The Art Must Win

 It’s a kind of madness. My writing is. Could be your garden, your watercolors, the woodworking. We temper it. There’s the Poes, the Van Goghs, the Pressfields that don’t. Pressfield wrote out of a Chevy Van forsaking family. What to do with the gnawing?

Close friends and spouses eye us dubiously. Still, they lend support. Greater success, greater support—till you go over the edge. I started experimenting in high school. Constantly scribbling. Journaling to let the ideas out of my head. To put something down for when fame—and death—found me. Notes to girlfriends and poems about waterbeds (“Lie with me,” it whispers and it sounds funny for you see, it talks without springs.). For an “A” grade I wrote a poem a la Alice in Wonderland about an onion ring. Notebooks full, typewriter pounding then word processer purring.

That girl in the sundress, that man in the pink shirt with the stutter—would they fit into a story? All the while the wheels spin. Like the Roald Dahl poem made famous by Gene Wilder, “Yes, the danger must be growing, for the rowers keep on rowing, and they're certainly not showing, any signs that they are slowing.” If drugs or drinking enhances the writing; is it worth the try? You’ve never gone down that road? Never wanted to abandon it all to bourbon and writing? The monomania grips you. The question is what to do with it?

The art must win. Some suppress, some bury it, deny it, kill it. Never flourishing as artist, never seeing the great gift they can provide their audience. We don’t tamp the art down. In full (‘normal’) lives let the madness motivate us to discipline that the art might shine forth. In the words of Madeleine L’Engle, “A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist…. It is a joy to be allowed to be the servant of the work.”

Photo by Jené Stephaniuk on Unsplash

Pursuing Your Giftedness. We Got This!

 “Risk is essential. It’s scary. Every time I sit down and start the first page of a novel I am risking failure. We are encouraged in this world not to fail …  We are encouraged only to do that which we can be successful in. But things are accomplished only by our risk of failure. Writers will never do anything beyond the first thing unless they risk growing.”---Madeleine L’Engle

“I’m not good at this; Why bother?” Before butt hits the chair and fingers start typing the thought is there. All of us have heard the whisper. It’s not specific to writers. Every artist, counsellor and teacher is familiar with it. Comparing my craft to others makes it obvious I’m not the best. But I am unique. Is that a reason to do it? Why pursue art? Here are some convictions to quiet the clamor.

You may as well rip off one of my arms or legs. I can’t not write. This is a parameter not a proof. I’ve no desire to be the zoo gorilla flinging feces. You need not venture far to find samples of people without gifts that think they have them! I once wrote 50 Sydney of Australia* stories and sent them to a tour group anonymously! The burning is an indicator.

Hear what the voices outside your head are saying. And yes, could be everybody’s too nice to tell you the truth (see gorilla analogy). Are there objective comments? Early evidence of giftedness? (thanks for the encouragement mom!) All art connects the artist and the aesthete.

Art is (per L’Engle) the small stone tossed into a lake. We contribute beauty to a world in desperate need of it. The biblical picture of donating the widows mite; the talent invested and not buried. Sure, I want “fame and fortune and everything that goes with it.” Conversely though, my soul, and hopefully yours, is fed through every small pebble I skip out onto the water.

To quell the whisper I entertain these other voices. The shout of my writing heart. The satisfaction of the perfect skip of the stone on water; fulfillment of my giftedness. At small risk to self, beauty framed and displayed.

*superhero very loosely (the women especially) based on the Batman genre

Photo by Y S on Unsplash

Shooting For Fame Completely Misses The Mark

Chariots Of Fire from Anchorsaway Ministries on Vimeo.

I’m never going to be a famous writer.  But the idea of fame completely misses the mark.  It. Is. Not. Even. Close.  I won’t be famous because I won’t leave my life and live out of a car ( a la Steven Pressfield) with only essentials and a lap-top to spend all my time typing up stories and writing my first novel.  I won’t be an Annie Dillard stealing away to a cabin for a year to write.  So many authors have stories like this.  But I confuse the act for the art.  I miss the heart of the writer which is the reason they break away.  The art drives them.

My search for a Pressfield quote led me back to The War of Art.  I am reminded; the art is the most important thing.  I write to write.  I’ve been writing since junior high school (a poem was a great way to sway a girl to go out with you).  Through junior high and high school I kept a journal.  I am compelled to put pen to paper, a need to process and synthesize life with ink. 

The struggle is to make time for family, and bills, and all the life interruptions while still writing.  This is where I feel I’m not dedicated or disciplined enough.  I choose other things over writing.  One doesn’t become a famous writer without writing.

Its not about fame.  Its about creating.  God is a creator.  We are created in His image.  Using what we’re given blesses Him that gave it.  Through my writing others come alive!  The pursuit of fame is a dead end.  Pleasure is the right pursuit.  I am reminded of two quotes from the film, “Chariots of Fire.” 

Harold Abrahams: If I can't win, I won't run!Sybil Gordon: If you won't run, you can't win.”  
Eric Liddell: I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”  

I choose pleasure and hope you are lifted along as well.

NaNoWriMo- 3 Things I Learned

“Like a body rising to the surface from great watery depths so Kendall began to wake up,” is one of my favorite lines I wrote for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year.  The challenge is to write a small novel, 50,000 words or greater.  I wrote 25,000 words; my first attempt at a lengthy story.  My novella is called, “The Making of Clay,” and it follows Clay and his wife Kendall through a character arc involving fracking, kidnapping, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), guns, drugging, and a small deli.  In the process of writing for NaNoWriMo I learned (at least) 3 things.

           

Writing is hard work.  It’s a cliché for a reason.  On the one hand the process is engaging, engrossing, challenging and soul-stirring.  The meat of the process involves hammering out a story with plot, characters and setting---all that stuff we learned about in elementary school.  For myself that part of the process was the most difficult.  For example at one point I had all the characters established along with how they were connected to each other.  The problem was that the storyline necessitated them coming together.  I wrestled for days before I came up with a device that would motivate them to be in the same place at the same time.

My appreciation for professional writers greatly increased in this process.  As did my questions about how they write.  In a tome of say six-hundred pages; such as a Ken Follett novel,  do the writers keep a chart of characters physical traits: eye color, type of lips, body shape?  Do they map out intersections that characters will go through?  I can’t comprehend that they would keep all that info in their head. 

           

Anything can be found on the internet.  I investigated wheat farming and found that much of the world’s wheat is produced in China.  I researched rape drugs (ala Bill Cosby) and even found sites that described the best way to kick open a door.  A believable story involves some aspect of research whether it be via interview or internet. 

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art).”  My daughter said to me, “Dad, I feel like you and Glenn (a close friend) always choose these high goals and then you don’t finish them!”  The point I told her is to have the goal and go for it.  The sad thing would be to never dream the dream or set the lofty goal.  This process reaffirmed for me that anybody can write the novel, travel the world or paint the painting.  The problem is that most people don’t do the work.

I will participate in  NaNoWriMo again next year.  I’m shooting for 50,000 words.  I’ll dig in on November 1^st and push hard til the 30^th.  It was a disciplined challenge.  The process and fruit of the process were well worth it.  I’m already wrestling with story ideas.  The process continues---the work goes on.

            “This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” ---Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

           

           

            

Normal Vs. Radical Lifestyle: Battles of A Normal Guy

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching---

But can’t you hear the Wild---it’s calling you.

---Robert Service

I live in tension.  On one end I spend my days as the normal guy.  I go to work, enjoy my wife, delight in my daughter; pay bills, workout, go to church and try to accomplish my short list of goals.  Pushing against this everyday life is the challenge to live a radically good story.  I am not alone in this.  Sometimes I feel I go it alone.

Partly it’s the voices I struggle against.  I say these things to myself and accept them as truth.  What if they are lies?  I look at writers like Donald Miller and Stephen Pressfield and the voice says, “They are brilliant.  They are geniuses.  You are ‘a bear of little brain’ just like Winnie the Pooh.  Those writers are crazy and committed---or should be.  Myself, I am just a normal guy.  And what normal guys do is work hard, be good, play on weekends, make it to retirement then die.

I’m so freakin tired.  No wonder we live for our days off?  We drive to work and drive home; fight the traffic, schlep the children, catch a sit-com, kiss the wife and hit the pillow.  I want to find the energy to keep swimming upstream.  The vision stays alive but its ember and needs oxygen. 

Oxygen is difficult to find.  Yet we are wired to breathe it, wired not to settle for the air down here.  We are wired for more.  Settle into the Barcalounger and we die.  There’s that tension.  We are not content with status quo.  What’s the answer?

The Writer As Recluse

Anne Lamott says that, “Being a writer guarantees that you will spend too much time alone, and that as a result, your mind will begin to warp.”  I suspect that the writer is wired to be alone.  For instance Annie Dillard took up residence on an island and wrote, “Holy The Firm”.  For two weeks Philip Yancey “holed up in a Colorado cabin” to ponder the questions raised in “Disappointment With God.”  Do we get alone to fuel our writing or does being a writer make us comfortable being alone?

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Hemingway wrote, “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”  This is the struggle we as writers face.  Most obvious is the fact that we sit at the computer alone.  Sure my wife sits in the same room reading but I lose sight of everything but the flow of ideas in my head and the letters on the page.  Ideally we write uninterrupted and each idea is immediately set to ink.  The thoughts themselves spring best as they bubble up in quiet; at least that’s how it is with me. 

We aren't all a Steven Pressfield, leaving behind our families to live from our car with a typewriter so as to spend our days writing.  A healthy life is spent in community after all.  I’ve a wife and child I love and friends whose fellowship I enjoy.  Still one has to admit; though it took Pressfield seventeen years he’s cranked out twenty-one books including The Legend of Bagger Vance, Tides of War, The Virtues of War; A Novel of Alexander the Great and Gates of Fire.  There may be something to the ‘lonely life of the writer.’

For those like me that aren't as talented or as driven as a Pressfield or a Dillard there will be this ongoing struggle to live our lives out in fullness and develop depth to our art.  The battle for us will be to balance the beauties of normal life alongside the voice that ever calls us to write.  The skirmish for those that love and live with us will be to have more of us vs. loosing us to write.  For we write best alone but we live best in community.  I trust that somehow in that tension God will allow me to create my best pieces and share them with the world.

Discipline and Its Pursuit

“For the Lord GOD helps Me, Therefore, I am not disgraced;
Therefore, I have set My face like flint…”

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro.---The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

Diligence demands that she is the focus of our primary energies. Other suitors will call out to us; the barbeque, the television or the night out with friends all seem such simple activities. Friends whisper, “It’s only a night. You can go back to her tomorrow.” Tomorrow is full of different demands and frailty causes us to skip out on Diligence one more day. Then we find a month has gone by and the relationship has suffered. Diligence hasn’t brought forth what was promised---but the promise was broken and half-hearted from the outset.

The disciplined individual will be misunderstood. The man that sets aside an hour a day to seek God’s face is a man that culture can’t comprehend. A commitment to writing the blog or the novel, to hiking for health or training for Everest necessitates a focus alien to the culture. The man who spends sports season rooting from the armchair and the teen keen on X-Box fails to grasp both the pleasure and pain involved in such pursuit.

Diligence demands forethought. We must be willing to skip the night out or the once in a lifetime show at the Bowl. The pursuit of the art or physical excellence; the listening for the voice of God will entail some personal pain. The pain is part of the process if there is to be fulfillment as the end result. The reward will come later.

We must set our face toward the object of our desire. Jesus set his face like flint toward Jerusalem and the resultant fire spread outward and changed the world. We must strike steel against the flint of our art that it too may ignite many.

Inspiration and The Writing Process

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.  It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole.  Resistance is protean.  It will assume any form, if that's what it takes to decieve you.  It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nime-millimeter in your face like a stickup man.....Steven Pressfield, The War Of Art

I’m going to let you in on an uncomfortable little secret. Before I sit down to blog I consider quitting. My mind and my emotion tell me I shouldn’t write. A little voice reels off a list of reasons, “Almost everybody writes better than you. You won’t say anything original. It doesn’t make a difference. Who are you anyway that you think you have something to say?” That voice is really good at presenting reasons not to write. Pressfield calls this Resistance. His exhortation is to show up anyway. So I do.

When I set my butt onto the beat up blue office chair at my desk something amazing happens. Often I sit down with no idea of what I’m going to write on. I’ve settled on a maxim from Hemingway and I write down one true thing (H/t Glenn). This usually gets me started. I type and words that scaffold the ‘true thing’ flow from someplace. I do not say they flow from my brain because that’s not how it seems. They do pop into my brain but they seem to show up out of nowhere. Pressfield calls this ‘the muse,’ most agree that it’s some intersect between talent and spirit. To me it makes sense that a superior Creator would allow for or give His people the ability to create on a much smaller scale, as we are created in His image. However it works ideas and images flow through me and onto a Word document.

The piece begins to come together and the ideas keep coming. There are junctures where a phrase or concept will percolate and in my gut I know it works but logically to my mind it seems not right. In these instances I go with my gut believing that to be, again, some interface between spirit, my subconscious and my rational processes all working together…which leads to a deeper thought….

What must it have been like for the writers of the Bible to write under inspiration? It would be like my experience but on steroids. In that case they wrote God breathed scripture attested to by the Holy Spirit and formed in them by each step and experience that God had led them through. Theirs wasn’t an interface with self or (small s) spirit but with the Living God Himself. I can not imagine.

With my butt still plopped down in the big blue chair the process culminates in lashing together all the pieces and ropes to make one sturdy concise piece. This too seems otherworldly since I often fail to see the whole while working on each little section. Even the ending seems to come from a center that isn’t mine; mine are just the hands that tie it together to strengthen the piece into one.