I’m often asked by some of the young people I visit: What is the hardest thing about writing? I like it when the question is “What is the hardest thing about writing” and not “What is the hardest thing about being a writer?” Being a “writer” is an ego-construction that we are tempted to bring out when we are sitting next to someone attractive in an airplane. The hardest (and most dangerous) thing about “being a writer” is seeing yourself as one, identifying yourself to yourself as a “writer”. It’s hard when this happens because of all the mental junk that this type of identification conjures and because wearing the writer’s hat has an effect (not a good one, I think) on your writing. So, now that we cleared that up! What’s the hardest thing about writing? The hardest thing about writing is pouring your heart and soul and effort into writing and having your work be deemed not worthy of publication. Everywhere I go I meet people who love to write, people who have been writing since they were children, people who feel they are called to write, but whose work has not been published despite their life-long attempts to do so. I’ve had the privilege of reading the work of some of these people. Sometimes, it is fairly obvious that the person is more interested in being a writer (see above) than in writing. There are works where the author clearly needs to practice more. (Yes, writing, like any other art requires repetition and mastery of form.) There are other cases where the work is stylistically perfect but something is missing, some soul, some spark is not there. Then there are those where you can just feel the author’s heart and passion, where you can see the author’s care for words and structure and everything that makes good writing, and still no publication despite repeated efforts. And I say to myself, “My gosh, this book is so much better than so many others floating out there in the published world.” I write a book that comes from the deepest part of myself. I do my best, my very best. I reflect for months, maybe years. I give the characters all the time to grow and become real in me. I revise. The story and the people in the story touches me. I work until there’s nothing more than I can change. I’ve taken the book as far as I can. I give it to my Beta readers (and to one or two Alphas!) They love it. They give me one or two suggestions which I make. I send it out. Days go by. Surprisingly, no one picks up the phone and says “You hit this one out the ball park! I found two typos we should fix, but otherwise it’s ready to go out.” Then it happens. Through letters or dry, despairing silence it hits you that this story that you wrung out with your heart’s blood with a life-time of learning, with all the gifts God gave you, this story does not click, does not resonate with, does not impress, does not economically or otherwise persuade the persons who have the power to publish it. This is the hardest thing about writing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are, of course, a number of consolations that I tell myself and others. Heartfelt consolations. “Look,” I say, “when you face your maker, you are not going to be asked why you didn’t publish. You’re going to be asked why you didn’t write. So keep writing, no matter what.” I pull out my Bhagavad Gita and point to the passages where Krishna urges Arjuna to give it all he has and then forget about the results. Do what you have to do, which includes trying your hardest to publish your work, but do it without anxiety knowing that you did your part, the rest is up to the Great Mystery that rescues and uses all our good deeds and good thoughts and puts them to use in ways unknown to us. So I recite all these words of comfort and still it hurts. There’s no way of avoiding the hurt. There’s no way. Keep trying? There’s no need to say this. If you like writing rather than being a writer, you’ll keep on writing. If only we would not let this “failure” affect us, damage who we are. If only we could cradle and succor our aspirations the way we do a tender child. If only we could see the goodness and the power that is there at the source of our writing and let it fill us with gratitude for its uniqueness, for the way it makes us see the world, for the compassion it brought to our life, for the lessons it has taught us, for the way its pain softened us and brought us closer to those who suffer much, so much more than us. If only we could. Take care of yourself my dear friend. The hardest thing is hard, but faith, hope and love are in the hard things.
September 29, 2012
February 23, 2012
Why Am I on This Planet?
That’s the question that I was asked by a young person recently. What would you say if you were asked this question by someone whose life depended on the honesty of your answer? All answers to this question are so . . . poor (it’s the best word I can come up with). Here’s what I struggled to say. I share this with you not without fear.
I don’t know where to start. The question is like a Zen Koan, so very complicated and so very simple. And like a Zen Koan the mistake we make is to look for an intellectual answer, something we can put in words and impress people with our brightness. Actually, the answer is more like an experience, a new way of seeing and it is one of those things that if you can name it, you probably don’t have it. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to try to communicate as best as possible this experience. Being a seeker (like you are) has consequences. One of the consequences is that if you don’t share what you find in some form or another you’re going to be unhappy.
What I have found is that there are times in my life when I experience something that is unique but also part of a greater whole shared with everyone and everything else in this universe (Maybe our question should be why are we in this universe?”). The best way I can describe this experience is that it is something like what I have experienced in other realms of life and which we call love. The experience is one of being loved and of loving. It is an inward and outward movement, like breathing or like the heart’s pull and push motion.
Why I was put in this planet is to realize completely and always that my true self is this ever flowing fountain of love. For some reason, realizing this full time is not easy. There’s another part of me that doesn’t want to live and operate out of this loving region. I’m not sure why this struggle was built into the system and why this other part exists at all. I have some clues, but that may have to be another e-mail if you’re still e-mailing me and I haven’t scared you off, which, trust me, is a real possibility. I don’t know you and I don’t know at what part of your journey you’re at, but the very fact that you are asking why tells me that you’ve started. The one thing I do know about the struggle to live in love is that for that to happen that other part of me has to surrender it’s claim to be number one and accept it’s role as a servant of the source, the true self, that I am.
So that realization of who I truly am is one side of the coin of why I’m on this planet. The other side of the coin is the expression of that realization in the particular circumstances of my life. This part is related to the “uniqueness” piece contained in the experience of love. This part has to do with discovering and using that uniqueness. How are you going to express the love that you truly are in a way that only you can express. Until not very long ago, I used to think that writing novels was my uniqueness, my gift, and it is only lately that I’ve discovered that my gift is teaching. Teaching includes writing young adult novels but it is broader than that. Teaching sounds pedantic, and preachy and even a little arrogant. You know, the teacher is “better” than the student, the teacher is supposed to know more than the student. But the kind of teaching I’m talking about requires a skill and a mastery that I am still working on, and most of all it requires humility. The good teacher is not just interested in filling the student’s head with information but in drawing out what is unique and universal in that student. Writing for me is the best tool for that and so I write for young people, about young people to walk with them as a fellow seeker, to humbly walk beside them toward the discovery of our true self and and the unique gift each one of us has received.
February 27, 2011
Prayer
Of all the things that are hard to write about, this is one of them. It is so intimate, so private. I bring it up because there is a connection between it and writing. I’m going to say that prayer is the movement of the heart towards Mystery. Mystery can encompass a personal, loving Someone, but it need not. I define prayer broadly so as to include as much as possible. Prayer flings you out in hope and roots you down in presence. In some form or another, conscious or unconscious, it is part of writing. I don’t know what else to call this reaching out to the unknown. I don’t know why anyone would do it except as some form of prayer. This filling in and emptying out, what else can it be? We think of the word “consecrate” as a religious term and so it is, but it is religious in a human sense, a universal sense. We consecrate, we make sacred, what we carve out of our daily hours for another’s sake. The sacred is hollowed out by intention and attention. Who do you write for? And in your heart of hearts you know that what you do is always a response. Why this sense that someone calls? Where does it come from? Then there is this: the writing itself is a search for some unknown that you never reach. There are discoveries along the way, but still, you never get there. You walk in darkness, one word at a time. Somehow you trust in a meaning you do not yet see. You have faith that it is all worthwhile. Because what else can you do? The work is your prayer.
