Writing, No Writing: Guest Blog Post at North American Review

Here's my second guest blog post, "Writing, No Writing: Cultivating the Emptiness of the Page," at the North American Review: 

https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/writing-no-writing-cultivating-emptiness-page

The blog post opens:

"Normally, not-writing is rejected experience. Most writers value the popcorn sound of typing or other signs of productivity—a paragraph written, a journal page filled, a poem drafted, a noble goal of 3,000 words/day. The entire reason for prompts is to springboard writers out of the preverbal and into the verbal, for instance. We only begin to feel secure once language makes an appearance on the screen and the word count climbs. Each new sentence or line seems to rescue us from a perceived plight of failure, transporting us farther away from this face-off with nothingness..."

(New Book) Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing

My new book, Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing, is available & out in the world. This book advances many of the ideas on this blog by developing a theory and practice based on Buddhist texts on mindfulness and composition-rhetoric theory.

Here's the info from Routledge:

https://www.routledge.com/Prolific-Moment-Theory-and-Practice-of-Mindfulness-for-Writing/Peary/p/book/9781138493599

Guest Post on Mindful Writing at NCTE Blog

Check out my guest post on mindful writing at the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) blog: 

http://www2.ncte.org/blog/2018/05/the-ability-to-write-is-always-present/

Do Not Clutch At Outcome

Do not clutch at writing outcome for to do so is to embrace an explosive, rabid, backstabbing, and ravenous pet, combination of pit bull and piranha. This creature will shred the shirt you are wearing. It will leave you in pain. It will show others the foolishness of your choices and the vanity of your ego. It is said that this creature once existed peaceably in mythic lands, running after written products, final drafts, and publications, causing no harm until one of us embraced it. And then this creature of outcome caused havoc with livestock and the ability of nearly adolescent children to focus in school.

                                                                                               Far wiser is it to watch the minnows of the moment pass and pass in the river of process.

New Book on Mindful Writing Published by Routledge August/September 2018

I'm pleased to say that I've finished Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing and that it will be published by Routledge in August or September 2018. Below is info on the book.

Blurb from Publisher:

Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing foregrounds the present in all activities of composing, offering a new perspective on the rhetorical situation and the writing process. A focus on the present casts light on standard writing components—audience, invention, and revision—while bringing forth often overlooked nuances of the writing experience—intrapersonal rhetoric, the preverbal, and preconception. Much is lost with a misplaced present moment because students forfeit rewarding writing experiences for stress, frustration, boredom, fear, and shortchanged invention. Writing becomes a much different experience if students think of it more consistently as part of a discrete now. This pedagogy of mindful writing can alleviate the suffering of writing blocks that comes from mindless, future-oriented rhetorics. Peary examines mindfulness as a metacognitive practice and turns to foundational Buddhist concepts of no-self, emptiness, impermanence, and detachment for methods for observing the moment in the writing classroom. This volume is a fantastic resource for future and current instructors and scholars of composition, rhetoric, and writing studies.  

Chapters:

Preface: Hymn of Binaries, Mantra for Equanimity:  Wooden Sculpture

Introduction
Chapter One: Present Moment, Writing Moment
Interchapter
Chapter Two: The Monkey Mind of Intrapersonal Rhetoric
Interchapter
Chapter Three: The Verbal Emptiness of Mindful Invention 
Interchapter 
Chapter Four: Mind Waves, Mind Weeds, Preconceptions 
Interchapter 
Chapter Five: Their Ability To Write Is Always Present: A Disciplinary Context for Mindfulness

The Stone Backpack of Perfectionism

Many of us carry around a stone backpack when we write: we unwittingly lug around a heavy load of our own preconceptions about our writing ability. This backpack isn't filled with stones per se but is actually made entirely of mind-generated rock: zippers, pockets, and straps.

That is, we approach a new writing moment with pre-formed ideas as to how the writing will turn out and what the experience will be like because we--and not some external critic, editor, or teacher--have already graded our performance. We assume we know our own writing capabilities--that we can predict what will happen in the next moment.
 
We are loading down the moment.
 
Even if what we're doing is presumably private writing or even disposable writing, chances are good that our intrapersonal talk involves a constant pressure to improve, a restlessness with our writing. A deep-rooted dissatisfaction.
 
(Not all this predetermined thought, of course, is necessarily "negative": we might be carrying around what seem like highly positive, generous views of our ability. But I'll save for this a later post since the brunt of our predetermined thought, I'm wagering, tends toward the critical for most of us.)
 
What follows is an activity I use with my undergraduate and graduate students to call a temporary halt to that need to "improve" as a writer.
 
Get yourself a blank screen or sheet of paper.
 
What would it be like—what would happen in your thoughts right now—if what you are as a writer is already wonderful, already Buddha?  If your writing was “perfect as it is” now? 
 
Jot down anything which arises in your mind in response to this notion of already-perfect. (Keep returning to the questions and keep seeing what arises in terms of:

* What sorts of images pass over your mind? Breathe into these images.  Follow them.  What do you notice?

* What sorts of emotion are you feeling?

* What color is one of those emotions?

* Breathe into this emotion.  Follow it. What do you notice?

See if you can gain a sense--even for a few seconds--of what it would feel like to stop wanting to change who you are as a writer. See if you feel the load lighten. See what it might be like to have a more expansive sense of the Present moment of writing. And when you return to the need-to-be-better thinking, notice yourself slipping back on the straps of the stone backpack.

Conceptual Metaphors and Images (For Writing Blocks) Contributed by Other Writers

Here are some conceptual metaphors & images for writing blocks I've received from other writers. Send yours along by commenting to this post. Indicate whether you want your name displayed or whether you prefer to stay anonymous.

My metaphor for writer's block is using a GPS where it keeps searching for the satellites, but it can't figure out where you are. It just keeps searching and searching, and eventually you either give up on it, or you find your way, but while it is searching, it is a feeling of hopelessness and frustration just like writer's block for me. My metaphor for writing when it "works" is trotting on a horse. I lose track of time and feel totally focused on the up and down and the sounds and smells and totally absorbed in the moment. Writing when it flows is totally like that for me. --Shirley P. 

 

Writer's block feels like I'm clawing my eyes out with jagged fingernails. --J.L. Powers (www.jlpowers.net)

Being at the bottom of a monolith with endless stairs.
                                --Audrey, graduate student in Overcoming Writing Blocks course

I was sixteen. It was snowing heavily, over a foot on the ground. I had left the admissions office of Amherst College, where I’d had a bland interview. I was to meet my father at the town library. He had told me directions, but I took a wrong turn and, as Springsteen says, “I just kept going.”

The snow kept falling, off and on, and the wind blew through the gaps in my overcoat and my buttoned wool suit. Finally, I knew I had gone wrong, so I turned, and turned again, and I found myself on a long stretch with few houses. Ahead of me was the University of Massachusetts football stadium. A flicker of memory: a warm autumn day, the bright colors of the field and the uniforms, the concrete bleachers like giant steps, each row coming above my waist. Before a childhood in Illinois and adolescence in Western Connecticut, I had spent my first five years of my life in this college town as my father finished graduate school.

It got colder. My thin socks were soaked with melted snow that found its way into my dress shoes. I turned again, some side street lined with small houses and bare trees. Off to my left I could see where I thought I wanted to go; something told me it was the way back downtown, where the library had to be, where at least there would be stores at which I could ask directions.

It had been over an hour. The library was only five minutes from the Admissions Office. Where was I?

Ahead of me, I couldn’t see a way to turn left, so I left the street and set off down a driveway, then walked through a snowy backyard and leapt over a half-frozen brook.

As truly as I remember, the moment I stepped over the brook it hit me—my own past. I was in a small lawn in the back of a student housing complex—Lincoln Apartments—where I had lived those first years of my life. I had flashes of playing ball on this lawn when there was grass, not snow. I followed a map in my mind around one building and there it was: my earliest home! That back wall, where I’d bounced a ball and learned to catch; the second floor railing from which my father dropped a coconut. It split at the foot of our apartment’s porch, white chunks in the sun. And there, from the porch, I saw the parking lot where I had learned to ride a bike.

I didn’t knock at my old door. I had come far enough.

It took another 45 minutes to find the library and my worried father. I told him my story, where I’d been, what I’d found. I couldn’t explain the mystery of it--why I’d chosen that backyard at that time—and I couldn’t make clear the wonder of it, the way that step across the brook brought a lost world back to me. It couldn’t mean to him what it meant to me: wandering in the snow, dressed in, of all things, a suit, lost, uncomfortable, and then, leaving the road and cutting through someone’s backyard and stepping into something at the core of me.  --J.D. Scrimgeour

 

I think of writing as a thoughtful expression of various ideas, questions and themes joined together in one carefully engineered structure, in which all the parts do not necessarily compliment one another, but all assist in the work 'becoming' through a combination of their supportive, compressive and passive properties. Supportive parts represent reason, which gives the structure strength and integrity. Compressive parts are the questions I am asking or trying to answer; they are what I deeply examine or wrestle with. Passive parts are grammatical and syntactical elements that provide clarity.

For me this process is like constructing a skyscraper. I am the uncertain and self-conscious engineer, guided by a loose blue print of creative compulsion. Using ideas as the materials and emotion as the fuel, I build, and many times disassemble, until I’ve reached a summit, where, in full view, I feel accepting, if not satisfied, with the overall structure.

--Carolyn Strain, graduate student at Salem State University

Flux



Pink Sherbert Photography
 

Our real environment—one of of constant change—works for us as writers, not against us.

One of the main tasks of mindful writing involves accepting changes in your writing experience along the way.

Nothing stays the same. Mindful writing is built upon the premise of groundlessness. Everything is in flux; everything is impermanent: even writing ability, even writing blocks.

Your feelings about your writing are constantly changing in subtle or not so subtle ways.

Instead of becoming locked into a death grip with one type of feeling about your writing—whether it’s a pessimistic or optimisitic view—let that feeling happen without judgment and fear and just watch how the feeling fluctuates.

If we hold on to a particular view of our writing, we will eventually suffer. Suffering in the Buddhist sense is caused by not admitting impermanence. For writers, that suffering takes the form of what we call a "writer's block." (I define "writer's block" as an inattention to the Present moment and specifically a lack of acceptance of the impermanence of the Present moment.)

I find that my perception of my own writing varies tremendously.

On some days, I am filled with bouyancy and confidence that what I am writing is worthwhile. Just the next day, I may find myself thinking, “What right do I have to be writing about this topic? What do I know?” I may really like a piece I've just finished and a week later have doubts. Or I may be excited at the prospect of a long weekend to do more writing but then only find myself distracted by plans with my family once I'm actually sitting at my desk.

Trying to replicate a positive writing experience will only last so long as well. Writers are notorious for their superstitions and repetitive working habits: these are strategies to gain some (false) semblance of control over impermanence.

Throughout my writing career, I have found that any gimic I cling to eventually leaves me high & dry upon a beach of blank thought.

In contrast, if I train myself to return to the Present in those times and watch it with acceptance, I invariably find myself in a better day of writing. It may take a few days or even a week, but the next change (one I welcome or would select) does happen.

Many scholars on writing (Peter Elbow, Linda Flower and John Hayes, Keith Hjortshoj, Don Murray, Sondra Perl, Mike Rose just to name a few) have emphasized the recursivity of the writing experience. That is, they have usefully drawn our attention to the time line of writing, pointing out how people engaged in composing a text regularly "loop" around through the different parts of writing--inventing, drafting, rewriting, editing, etc. Broadly speaking, scholars have argued against a linear view of the writing process.

What I am suggesting is a finer grained notion of the time involved in the act of writing. Micro-beats instead of macro-beats. We should pay attention to changes not just in large phases of the writing process (for instance, how a writer might return to drafting after a stretch of editing) but also look at the moment by moment changes.

Our real environment—one of of constant change—works for us as writers, not against us.

 

Build-A-Poem



Pop Culture Geek

Build-A-Poem Workshop

[To become aware of our discursive thinking around the act of writing, we do a“Build-a-Poem” activity through a series of steps and discuss each stage of the experience.]

Many of us are not aware of the messages with which we bombard ourselves when we’re writing. We’re not aware of how much we try to predetermine our writing experience and outcome.

Discursive thinking refers here to the self-talk we engage in: that constant sorting of experience into good, bad, neutral. It’s a type of inner talk or inner rhetoric that carries tremendous influence, as Jean Nienkamp among others has pointed out. We frequently persuade ourselves through our self-talk without realizing it.

What follows is an activity I’ve used with students and when giving talks to help people become more aware of their own discursive thinking around the act of writing. (I've left quite a bit of page space between each step; try not to scroll ahead beyond the asterisk until you've jotted down the current line.)

Step One: After opening a blank screen or finding a scrap of paper and pen, take a moment to get comfortable. Observe your breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

*

So you’re about to write a poem. Right now. Within the next 3 minutes.

Step Two: For a minute jot down your reactions to what I just said—to the fact that you’re about to write a poem: any reactions.

I purposefully selected poetry because most people have strong reactions to this genre. (I've heard grown people groan at the prospect of a poem.) The idea of an upcoming experience with poetry arouses a whole gamut of emotions and associations from the past.

The reactions you wrote down constitute your discursive thought about this upcoming act of writing.

Step Three: Watching your breathing, come up with a line for each of the prompts I’ll give you. Write down whatever comes to mind, not worrying about quality or audience. Try not to read ahead to upcoming prompts—just spend 30 seconds on each and move on. Each prompt provides the next line.

First line: Think of an emotion you’ve recently felt and compare it to an object in nature using either a metaphor or a simile.

*

Second line: Describe that natural object using one of the senses.

*

Third line: Use a list (you decide what goes in the list).

*

Fourth line: Zoom-in real close to the natural object and describe something microscopically.

*

Fifth line: Something in the background to this natural object is pointing to another emotion you experience. What is it?

*

Sixth line: What’s the weather or climate around this natural object?

*

Seventh line: Something lies within a few feet of this object. It’s an item you haven’t seen since your childhood. What is it?

*

Eighth line: Use a simile (you decide what goes in the simile).

*

Ninth line: There’s a shadow lying on the ground. It belongs to a person you wish you could speak to again. What’s interesting about the shadow?

*

Tenth line: Something is about to change in the setting around this natural object. What is it?

Read through your poem.

(Feel free to share your poem by commenting to this post or email it to me. I'd love to read it.)
 

You wrote this poem in a short span of time. You had no concept of this poem ten minutes ago, and the poem has been relatively unaffected by predetermined thinking. It arose in the moment. It is emblematic of all that can arise in each moment. Did you think you could write a poem like this? Who knows what your next idea or sentence will look like? Take a moment to jot down the thoughts which are passing through your mind right now about writing.

 

 

Writing Materials and the Present Moment

 

Rocpoc, Flickr Commons
 

In the next series of postings, I will be discussing the material conditions of writing and the importance of staying present to the physical realities of writing.  Several of those upcoming posts will focus on the marvels of the Post-It note.

In Understanding Writing Blocks, Keith Hjortshoj offers an example of the importance of the material side of writing. It’s an example I frequently tell my students.

Hjortshoj describes a student, Paul, who is struggling to complete college courses because he can’t turn in written assignments. It’s not because Paul is unintelligent or unmotivated. When Paul was in grade school, his father, a professional writer, insisted on reading and critiquing all of Paul’s assignments before they were turned in to a teacher.

According to Hjortshoj, “by the time he graduated from high school Paul dreaded writing anything because he knew he would have to show it to his father and knew it would be terrible.”

Speed forward to college. Paul was failing his college courses because he couldn’t finish even a paragraph without feeling like it was flawed.

One day, Paul is at last able to turn in an essay.

The night before, he’s snarled up in his usual anxieties about writing, tossing out paragraphs, when he realizes he’s run out of fresh paper and has to use crumpled sheets from his waste bin.

Paul is able to complete the essay by using ruined paper—and he continues to do so in his other courses by turning in final drafts composed on physically imperfect sheets of paper—ones with “some little flaw—a dot of ink maybe, or a little tear” on it.

What’s going on here?

In Paul’s case, by interacting with the physical objects involved in writing (the sheets of paper), he is able to deal with an imaginary audience (his father, the Critic), one not really in his Present moment. When he stains or tears the paper, Paul is making contact with an aspect of the Present moment (the paper) and recognizing that an aspect of the Past (his father) is not actually in the room.

The physical aspects of writing serve two important functions toward mindful writing.

#1: Those physical aspects—our typing hands, the pen we use, the notebook or journal we select—are all bells calling us to the Present moment and to the language and ideas passing through our minds in the now.

They help us see what is really present as well as what is not present (an audience). Remember, most of the time, we are alone when we write and any audience is a construction of our internal dialog.

#2: The material aspects of writing also have the potential to adjust our intrapersonal voice—our internal conversation.

That is, certain materials suggest a certain relationship to ourselves and to audience.

Writing a draft of an article, for instance, solely on Post-Its sets us up for one type of relationship to ourselves and to audience.  Post-Its are a forum for informal, note-like writing. We associate Post-Its with low-stakes writing, tasks not expecting perfection or audience.

Writing a book draft with crayons or Magic Markers sets us up for another type of relationship to our words and to audience. Crayons and Magic Markers carry the connotation of the child-like, the free and imaginative, and they help kick out any high-stakes professional audience because I certainly won’t be showing my crayon writings to an editor.

The physical side of writing can also hinder us. Think of the person who wants to start a novel and purchases a fancy journal. I feel immediately worried for this person’s writing ability. This leather-bound journal with the expensive paper is practically soaked in critique: it’s expecting perfect words from the get-go. 

So what's inside your sheet of paper?

Have your writing materials ever brought you to the Present moment as you write? Do tell: please post a comment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Make Contact with Your Inner Dialog

 

 

To become a more mindful,
more productive writer, you need to get in touch with your intrapersonal communication—that inner “babble” in which you are constantly talking to yourself. (Don’t worry: we all talk to ourselves.)

That inner talk is where you can find ideas for writing as well as the energy to continue writing projects.

Of course, meditation helps us with this. Meditation is all about noticing how in our constant self-talk we are sorting our experience (into good, bad, and indifferent) in the misguided but all-too-human attempt to make life comfortable for us.

Some of my writing students, however, say they are unable to notice when their minds depart from the present moment. They say they can’t notice their monkey minds. They have no idea what mindfulness feels like.

To help those students, I devised the following exercise. I hope it might be of some use to you. The first 10 steps are the set-up for the exercise.

1.      Go to a quiet location.

2.      Put a piece of paper and a pen or pencil beside you.

3.      Sit gently upright, hands resting either palms-up or palms-down on your knees.

4.      Scan your body for its feelings: where are you tense?

5.      With eyes gently focused on a spot a few feet away, begin watching your breathing.

6.      Notice the sensation of the breath entering and leaving your nose.

7.      Notice the sensation of the rise and fall of your torso.

8.      Breathing in, think to yourself, “Here.”

9.      Breathing out, think to yourself, “Now.”

10.  Continue to put your attention on your breathing.

Whenever you notice that your mind has wandered from watching your breath, briefly turn to your piece of paper. Jot down one of the following:

ü  FUTURE (for a distracting thought about the future moment after this meditation session)

ü  PAST (for a distracting thought about a time before this meditation session)

ü  EVALUATION (for any thought that judges your present circumstance—for instance, whether you are pleased, irritated, or bored with the Now)

Do this notation fairly quickly. Don’t make a big deal of it. After you note “future,” “past” or “evaluation,” return to watching your breathing.

The next time you find that you’re no longer watching your breathing, return to the piece of paper and again record one of those three words.

After 5-10 minutes, if you’re like the rest of us, your sheet is probably one long list of distractions.

Did you notice, however, a difference in experience? Did the moments in which you were blindly daydreaming suddenly stand apart from another set—ones in which you were more aware?

If so, you may be well on your way to tasting mindfulness. Maybe more importantly, what you succeeded in doing is shaking hands with your own inner conversation.

Next time, watch that conversation and ask it a question about your writing. A good start might be, “What would I like to write down, right now, in this moment?” Or, “What do you have to say to me about  Idea X?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.