Learning to have faith in your writing
What is this thing called faith? Ministers of religion preach it from the pulpit, census forms ask us to write what faith we belong to, or teachers tell us we have to have faith in our abilities if we are to do well in school. But how do you generate faith in your own writing, knowing that some days you feel like a brilliant writer while others you feel like total crap! Just keep writing, all the writing gurus say – write your way through the crap, you can always come back later and mine the dross for your speck of gold!
Natalie Golgberg reminds us in her classic, Writing Down The Bones: “Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.” I think Goldberg is onto something here. Having faith means ignoring the fear of failure, continuing on regardless, writing on through the good days and the bad, knowing you will have something at the end of your process you can work with.
Having faith in your writing means not being afraid to expose yourself as a ‘bad’ writer to other writing friends, letting them see what you have to offer in it’s raw state, warts and all; allowing them to experience its potential. Reminding yourself that you are neither brilliant nor crap, simply a working writer. It’s your job to go to the desk every day and work with words, so why not enjoy it. Take Natalie’s advice: “play around, dive into absurdity!” If you spend too much time judging your writing or judging your writing days as good or bad, you will find yourself on a treadmill of doubt, rewriting Chapter One over and over again until it is perfect. You have to have the faith to move on from Chapter One; you’ll most likely ditch it later or completely rewrite it anyway, once you get to the end.
Having faith in your writing means ignoring the doubting voice and all the other voices that come out to taunt you; the dictator, the sabateur, the resister, the avoider, the procrastinator. It means putting them in a sound proof box, closing tight the lid, and writing on into the long dark night of distraction; knowing that YOU THE WRITER are the HERO of your own quest and you WILL reach the HOLY GRAIL, YOU WILL!
Having faith in your writing means believing that if you put the writing hours in, you will will have a piece of writing at the end of it. It’s that simple. Good or bad writing – it doesn’t matter. If you keep showing up to the desk, bad writing will become good and good writing even better.
If you find this business of having faith difficult, get yourself a daily Buddha. A Monday Buddha, Tuesday Buddha etc. I found my Thursday Buddha on top of the Nat Temple near Bagan in Burma. He reminds me to have faith in my writing on Thursdays ( and even works for other days too!)
Hope to see you soon at:
June 6-16: Sacred Song, Sacred Story, Fes, Morocco (in conjunction with The Fes Sacred Music Festival).
Nov 24 -30 : Mekong Meditations, Luang Prabang Laos. Find yourself in a writer’s heaven.
Jan 9-21, 2014: Moroccan Caravan. Fez, Tissardmine, Erg Chebbi, Marrakech – a 12 day desert journey.
Feb 2014, Temple Writing In Burma – Green tea and Buddha’s in a brave new land.
March 8-15, 2014. Breakthrough Writing in Fiji – Eat, Snorkle, Write, in Fiji’s hidden paradise.
Taking risks for your writing
You have to be brave, foolish or both, to stick at this writing game. Actually for most of us there is no choice; we are driven to put words on paper no matter what. I saw a great title for a lecture yesterday that sums it up nicely: “Why Write: Living the Writing Life Regardless of Publication, Recognition, Money and Fame.” to be given by Valerie Martinez at the Taos Writer’s Conference. Valerie has a good point – we have to find other reasons to stick at the writing, day in day out. And if it is becoming too routine, too much like Groundhog Day when you hit your desk each morning, you have to find other ways to keep yourself (and your reader) interested.
When I teach writing workshops, a question I always ask is, “what are you going to give up for your writing?”That always gets the heart a-fluttering. Another I ask is, “what risks are you willing to take for your writing?” You can make a list of them and see just how far you can go. When you start to feel scared, it’s a good sign. When you feel terrified you know you are on the right track.
Apply the same question to your characters; raise the stakes, put them in situations you would never in a million years put yourself in. After all it’s just writing; you can always hit the delete button. Make sure you leave it a couple of days or weeks before you do. You never know .. you might have just found the key to your plot conundrum in that risk-it-all moment. Isn’t that what we crave; excitement, risk, pay off. Start practicing. Take a risk today! Do or say something you wouldn’t normally do. Have your characters do the same and watch the sparks fly!
Risk having the journey of a lifetime and join us (and PATTI SMITH) in Fes this June. Places still available! Check out the budget options for students, poets and attic novelists!
June 6-16: Sacred Song, Sacred Story, Fes, Morocco (in conjunction with The Fes Sacred Music Festival).
Nov 24 -30 : Mekong Meditations, Luang Prabang Laos. Find yourself in a writer’s heaven.
Jan 9-21, 2014: Moroccan Caravan. Fez, Tissardmine, Erg Chebbi, Marrakech – a 12 day desert journey.
Feb 2014, Temple Writing In Burma – Green tea and Buddha’s in a brave new land.
March 8-15, 2014. Breakthrough Writing in Fiji – Eat, Snorkle, Write, in Fiji’s hidden paradise.
(Cliff diver photo by Kfengler via Wikimedia)
Leave your writing fool behind
April fools day has been and gone and if you got caught out, we have three April workshops in Newtown designed to leave your writing fool behind.
Meditating On Memoir - April 18 – May 23, 6 weeks of thursday workshops, 1pm -3pm .Two prices : with or without Super Session. Early Bird ends March 25 Info here For life story writers and fiction writers alike, using sense memory to create powerful stories. Book here.
The Haiku Art of Petite Book Making - Saturday April 27, 11am -3pm. Mess around with handmade papers from Laos and Bali and recycled materials. Learn the art of oriental stitching and folding. Book here.
Scrapbook Your Way Into Story – Sunday April 28, 11am – 3pm Spend a few hours with fellow creatives messing around with paper, scissors, glue and scrap book to create an image field for your next creative project. Book here.
Please contact Jan before making your payment to check there is a place for you.
Fresh from our Fiji Writers Breakthrough Retreat:
Margo Lanagan award winning fantasy author says:
I came here for the companionship of other writers, and to shake my mind and my writing loose from their usual patterns by listening to other people’s stories and discussing their work and my own.
I found affirmation in what I was writing, and that lifting of spirits that happens when you are being transported by someone else’s writing, whether halting first draft or polished near done chapter. It’s not just the companionship of sitting around talking about the process; there’s a particular energy and community that gets generated by being present at the source, or present at the birth, or present at the breakthrough moment for someone else’s story.
I’ll take home a new chunk of writers network, a new set of memories of a different country( so, new fodder for story settings) and twenty pages of the story I came to work on.
Arienne Alphenaar, fiction writer, says:
I came here to get the writer in me to come out; to stop holding myself back and to decide whether to keep writing or to give it away for ever.
I take home an inner acceptance, a strengthened desire to write and a direction for the future. I’m taking home the key to unlocking my stories.
Deb Fleming, fantasy writer, says:
I take home with me a lot of great material. A sense of joy in the journey. It may be hard sometimes grinding out the words, but there doesn’t always have to be angst about it. I learned that it’s not a failing to find it difficult to write sometimes. In fact you need to go through the grindstone in order for things to get smooth. I learned how to persevere.
Caroline Reid, playwright, short story writer, says:
I found the meditation and writing exercises gave me a way to begin writing even on those days when I felt I had nothing to write.
I found multiple new ways of entering the work, that brought back a sense of play. It made writing so much more interesting and fun and also took away the inner critic so that I was free to write and trust my impulses.
I found camaraderie with other writers.
Johanne Shepherd, inspirational writer says:
I would like to thank you so much for the wonderful week at Daku resort. After struggling all week with my writing, I felt the flow on the morning of our departure when I awoke early and began writing in earnest. Since then I’ve been head down every spare minute and I now have 15,000 words, with lots of dialogue, fantasy and a touch of intrigue. What fun! I never thought I could do this, but for me the key was seeing others and realizing its not so difficult after all.
Coming Up
June 6-16: Sacred Song, Sacred Story, Fes, Morocco (in conjunction with The Fes Sacred Music Festival).
Oct 7-15: Backstage Bali (inc 5 days at Ubud Writers Festival).
Nov 24 -30 : Mekong Meditations Luang Prabang Laos.
Jan 9-21, 2014: Moroccan Caravan.
The inspiration to write
It didn’t take much for a group of intrepid writers to jump at the chance to join me at Burma’s inaugural Irrawaddy Literary Festival early this month. It must have been one of Asia’s best kept secrets when I heard about it in late November and I thought a couple of people might join me, but when nine writers took up the challenge I was thrilled.
Knowing festival patron and esteemed guest Aung San Suu Kyi would appear was inspiration enough. In what manner we didn’t know, as the festival program still hadn’t been released as we caught our planes.
The list of authors joining Daw Suu (as she is respectfully known in Burma) was impressive though: Jung Chang, Vikram Seth, Pascal Khoo Thwe, Caroline Courtauld, Jocelyn Dimbleby, Rory Stewart, Victor Chan, Rupert Arrowsmith, Rory Maclean and many more, plus a line up of 120 Burmese authors and scholars including Thant Myint U, U Thaw Kaung, Pe Myint and poets Pandora, Zeyar Lyn and Nyein Way.
We were not dissapointed and reported back to each other throughout Day 1, breathless with excitement at what we’d seen and heard. To be in the presence of writers whose work you have always admired is one thing, to catch the pearls of wisdom they offer about life and writing is another.
And then of course there are the surprises: like listening to George FitzHerbert talk about the Tibetan bard tradition, joining Burmese poets for a sunset poetry reading, meeting Burmese short story writers, some of whom, having been in and out of jail, joked that their writing was much more creative under censorship.
On Day 2 an hour before Aung San Suu Kyi’s session, we joined a long queue wound around the terrace of the Hotel Inya Lake, where the festival was held. When it dawned on us that despite our efforts of coming all this way, we wouldn’t get in, no-one stamped their feet or cried, but sat down outside and listened quietly to the broadcast talk. Our patience was rewarded when at its conclusion, Daw Suu came out especially to speak to us.
To be in her wise and graceful presence, knowing her past sacrifices and sensing the struggles ahead, was enough inspiration for a lifetime.
When she spoke of how important books and literature were to her during her 15 years of house arrest, we remembered why we must write. And when with characteristic selfless grace she said:
“Through books you learn about yourself. You find out your own troubles are nothing compared with others,” we knew once again we had found the inspiration to write.
The intrepid nine (and me makes ten), carried on to the plain of temples at Bagan to continue our retreat in earnest. Once more I found it such a privilege to listen to and work on writers’ stories, all so different, each so uniquely compelling in voice and content. As on all my trips, I was inspired and moved not just by the stories, but by the bravery of those telling them. It is no easy feat to put yourself on the line, as Daw Suu teaches us, but that is what writing ( and living a courageous life) demands.
View pics from the Burma trip on Flickr here.
We will go again next year, see link below, let me know if you want to come.
Booking Now
March 9-16: Fiji Island Writers Lab
April 15 – May 26: Meditating On Memoir, Sydney, a six week course, for memoir and fiction writers.
June 6-16: Sacred Song, Sacred Story, Fes, Morocco (in conjunction with The Fes Sacred Music Festival).
Oct 7-15: Backstage Bali (inc 5 days at Ubud Writers Festival).
Nov 24 -30 : Mekong Meditations Luang Prabang Laos.
Jan 9-21, 2014: Moroccan Caravan (with optional extra week).
Feb 2014, Temple Writing In Burma (dates to be confirmed).
Participant Comments
‘I’m a bit of a groupie for Jan’s workshop travels – I’ve been on a few of them now and I wait for the time when the place is not quite so stunning, the group not quite so stimulating, the whole experience not quite as mesmerising as the last, but it hasn’t happened yet. Jan has a sixth sense for choosing places at a prescient time that heightens each journey and her recent Burmese trip including the first Irrawaddy Literary Festival crowned by the presence of Aung San Suu Kyi was a one off.’ Jennifer Moore.
‘Often it’s the spontaneous decision that’s the best . And so it was to take Scarlett, my granddaughter, to Burma for Jan’s Writers’ Course. All the stars were aligned. A brilliant three days in Rangon at the Inaugural Irrewaddy Writers Festival with the added excitement of Aung San Suu Kyi – Live as Patron of the Festival. Stimulating guests like Vikram Seth. Then on to Bagan where our Course proper began. A fabulous group of eight women participated in the course. Jan planned it perfectly with time to write, time for sight-seeing and time for sharing feedback. Jan’s meditative technique was invaluable as was her encouragement to feel free to experiment. She was also tireless in making sure that we all had visas, were comfortably housed and that our writing received her individual attention. Her general knowledge of Myanmar, Buddhism and her love of food was a huge bonus. I had the extra delight of 4 days in Mandalay and Inle Lake – an unforgettable experience. Thank you Jan.” Hilary Linstead.
Finding the space to write
Sometimes you just have to get away, far away, to clear enough space around your head to let the writing in. We did this recently on our twelve day writing journey in Morocco. Starting in Fes we explored the fascinating medina of the old city, chasing our story ideas through its labyrinthine laneways.
Soon we were on the road again, crossing the snowy mid Atlas ranges, experiencing a change of landscape on the hour, from barren desert plain to fertile river valley.
But when we arrived at Cafe Tissardmine, an artist and writer’s retreat set up by artist Karen Hadfield, near the great Erg Chebbi sand dune, the space around us opened up, fell away, allowing the writing to pour in.
Sometimes you have to travel far way from your story to be able to look at it from a different angle. There were breakthroughs a-plenty as we worked intensively day by day, following the inspiration of the eightpointed star, mapping our stories from every angle.
As the night sky opened its vast brightness, filling with stars, so did the space of desert beckon us, as we travelled by camel further into the dunes and deeper into the centre of our work.
Sometimes you need to do this for your writing – take yourself far way from familiar routines and place yourself in a foriegn landscape. It always works, but in the desert it is always far more profound.
If you missed out this year don’t worry, we are going again in January 2014, so start putting your pennies in the jar and have a look at the latest pics from Moroccan Caravan here.
Coming Up
Feb 1-9 : Temple Writing in Burma (including Irrawaddy Writers Festival)
March 9-16: Fiji Island Writers Lab
April 15 – May 26: Meditating On Memoir, Sydney, a six week course, for memoir and fiction writers.
June 6-16: Sacred Song, Sacred Story, Fes, Morocco (in conjunction with The Fes Sacred Music Festival).
Oct 7-15: Backstage Bali (inc 5 days at Ubud Writers Festival).
Nov 24 -30 : Mekong Meditations Luang Prabang Laos.
Jan 9-21, 2014: Moroccan Caravan (with optional extra week).
