Running With the Wolves
Georgia O'Keefe 'Pelvis'So how was your weekend? We've just had half term here - aren't you glad to see sunshine, first flowers bursting through, and to be able to get outside with the kids? This has been a long, cold winter for everyone - but (maybe it's the first hint of Spring), I've written my first new work in a while (the synopsis for book four). I don't do well with being cooped up, and as we've said before there is nothing like getting out and just walking to free your mind and thoughts. This Loengard photograph of Georgia O'Keefe is an old favourite - that sense of space and tranquility, and the mountains remind me of Valencia. Writing book one, this was the kind of daily walk I took through the orange groves, running with my own 'wolf' (Faber, the husky x malamute).
As we were chatting over a bedtime book the other night, the six year old asked me 'What if this is all dreams?' She's becoming increasingly curious about the world and universe around her -maybe you remember growing aware of concepts like 'eternity' and 'infinity'. It's difficult to know what to answer isn't it, when huge questions you are still grappling with yourself are thrown at you? I freely admit to not knowing sometimes, and tell her I'm still learning too. I read the other day about a fantastic enterprise in London, the School of Life. Isn't the idea of a shop trading in ideas, concepts, wisdom, wonderful? As they say, 'too cool for school' - and there's an 'Idle Parenting Masterclass' on March 4th that sounds rather appealing. Now more than ever we need spaces like this to step back and assess where we are.
I've been re-reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes' groundbreaking 'Women Who Run With the Wolves' (she is a Jungian psychoanalyst, writer and poet, and it's the most thought provoking book on the female psyche out there). It's interesting coming back to it after a ten year hiatus - and it's one of those books that if it's read at night gives you the most extraordinary dreams. Something that stuck with me last night is the idea of a Life/Death/Life cycle. When you look at the world around you, a dying back is all part of growing stronger. Life's a perpetual cycle - perhaps as humans we expect too much, a permanent upward trajectory. In time maybe we'll all look back at these strange times as a 'correction' rather than the tragedy everyone is declaring it to be.
The idea of a Life/death/life cycle is equally applicable to your writing. The first draft of book three has been finished for a month or so, but it's resting before rewriting. You may work through periods of intense creative energy, but it is perfectly natural (and desirable), to step back for a while and get some perspective. Immediately after completing any creative work, you are too close to it to judge it and see its flaws. The one thing I'd suggest is don't lose the momentum of writing - keep turning up at your desk. Write something different - short stories, articles, blog posts, then return to it with fresh eyes. I read Philip Roth's 'Everyman' on a long journey to Suffolk over half term (courtesy of the Wiggles weaving their magic on the back seat passengers). At one point he said: 'amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.' Let your book rest, but keep going to work.
Estes talks a great deal about the wild woman collecting 'bones' - rebuilding and creating a strong, whole, creature from scattered fragments - you can take this in terms of a person's psyche, or in terms of a creative work. This has been a strange, tough year - the best description I heard recently for what I'm working through is seeing a crystal bowl shattered into a thousand pieces. You can rebuild the bowl, but it takes time. The important thing is to keep moving, one foot, one word, one piece at a time - that's the way to build or rebuild anything, whether it's a life or a book. What is a novel if not beautiful fragments of story and character brought together and made whole? As Natalie Goldberg's famous book declared, it begins by 'Writing Down the Bones'.
TODAY'S PROMPT: Estes once wrote: "Some people mistake being loving for being a sap. Quite the contrary, the most loving people are often the most fierce and the most acutely armed for battle... for they care about preserving and protecting poetry, symphonic song, ideas, the elements, creatures, inventions, hopes and dreams, dances and holiness". The best lives, and books, are a journey. Life as you know it - Death (crisis) - new (wiser) life. In the course of a lifetime we go through this cycle countless times, hopefully learning more each time and gaining a greater sense of our own strength. In the course of a story, your protagonist will probably only face one great crisis and its aftershocks before the end of the tale. Today, why not think about some of the crises you have survived and reflect on the lessons you learned, the strength you gained. It's easy to forget when we're mired down in the day to day challenges we are all facing how much strength we have within us, and our ability to survive. Why not think of how you can weave the lessons you have learned in the school of life into your work, and help your readers along their journey?
