write daily

I’m not doing this!

I’m just not.

I know I need it. With each passing day the journey back gets longer.

sigh.

on the way to work to capture the delicious word music playing my head. Lord, I’ve missed that!

It has been far too long since my muse has been this persistent, audacious. It has been far too long since poetry has actively interjected itself into the constant motion of my life, insisting “hear me!”. Or maybe it has been far too long since I have been quiet enough to listen, to hear that voice speaking to me.

Grateful, I am. Heartened.

I’ve noticed, have set or met goals relating to this. Reading their posts makes me realize how out of this mindset I’ve been over the past few months. It’s clear to me now that I subconsciously rejected this goal for awhile as a construct of a former mindset, one that had for me become intertwined with hurt and sadness. For the past few months I have turned away from the basics of my writing practice. I have let myself become distracted, blissfully so no less, by other influences. These influences have broadened my perspectives and opened my eyes, my heart, in ways I could not have imagined. I have found love and joy in places I have least expected. I am ever grateful for these influences, and the ways in which they have enhanced my life. Still, for my writing life, my progress, I must return to the basics, tainted though they may still be, in order to begin again on the road to my writer’s discipline. So many times in my life I have felt the need to do this, return to the source, get back to basics. As a writer, this return is an integral part of forward thinking and movement, for me at least.

I will begin once again, with discipline and focus, with hope and, yes, with joy.

I forgot how beneficial it is to get one’s self away from the comforts of home as a way to jumpstart creative energy. The funny thing is, for the first time in months I was all alone at home, so I could have stayed put, although I suspect I still would have been moored, or even mired, in my surroundings, my “home self.” In some very real ways, I think I needed to get away from ME! ;) At any rate, this unplanned excursion to my favorite coffeehouse yielded a good solid 90 minutes of inspiration and creative exertion, including three pages of journaling (blog and post fodder for sure) and a whole new structural approach to a story that had me stuck. And of course a delicious decaf skim latte. ;) I was even able to tune out the music, or at times use it to my advantage, especially since, rather spookily, each time I tuned back into the music it was because a song was speaking directly to me. It was as if I was meant to be there. Ah, I love when the universe taps me on the shoulder like that. :)

Lately I have been a project-oriented writer, working on one or two pieces at a time when time allows. While this approach has allowed me to produce some good, nearly finished, work, it has not allowed me access to the pervasive writer’s vision I once possessed. Also, this approach can be dangerous; if I rely on time to present itself, I will lose my way, my opportunities rather readily.

There was a time, back in my poet days, when words and images constantly flowed within me, washing over me in the shower, in the car, in the midst of living. So compelling were they, and the insights they represented, that I would stop everything, scrounge for a notebook or a scrap of paper, a pen, in order to capture them. At that point in my life I was attuned to the music of the world around me, and open to all it had to teach me. I lived in a heightened state of inspiration, whether by breathtaking beauty or profound sadness, or some other myriad emotions. For better or worse, I was truly awake, and driven to encapsulate the sensory truth of my emotional and physical world. I miss that vividity, and that drive. I didn’t realize how much until I experienced glimmers of it in the past year or so. I need to get back there. As a writer, that state is my epicenter.

A talented poet and beloved mentor once advised, “You must listen to your muse, she is soft-spoken but wise. If you stop listening, her voice will eventually fade into the landcape of noise that is mundanity.” I fear that over the past decade I have failed to listen carefully enough, and eventually stopped listening altogehter, until her voice became buried beneath the cacophony of my mundane, at times claustrophobic, life.

I need to get back to my muse, and to that heightened state of awareness. My hope is that writing daily, call it morning pages or some NaNoWriMo redux, will create opportunities for me to stop, be still, and listen to the world, hear what it has to teach me. I will do this, alone or with the support of others. I will show up for the page, every day, starting today, in order to create spaces of relative stillness in which to cock my head, cup my hand behind my ear, and listen. To my muse: speak, my dear, I will do my best to listen.