Today concludes a four-part series on a two-day writing workshop given by Richard Tarnas at Pacifica Graduate Institute last year. 1
the hardest part of the day
The hardest part of the day for the writer is that point near the beginning where you know you need to say something. The page is blank. The screen is blank. There is tremendous resistance to putting anything down; you’re like Sisyphus, only you can’t see the boulder or the mountain. This is where it takes a brave, self-reliant, determined act of will to write. It takes a choice to not do one more procrastinating thing that you must do. Push into it. Write the first sentence, the awkward sentence, the convoluted paragraph. As you’re writing, something happens after a certain amount of time has passed, and the argument begins to unfold; boldness has a certain type of grace to it. The angels come to help; clarity and creative energy start to flow.
begin now
In a quote often misattributed to Goethe, William Hutchinson Murray wrote:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
William Hutchinson Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.2
Faith only grows in darkness; it is the seed that requires the coldness and darkness of being underground that grows.
don’t rush into print
Get a lot of criticism from leaders in your field, if you think your first work is going to be really great. Let enough help and wisdom from others come to you before you publish. You want what you publish to be something you can be proud of ten years from now, without too much immaturity or inflation.
Tarnas mentioned Taylor Mali’s, “The Impotence of Proofreading,” to illustrate (what else?) the importance of proofreading–and a good editor!
write well
How do you know if what you write is good? Because it’s elevating. You know it’s good because you have read so much other work that is great. You are elevated by being with great works over and over again; this helps form your aesthetic judgment. You forge your judgment through wise reading in your field and in the larger cultural tradition; also you find those among your colleagues, friends, and community whom you trust to be discerning and to tell you the truth about your writing.
A lot of writing comes as a result of someone else’s writing; the other person’s writing is a catalyst for you. Hillman reads widely and responds through writing to that. He writes impassioned and even irritated responses to what he reads. He once went a few years without writing and told a friend, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to write again, because I’m not angry about anything.”
the role of structure
James Hillman wrote one of his books on scraps of paper and in small notes. Tarnas writes his books in bits and pieces, too, as do many other writers. Write daily and with dedication, but be aware that you will often end with a structure radically different from what you imagined.
Don’t try to solve all the problems of the overall structure of your book or essay at the beginning; don’t think you’ve got to figure it all out at the start. The work will unfold in ways you can’t anticipate. Just pay attention to what wants to come through now, at the given moment.
Hold your structure flexibly, loosely. It will likely change with the unfolding of your book. The beauty of creativity is that on some level, the book is already completed and you’re finding your way to it. It will have solved problems that you cannot anticipate at the beginning or in the middle of it. Just go with it and trust that it will unfold. Often this means writing a sentence, a paragraph, even a whole chapter, and later you will say, “Oh! That’s where that goes!” It will be like a missing puzzle piece fitting in. Trust the creative unconscious.
writing the mundane
When you’re writing in the later part of the day, you’ll do different kinds of writing, such as email or other correspondence. Make every bit of writing you do count. Email is a more challenging medium because it’s flat, making it difficult to convey what you mean to say.
People regularly think that their email sounds friendlier than it is; there is a great deal of research showing that email is not effective in terms of communication. You have to work even more to contextualize your words and make them explicitly clear in terms of feeling tone. Pay attention to making sure that it says what you want to say as well as you can, as clearly and as precisely as possible. This discipline will make your daily writing easier, because you have been sharpening the sword.
go where the energy is
In the moment of writing, go with where the energy is. Your delight in saying something, what unfolds most readily in you is a good place to begin. It primes the pump, and gets the waters flowing. If you leave what you actually feel like doing as a writer, but then some super-ego inside you says, “No, you should be doing this other thing or a harder part of the task,” then that could leave you stymied for hours. You may lose the magic moment of when something wanted to be said to you.
Tarnas calls this a writer’s version of Joseph Campbell’s ‘following your bliss.’ It’s a delightful, pleasurable energy that can be subtle, too. The muses are unpredictable, even capricious. When they appear with inspiration, he says, pay attention. Heed the inner calling, and follow the bliss. Don’t push it aside. Don’t dismiss the muses.
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
Carry a notebook or a means of recording your thoughts. The moment the creative idea presents itself is when you need to write it down. You’ll lose what you could have gotten had you written down the thought and attended to it. Something about writing it down draws forth more from that well.
Tarnas says it’s quite a process, “like making love, like a caress.”
This is a writer’s version of Joseph Campbell’s following your bliss. It is a kind of delight or pleasurable energy, even quite subtle. Inspiration can’t be called up on demand; the muses are extremely unpredictable. When they are present and available, don’t say, “I’d love to, but I want to do this first,” or “I’d love to, but I want to go do this instead, watch this program or go to this party.” Pay attention to that inner calling, your inner bliss. That’s why it’s also important to have your notebook at hand. The original force of creativity is at hand, so that’s when you need to write it down. You will also lose what you could have gotten had you actually written your thought down and attended to it. Something about writing it down draws forth more from that place. It’s quite a process, something like making love, like a caress.
As Nabokov said, “Caress the detail, the divine detail.”
endnotes
- Tarnas, Richard. The Art of Writing. Depth Video DVD. ↩︎
- von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust. Trans. John Anster. “Faust: A Dramatic Mystery,” Blackwood’s Magazine, 1835. ↩︎
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