as an accomplishment.  We grasp the goal of writing.   

            It is often presumed that wanting to write is a positive quality in a person. We tend to think that it’s good when students, for instance, want to write their assignments or, seemingly better still, want to write on their own, independent of any homework.  We say, “good, this student likes writing,” if we are a teacher or their parent.  It’s considered good when we ourselves feel willing to complete a piece of writing within a deadline.  It’s perceived as positive when others embark upon a project of any genre.

             We tend to admire or envy that willingness to write in another person as though that willingness all by itself were valiant.

When we praise another person’s writing ability, in general, we are actually chasing after one of two qualities, either self-expression or self-discipline.  In the case of self-expression, we operate as though there exists inside each person’s life an experience or emotion that can only be released through writing.  For ourselves, we may feel deeply frustrated while trying to release that uniqueness because we believe that writing about our experience is our sole chance.  This scenario sets most of us up for the false belief that the ability to self-express is only possible for a few either extremely hard-working or talented individuals.  Not us.

            It would be cruel if only a select few individuals were capable of the satisfaction of self-expression.  This notion is both limiting and false, since all of us born with healthy bodies do possess as a common denominator the ability to use language on an everyday basis. 

            On an everyday basis, most of us speak and write, and we are all fluent—not jammed—users of words.  In some Buddhist traditions, everything and everyone has a Buddha-nature, or the opportunity for enlightenment.  Revered Zen monks used to call each other derogatory names such as “old rice bag” to remind themselves that enlightenment is this universal ability, not just something in high-ranking religious officials.  Likewise, each of us is completely capable of creating “verbal gold”—phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and whole texts—which make us feel proud and assured.

            When we praise the self-discipline of a successful writer, we are causing as much harm to ourselves as creative spirits as when praising self-expression.  To admire discipline in the abstract is to remove writing from the present moment and—by extension—to further eliminate any chance that one will be writing at any time soon.

            You may have encountered a stranger at a dinner party who says, “Oh, I have tons of great ideas for books I could write, but I just lack the self-discipline.”  Individuals who admire self-discipline in another are less likely to be really driven by a desire to write than the person who admires self-expression.  These I-wish individuals are likely hoping that discipline could be grafted onto other areas of their lives, such as dieting or paying off debt.

            When writing is liberated from our systems of judgment and the binary thought pattern of good/bad, we are also liberated.  We are free to either write or not write, thereby opening ourselves to the countless possibilities for human activity. 

            It’s okay to bake those chocolate brownies instead of writing.  It’s okay to go play with your son and then do the work you’ve brought home from the office.  Writing is just one activity of hundreds.  

            Poet William Stafford said that lowering one’s standards will help a writer do the text.  Take that advice a step in a new direction and cut back on your notion that even trying to write is a good attempt.  Lower your standards that far.  What’s funny is how achieving this non-dualistic thinking often allows people to start writing and keep at a project.

            Simply stop the dualistic thinking about writing, and sit back and observe what happens.  See that these binary categories about writing are absolutely meaningless.  Not only are they meaningless, but in the end they will prevent you from writing as often as you want.

            Trust me, it absolutely does not matter whether you finish that novel, memoir, poetry collection, volume of literary theory, historical documentary [insert your genre here] because writing is neither positive nor negative.  If you feel anxious at the idea in the previous sentence, inwardly you still cling to the dualistic notion that writing is a positive occurrence and that not writing is a negative occurrence in your life.