Give Me A Break

The first two rules of writing are these: apply butt to chair and just write. Last Saturday, I followed both rules and yet, two hours after having started with a workable idea and good head of steam, nothing came of it. I had a deadline to spur me on, something that often pushes me to produce good work. Not this time. Not even close. The pages aren't fit for lining the compost bucket. Really, they just aren't any good.

About now I'm supposed to say what a failure I am and complain that writer's block is worse than COVID. Sure, I felt some of that but not much and certainly not for long. I mean, give me a break. It's just writing.

Just writing?

Aren't I the guy who loves writing more than just about anything? Surely, I must be kidding.

But I'm not kidding. And don't call me Shirley.

It's just writing, just words on paper. Here's the thing: I'll write more words. I already have. In the week since Saturday, I've committed more than five thousand words to screen and page. Some of them have been just as terrible, but some are alright, and writing them has taken me to new places.

Places such as this.

Between paragraphs I sipped an espresso I made before sitting down to write. It's good espresso. Not great, just good. I'm too new to the craft to know what I'm doing yet. I've watched James Hoffman's espresso-making videos. He makes it look effortless because he's a gifted master and has done this sort of thing for years. I got my espresso machine a month ago and pulling great shots remains beyond me for the moment. Wait a couple months and I'll have a good espresso to offer.

James Hoffman is expert at this stuff, gifted after having practiced for decades. Being gifted and well-practiced are intertwined. He pulls scores of shots daily and has for years. Even if I was gifted at this — and maybe I'll turn out to be — I'll need years of practice to develop the gift. I'm too new to espresso to pull a great shot, so give me a break.

I'm talking to myself when I say give me a break. No one but me is as harsh a critic of my poor and novice attempts. No one else is so likely to tell me to give up.

Writers, especially those who aren't very practiced, are susceptible to the cruel voice within that says, give up, you have no gift. You and your writing will never measure up. Surely, there's no point in going on.

I respond this way: Stop calling me Shirley. And give me a break.

Last Saturday, I could feel that the writing wasn't going to work out, that at deadline I would find myself with a sad sheaf of pages unfit for sharing. I kept writing anyway. Some of that was obligation to deadline, but mostly it was faith in the practice of moving the pen, a practice I've maintained for decades. All that and I gave myself a break.

When it comes to espresso, I'm giving myself a break because I'm a novice, just beginning the practice. When it comes to writing, I give myself a break knowing that I'll write more and that I'm still a student of the craft, an eternal novice.

The voice within tells me to quit. It says I lack talent. I say, talent-schmalent.

Writing has less to do with talent than with applying butt to chair and just writing, going at it one day and coming back the next to go at it some more.

Whatever I draft today informs tomorrow's writing. This morning's shot of espresso has in it the taste of all I learned yesterday. Tomorrow's espresso may taste better, smooth with hints of caramel, or turn out bitter and awful. The writing could go either way too.

I had a good idea last Saturday but still haven't been able to write it. I'll try again but it may refuse to come together. There's a chance it's beyond my ability to write. Wouldn't that be a pisser? End of the freaking world, right?

Give me a break.

Not Much Happens

I don't want to tell anyone how they have to do Morning Pages. I bristle at that kind of direction and learn better from stories than directions. There's no one true way. Finding my process, habit, and technique have been part of the process. Rather than prescribe how anyone should do Morning Pages, I'm sharing some of what I do because because I like thinking about method, and maybe it will help someone discover their own way.

A guy I know is considering Morning Pages but not writing them yet. I get that. I took weeks working up to the idea before writing my first three pages. I felt unprepared to commit to daily practice until the morning of July 5, 2014 when curiosity overtook me and I just started writing. I needed those weeks of thinking and worrying, though at the time I kept thinking, come on, man, let's just go!

I'm an impatient person, especially when waiting on myself to rise to expectations. I'm impatient for results rather than devoted to process and practice. Beginning Morning Pages, I expected them to change my life. I was forty-six, miserable, suffering from a lingering disaster, furious, and frustrated. July 5, 2014, I woke, put pen to paper, and wrote three pages.

Not much happened.

That secret needs to be told. I'll say it again: Not much happened. Even today, after more than six years of daily practice, I woke, put pen to paper, wrote three pages, and not much happened.

Inspiring, right?

In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien tells of two guys fooling around in Vietnam during the war. The weather has been scorching hot and dry for weeks. A Native American guy, Kiowa, is teaching Rat Kiley a rain dance. When they finish, Rat looks at the sky, then asks, "so where's the rain?" Kiowa says, "The Earth is slow, but the buffalo is patient." Rat looks at Kiowa, trying to understand, then says, "yeah, but where's the rain?"

In 2014, I wanted Morning Pages to bring the rain. I did three pages the next day and the day after. No rain. Not a drop. I stayed confused and angry. I was not transformed. Not much happened. The Earth was really slow but this buffalo was impatient. The Earth is still slow. I'm only slightly more patient six years later.

I wondered then if I was doing it wrong. A year in, I pushed to create publishable things in my Morning Pages. I drafted a prose poem every morning for a couple months. I drafted a blog post each morning for a few months. I used November's pages in a NaNoWriMo attempt. Morning Pages just had to make something happen.

While I drafted some good prose poems, blog posts, and even got to 50,000 words one November, here's the part that seems like a killer: _there was no rain, I was not transformed, and not much happened.

Not much of what I expected to happen anyway.

The mystery of my Morning Pages is that expectation gets in the way. Progress comes only when I let go of the expectation of progress. Expecting Morning Pages to do one thing, I was incapable of accepting all that they were doing and had done. Not much happening turns out to be the primary wonder of Morning Pages. The good news is that Morning Pages revealed this to me. The bad news, it has taken me 2,352 days to come this far and I'm nowhere near enlightenment.

Your mileage may vary.

Today I wrote Morning Pages. Nothing much came of them. I talked through the pen and listened to what the pen's movement had to tell me. I began with the first thing on my mind, something my wife said last night, and let the act of filling pages work on me.

That's something happening.

Up top I said that I don't want to tell anyone how they have to do Morning Pages. Still, a few guidelines may be of use to someone like the guy I know who is trying to get started with the practice. Here are the basics:

• Write three pages first thing every single morning
• Write in private with few distractions
• Write by hand on paper
• Accept that nothing much happens

Practice and acceptance have carried me through the frustration of failed expectations. They allow Morning Pages to work on me mysteriously without me trying to understand all of how it works. I just keep writing.

I know how mystical and annoying all this acceptance and mystery may sound, so let me end with something practical. I've come this far after doing daily Morning Pages for years. In the beginning, I counted every day and set goals. Now, I just do them. I did them yesterday. I did them today. I'll do them tomorrow. The not-so-secret of Morning Pages is to just keep doing them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If you can let go of expectations, do that, but I'm terrible at following that kind of advice and direction. Someone tells me to let go of expectation and gives me a great set of reasons why. I wait a few beats, then ask, but where's the rain? I rarely notice the gathering clouds, the dimming of the sky, or the first drop of rain. I'm standing in a downpour before I realize it has begun to rain.

Something happens from doing three pages this morning and the next, for this reason and then that, from holding unrealized expectations but still getting up the next morning to write again. I knock my head against the wall expecting to break through but instead soften my thick skull enough to realize the wall isn't in the way. It's not even a wall. There's open space ahead, a winding path paved in blank pages laid out one after another after another beyond what my eyes can see. I've mostly let go of my expectations of where the path may lead and am learning to just keep walking, to keep writing and see what happens. And all the while the rain falls down. Something is happening.

Accepting Nothing To Write

Really, what do I have to say this morning?

I don't want to talk about my weight, this headache, or the urge to take today off from work. I've no interest in rehashing last night's SU Women's Basketball loss, politics, or the pandemic. None of my ideas interest me.

A voice in me suggests, accept what you're feeling.

Accept this? I resist that idea. It sounds like moping. Yet, I can't recall a time when acceptance hasn't been a good move, when it has done me wrong.

But what even does acceptance look like? I sip coffee, thinking this over, tasting warm richness. I sip without expectation, a moment's break between paragraphs, and it becomes a model of acceptance.

The act of acceptance for me is a letting go of mind-clutter, being present to the moment, feeling my breath, my beating heart, the turning gears of my mind. Acceptance is a sip of coffee, warming and soothing.

I say this while also accepting that I'm unsure what acceptance is or how to go about it. The best I can do is tell stories of acceptance: a sip of coffee or the filling of pages with ink.

This morning's pages began with me complaining that I had nothing to write, rejecting each idea, putting a resistor on the wire running from my mind to the pen in my hand. My mind said, no, no, no. Still, I was committed to filling three Morning Pages and have experience enough to know that moving the pen, even just to list things unworthy of writing, overcomes resistance and turns on the lights.

Acceptances are at work in this. I accept the task of filling three Morning Pages. I accept my complaints and anxieties rather than arguing against them. I accept that moving the pen will take me somewhere.

But acceptance is hard. This morning I struggled to accept feeling lousy, but trying to recall that feeling now is delightfully difficult. It's like trying to recall a dream. Acceptance, like waking, has turned my anxiety to smoke onto which I have no hold.

I accept this moment and the next as it comes. I accept this word and the next as the pen on the page tells them to me. I accept that the line of ink on the page will lead me forward into whatever it is that may come next.

Just One

Most mornings, after writing Morning Pages, I read one passage from Daily Doses of Wisdom, underlining passages that speak to me, noting the date on the page, replacing the bookmark, and placing the book back on the shelf. I've been working for years to develop this as a daily practice but am still a beginner falling down often, missing days, learning only in the last few months to do this each and every morning.

Regular practice shows me things and invites more regular practice. I'm learning that there is time every morning to read a passage, no need to skip or rush through. The time to read one passage is well spent and does not keep me from my appointed rounds. Often, it augments what I do and how I feel that day. However, some mornings, such as today, I can't recall what I've just read. Going back to it now I see that passage 268 says:

The wonder I feel at there being something rather than nothing is so large it goes beyond my calculation, beyond the possibility of my making an explanation, far beyond my understanding. That a parcel of vain strivings should appear in this world and be able to experience love, life, loss, beauty, growth — it is beyond my ability to ever fully comprehend. And that it should be embraced by infinite wisdom and compassion beyond the self and delivered to awakening and bliss — it is truly wondrous.

My only hope of expressing these feelings is through the nembutsu, the voice of buddha-nature itself.

— Jeff Wilson, _Buddhism of the Heart

Rereading hasn't brought me much closer to understanding. Sometimes that's just how it goes, and I'm trying to learn to accept that some lessons don't land and advance my life as I might expect. My growing faith is that these things accrue mysteriously if I just keep practicing.

I sound like Thomas Merton's prayer about not knowing how to please God but believing that the desire to please Him does in fact please Him. Accepting mystery seems a good path and teaches some of the humility I sorely need.

Tomorrow, I'll take a single Daily Dose of Wisdom again, trying to open myself to both the immediate benefits and the mysterious consequences. I'll likely feel inclined to read another but resist that urge, trying to trust the power of doing something once daily every day I'm fortunate enough to live in this world.