Presentation at Towson University Saturday morning….Here’s the Powerpoint for attendees (and others!) :)

MWP MetaJournals

Last week, while on vacation, I spent one mid-morning watching tv with my younger two children. They channel-surfed between PBS, the Disney Channel, and the Cartoon Network with the navigation of a highly trained professional. I was extremely impressed with their efficient use of commercial time to 1) find other shows not on commercial break, 2) sharpen their persuasive skills for toys they just had to have (toys that, conveniently, were being advertised at the same time), or 3) declare their absolute state of starvation, only to be remedied by the resumption of colorful characters bouncing around the screen, resolving this and that.

One show, though, struck me as having a rather thoughtful script writer. I am going to guess that it was Clifford, the Big Red Dog, but I cannot be certain. The main storyline was this: well-balanced happy Character A kept a journal, while not-as-happy Character B did not. Character B stole a peek at Character B’s journal and was mortified by what she read. Offended and upset, she shunned her friend for most of the show.

When the show reached the final showdown between A and B, happy Character A calmly explained that journal writing was good for so many things, but it was never meant for anybody else’s eyes. Character A said (and I paraphrase loosely): writing is a way of cleansing the mind and clearing the path for understanding. It’s not that what is written is the truth in another person’s eyes, or even my eyes, for that matter. It is the pathway to the truth. To interpret it literally is, quite honestly, impossible.

And then Character A suggested to B that she try it; it might help her better understand the powers of writing.

To imagine all of this was promoted in a show about a big red dog! Bravo, anonymous script writer. Bravo.

In nearly every workshop or presentation I give on writing, I ask my participants if they write daily. The responses, for the most part, fall into three categories:

• I don’t have time
• I don’t have anything to write about
• I don’t want others to read what I am writing

Now, these responses are from people who have chosen to take my workshops. There is initiative there to make a change; my heart shudders when I think about all of the people out there who believe so deeply in one of these three reasons that they don’t even venture out to see what this writing “thing” is all about.

I Don’t Have Time

I am always surprised by how much time I make for myself when there is desire or motivation to do something. The key is to stop looking for that big block of time that you might have once had when you were younger and responsible for little more than making your own breakfast and making your own bed. Big blocks of anything don’t exist in my life; I’ve stopped believing that great things will happen only if I had those big blocks. Instead, I piece my time together, and throughout the day it accumulates. Get up an hour earlier to write. Carry around a small notebook (Moleskine makes great little notebooks that slip in a shirt pocket, but an index card works just as well). Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) suggests that you make a date with yourself at least twice a week, at 2-hour clips, to write, among other things. Time exists for things that matter to you; if you want to write, then write. It’s that simple.

I Don’t Have Anything To Write About

You are blessed with a unique set of eyes with which you see this world, a mind to interpret what you see, and a heart to feel the good as much as the bad. The combination of those three makes you like no other human being, alive or dead, and therefore gives you the right to shout out what you see, think, and feel. We sell ourselves short by thinking we do not lead extraordinary lives, but our very existence is extraordinary. When my father died in 1989, I bought my mother a journal and encouraged her to write through the pain and the hurt. She resisted at first, struggling with what to write about. She kept thinking there was some audience beyond herself that she needed to impress. Once she started writing for no one but her, she could not stop. She lived for 18 years after my father died, and she filled twice as many journals in that time. She wanted me to take care of them and, someday, cull the deeper thoughts and “do something” with them. When I started reading through her words, I discovered the depth of her love for family, her thoughts on politics, and her strong belief in living fully for the day. My mother was once a cafeteria worker, a mother of five, a widow, and a shopaholic. It didn’t stop her from viewing the world in a wonderfully unique way. Once she discovered that she didn’t have to worry about impressing anybody, she wrote authentically.

I Don’t Want Others To Read What I’m Writing

Believe me, like the character on Clifford, none of us do. Reading other people’s journal writing makes no sense, because it’s not meant for anybody but the writer. It is raw, unpolished, imperfect, experimental, parenthetical, extreme, ridiculous, among about a thousand other things. Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards to discourage peeping journal readers. Others have resorted to codes, symbols, and hieroglyphs to ensure nobody reads their thoughts. I don’t worry about it. The benefits far outweigh the risks. Just keep the journal close to you, and surround yourself with people who respect you (and your writing). Encourage them to write as well. You might want to take the time to explain to your loved ones who might be tempted to steal a peek that you are not writing about them, or about their lives. You’re writing about yours, and for that reason alone, you ask that they respect your privacy.

We all find ourselves in situations where we want to do things but don’t follow through. I suggest you do this: go out and buy the cheapest spiral notebook you can find (most places have them for 25 cents or less in their back-to-school sales) and write about why you don’t write. Make that date with yourself and put the pen to the pulp. Write to an audience of one–yourself–and give yourself the right and the opportunity to rip those pages out and throw them away when your date is over. Chances are you won’t, but make the promise anyway. The important thing is to write–just for you.

On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and a few other friends at Harvard created Facebook for the purpose of staying in close touch with other friends. Two years later, Zuckerberg created the ever-popular (and oft-criticized) NewsFeed to allow Friends the chance to know what other friends were doing, and with whom.

In that same year, 2006, Jack Dorsey created Twitter, which has gained equal acclaim and criticism for being the Internet’s premeire SMS feed.

Now, in 2009, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace have over 200 million users in the US alone. While many use these information feeds and social networks for entertainment or personal purposes, it is no surprise that the immediacy of this technology is proving to be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the connections established (and re-established) as well as the ability to reach a large number of people instantaneously is unprecedented.

On the other, the inability to hold thy tongue and forego “publishing” emotional outbursts and reactions makes those 200 million vulnerable to scrutiny and condemnation long after the fists have stopped pounding the keyboards and the tears have been wiped away. Just this past week, several major writers have come under fire for reacting to reviews and other published comments on their work.

Most recently is Alain de Botton’s reaction to a review he received in the New York Times for his book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. The review, written by Caleb Crain, accuses de Botton as mocking the people he interviewed for the book.

de Botton returned the favor by posting a comment on Crain’s blog that, according to the UK’s Telegraph, stated, “I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. . . .I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude” (see the full article here).

de Botton’s comments have created a strong reaction on Twitter and throughout the various social networking communities. de Botton has one thing right, in my opinion: the review of his book will certainly hurt his sales in the US, but not because of Crain’s words as much as his own reaction to the review. de Botton did himself a far greater disservice by not having the patience and strength to resist the immediate counterstrike available at our fingertips, 24/7.

It is unfortunate that writers, who are trained in using restraint in sharing their work until they have painstakingly worked through revisions and edits of their manuscripts, cannot apply the same discipline when it comes to keeping their emotions in check.

Just last year, Stephen King used his website and other means to blast Noel Sheppard’s one-line comment about King’s public statement in April, “I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s not as bright.”

A month later, Sheppard posted the quote in his column with the statement, “Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen” following King’s words.

King launched an e-attack against Sheppard, and the international coverage diminished King’s credibility, even among some of his most loyal readers. The media frenzy traveled fast and furiously along Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds, instantaneously bringing those 200 million followers in the debate, with many of them forming instant opinions and judgments.

Writers, especially, need to be cognizant of how the immediacy of newsfeeds can change the direction of their careers in a matter of, well, a few tweets. There is no doubt that Facebook and other social networks have shattered the lines separating the personal and professional sides of our lives; the new question is: will the inability to accept those shattered lines be the ultimate downfall of our literary giants?

I am in my fifth week of working out more consistently than I have in years, perhaps even a decade. In 1992, I lost nearly 40 pounds as I worked on the final stages of my first novel. The writing was some of the best I’ve ever done, before and since, and I stayed in that “writer’s zone” months after the book was finished.

In 1999, I became a vegan and exercised regularly. The combination of those two things helped me drop 80 pounds and cut my cholesterol levels in half. It was the last time I heard my doctor tell me I was in better shape than most my age.

I was also writing like crazy. I was leading workshops in writing all around the region, publishing pieces on writing in newsletters and other writing publications, I had my own monthly column in a family magazine, and I was journaling 2-3 times a day.

When I stopped my vegan ways and dust gathered on the treadmill, my writing slowed down. My daybook entries were filled with frustration, and most of my writing beyond my daybook was weak and sporadic, at best.

But now, in just these first five weeks of resuming a disciplined diet and exercise regimen, my writing is taking off again. My daybook entries are entirely about the art and craft of writing, and my mind is clear in solving many of the problems I faced with my stories, even just weeks ago.

In a nutshell, I’m seeing a direct correlation between establishing an exercise regimen and becoming a better, more disciplined writer.

I did a quick search online to see if there were any established studies confirming my belief, but no matter how I typed in the search words and phrases, I came up with absolutely nothing, even searching through ERIC.

The generic cause-effect relationships seem obvious to me: If I lose weight and exercise, then

• my self-esteem will improve dramatically;
• I will manage my time more efficiently;
• I will interact more with others in social circles and communities; and
• I will be less afraid of success (and failure) and will take greater risks to see projects through to completion.

Easily, each of these generic benefits can be applied nicely to writing.

• If my self-esteem improves, I will feel better and more confident about my writing.
• If I manage my time more efficiently, then I will have more time to complete the tasks i begin.
• If I interact more with others, then I will gain more experiences to use in my writing, as well as have opportunities to share my ideas and gain valuable feedback.
• If I take greater risks, I will discover more genuinely who I am as a writer and what I am capable of accomplishing.

So even if there aren’t any studies out there (if you know of any, though, do let me know), I have to believe that my grad school mentor, Philip Gerard, got it right when he told us: Working on a book is like running a marathon. You have to practice hard every day at it and be in the best shape of your life. If you don’t, you’ll never get the damn thing finished.

I think you are right, Philip. Thanks for the lasting advice. I can now visualize that published book just on the other side of that FINISH banner at the end of the race. . . .

Today is only the fifth day of summer break, and I cannot remember another summer when I’ve been out of the starting gate so ahead of where I thought I would be, less than a week following the last day of school. You see, I took the time in May, believe it or not, to devise a summer writing schedule.

Here was the plan.

Beginning on Saturday, June 20, and every day following, I would place my writing above all else.

Now, that sounds pretty selfish, especially when you have three kids you are raising, and your wife does not get the benefit of having nine consecutive weeks off. Still, I was unwilling to compromise.

So how did I make it work?

I did not change the morning alarm on my Blackberry, and I made writing the first thing I did every day. That means, by 5 a.m., exactly 13 minutes after my alarm (“Early Riser”) brings me out of my sleep, the coffee is already brewing, and I am downstairs, in my writing sanctuary (never mind the washer/dryer, old refrigerator, and cat litter box), selecting the morning’s playlist (based on what I am writing), and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. This gives me, at the very least, a solid 2-hour block in which to work on my writing.

That’s been my schedule since June 20, and It has paid off enormously.

Today, though, was a bonus payday. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

I am quite humbled by the fact that I am 43 and I continue to learn things about myself on a daily–sometimes hourly–basis. The funny thing is (and I do mean in the strictest of ha-ha ways) that the things I am learning have been common knowledge, I am sure of it, among my closest of friends for many, many years.

Yesterday, I learned that my inner critic (aka the judge, the censor, the watcher-at-the-gates…we all have one) feasts off of my emotions and seizes each and every opportunity to lash out against me when it senses the slightest instability in my emotions or in my wellness. I actually heard my critic launching its barrage of insults yesterday afternoon when I felt a little stuffed from a magnificent lunch.

The critic started in about my weight, how nobody could respect somebody so out of shape. It quickly followed with an onslaught of “who do you think you are” attacks, and within a minute or two, I started doubting my abilities as a writer, as a father, as a human being.

Crazy!

I stopped that critic in mid-attack, slammed on the mental breaks, and started laughing at the realization of how much control I’ve given to the inner critic. For years–maybe even my whole life, I have allowed that critic to persuade me that I am incapable of doing some of the things that I set out to do.

What’s most crazy about this is that I teach my writing students about the inner critic and how it can stop you from being a better writer. But what I realized yesterday is that the inner critic does not limit itself to attacking my writing (this I have known for years); my inner critic is, well, unbiased when it comes to matters worth judging. Apparently, every aspect of who I am is fair game.

Or should I say….was fair game.

After that brief but powerful epiphany yesterday, I feel more empowered than ever to reach my goals. Traditionally, I would have had a relapse (such a loaded word, but I think appropriate here) and would have had to rebalance myself in other ways (diet, writing, exercise). But just recognizing the inner critic and sending it away (realizing its existence was more than enough to send it off, scowling) was enough to resume my focus for my writing, my teaching, my living.

I often cite this quote (it’s one of my favorites) from Henry David Thoreau. But when I do, I  apply it to others and the ways in which they let the smallest things in life slow them down:

“Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”

I imagine my critic sitting in a tree above me, tossing little nutshells and mosquito wings in my path, watching me be bothered and derailed so easily. It’s nice to know that, now in my life as much as in my writing, I’ve got my critic under my control, and I won’t be so quick to let it invade my focus or my emotions.

Give It A Try…

Take a moment and think about who the critic is within you. How often does it make an appearance and try to derail you and take you away from success? Where are the cracks in your armor that it seeks out? Write about those weaknesses and then, with the utmost authority, draft a letter to your critic, informing it that you are now in control, and it will be summoned when you need it, and not a minute more.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.

I’ve been having some rather candid conversations with fellow writers in Towson and around town about the importance of authentic writing. Repeatedly, the same troubling concern rises to the primary focus of these discussions: we do not wish to offend, yet we know that, invariably, we will.

Offend whom, you ask?

There’s a book that I refer to often. It’s called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. The message is simple and can be found in most “good book” manuals, from the bible to the cub scout handbook. But the simplicity with which this book is written makes the agreements themselves accessible.

One of the four agreements is to never take anything personally.

Good advice for both readers and writers, I think, when the latter is doing his job authentically.

On the reader’s end, authentic writing from a son, a father, a spouse, a friend, a colleague can be terribly enlightening, but often it brings contradictions to that “role” that the writer has played with that reader over, perhaps, many years. It took me a very long time to see my parents as individuals; they shared only a fraction of their true personalities to us when we were children. By no means did they not live authentically; I believe that, on many levels, they did, especially Mom. But I didn’t care about any of that; I didn’t know any of that even existed, to be honest with you.

It did exist, though. Despite my every attempt to keep them in their roles as Mom and Dad, much to my astonishment, they were Eileen and Charles, individuals, to the rest of the world.

I imagine it is the same for you, in some manner.

For those of us who do not write, it’s not as big a deal, I think. There are fewer chances for us to bare our true souls, put them on the stage for all to see in black and white. We find convenient ways to practice a “don’t ask, don’t tell” lifestyle where we keep our authentic selves from emerging.

We’re good. We play the game and, for the most part, choose our translucent masks from the jar by the door, where they mingle a little shyly with the others of varying thickness. We even find ourselves believing that we are the mask. It shows up in our actions, our words, our beliefs. We buy into these pop-fad crises of global warming and rush to buy our hybrid cars suddenly to save the earth. We are made to feel so good, our egos soothed by our acts, doing our part, living the good, right life.

I don’t mean to mock or offend. I don’t. It is me. This is my belief and it’s not about any one of you. It’s what I feel, what I think, what I believe. When I read that you are looking for hybrid choices, I applaud your efforts and want to know if you are free for a barbecue next Thursday. That’s your choice to make. That’s your place in this world, right here, right now.

I do not mean to offend. I mean to tell you what I think. Please, do not take it personally.

But as writers, we do this as well–we anticipate criticism that we will most assuredly take personally, and then censor our writing to make our audience members nod their head in agreement. That’s what we’re after, isn’t it? Approval? We sacrifice authenticity for approval. We sacrifice genuine honesty to protect the ones we love and to preserve the images they hold of us, near and dear to their hearts.

God bless us all for our efforts.

That’s not authentic, though. As writers, we’re faced with this dilemma on a daily basis. My blog is public. But my blog entries are personal. Do I wish to be conservative? Refrain from posting opinions that might offend? Censor my thoughts and censor who I am to save the ones I love from potential hurt because they choose to take my words personally?

We can’t help it, I know. It’s what we do all day long. We are trained away from seeing and sharing all things with love; we grow suspicious, concerned, filtering all that comes in, and all that goes out.

We are becoming the first generation of artificial intelligence (AI) life forms, higher-level thinking zombies, if you will, who walk through their days and surf in their nights playing the lifelong game of PC-Perfect individuals, never wishing to offend, never wishing to misunderstand.

So many of us wish to do neither. And yet, we do, and in so doing we feel terribly sad that our efforts to live and write authentically have somehow missed their mark.

Never take anything personally.

I know. I see myself doing it even now. It’s hard. So hard, when you know that your audience sees you in so many different roles: teacher, husband, father, friend, colleague. They bring those filters to my words and gasp, shake their heads, and maybe even do a little re-read to make sure they got it all right the first time.

Never before, though, have we lived such transparent lives for all our communities to see us so vividly. We’re all making choices, however conscious (or not) those choices may be. Some are retreating, staying low, under the public radar and wrapping themselves around popular causes to insulate them from the dangers of authentic living. It’s a genuine and noble drive, for sure. There’s not much awareness happening at this level, I believe; rather, there is much awareness happening for everything but who they truly are as individuals.

We’ve had our arts programs stripped out of our schools, we have our students practicing the art of hoop writing with perfecting the tricky craft of composing brief and extended constructed responses. We are regurgitating numbers and facts and formulas and processes at lightning speeds so that school systems can boast when the annual reports are published in the morning papers: We are in the XXth Percentile; we have many reasons to celebrate. So many other schools did horribly worse. Hoorah for us.

We are not celebrating the successes of our individual students in their desperate attempts to hold on to their individuality; we celebrate that, collectively, we play a better game of jump rope than half the other schools on our block.

When they graduate, those expert jump-ropers, what do they know of authenticity? Of individuality?

Perhaps that is why so many of them flock wildly to Facebook for a little breathing room, a little sanity where they can be a little dangerous with their words, say what’s really on their minds, and feel like they’re living authentically in a bead of water that rests precariously on a dewy leaf, overlooking the rushing waters of domestication and conformity.

Look, I know it’s hard. We both need to work on it, Reader and Writer. But maybe, just maybe, if each of us comes to the page with a little sensibility, doing our best to take none of this personally, then maybe, perchance, we will not have offended the other.

Just maybe.

By all measures, I had a writer’s day.I woke up early (but not as early as I intended; still, 6 a.m. did the trick) and hit the daybook immediately, followed by a full hour of watercolors before the family started to stir. I’ve been experimenting with various blends, wet and dry brushes, all with bringing a new look to some of the photography I’ve been doing recently.

I’m having trouble with watercolor daisies, though. I’m determined to get that just exactly right by the end of the week. I’ve got a note card I want to send off, but it would be wrong to send with naturally challenged daisies…

Then it was off to the pool for about 90 minutes as my two daughters had swim lessons and my son built sand castles in the world’s most wonderful sandbox. This is a miniature playground built around a tall oak, which provides plenty of shade for the kids as they bulldoze, construct, sift, and dream away the morning hours. I brought along Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind to re-re-read and do some of the exercises. The first one, where she talks about ten-minute writes where you begin with one starter (“I remember”) and then take its opposite for the next ten-minute write (“I don’t remember”). Wow….

I decided to write about remembering the first time I actually workshopped a piece of writing. I remembered getting ready for the workshop, working on that first draft at my dining room table, pressing hard on that sheet of looseleaf with my blue-Bic ballpoint, pushing the ink into the paper so that, when I was finished, I had to peel the paper from the wood, where the indentations from my writing stuck to the tabletop. That was a fun write to do this morning.

Then I turned the tables and did my “I don’t remember” piece about that very same topic, and what I discovered was that I don’t remember the actual workshop. I don’t remember getting peer feedback, although I knew there must have been some. That was the whole purpose of the activity. That led me to think about my own students and the workshops we do. What do they really get out of them? Do they remember them at all?

That led me to this: What do my students really need to remember at all when I teach them writing?

I turned the page and I drafted the first chapter of what I believe to be the essentials to good writing. This chapter focused on Audience and the reasons why we resist writing in the first place. Where it ends up eventually, I don’t know. But I did cherish the thought of having these 90-minute writing sessions to focus on these chapters. 30 days at the pool means 30 chapters….

When I returned home, I shared Natalie Goldberg’s “rules of writing” with my summer grad students on our online forum, and when we went back to the pool for our own afternoon of swimming, I enjoyed reading more Goldberg, some Lamott, and a little Thich Nhat Hanh.

After dinner, I went through my old writing files and found a few gems that I can rework. I also found some email correspondence with old friends. Some of it saddened me, as much has changed over the last eight years. But much of the words reminded me of all I have to be thankful for in the present, and that was a nice surprise.

I end the night blogging, thinking about my friends out there who may be writing in their blogs, too, doing our best to stay a little sane, support each other, and express love in any way we know how.

I hope you had a good day, too. There’s so much to be grateful for…

(photo taken at Loch Raven Reservoir, Nikon D70s, 18-55mm Nikkor lens, 6/19/08)

Earlier this month I picked up Shady Grove by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, a 13-track compilation of acoustic folk songs and ballads that Jerry and David did between 1990 and 1995. A few days ago, I heard Jerry and David do “Bag’s Groove, Take 1″ on the Dead channel on Sirius Radio, and they took me to new levels with a certain spirit and soul that seeped through the speakers and spoke to me. There was a real depth to what they were doing, and I could sense that their playing was something more than two guys getting together to strum guitars and banjos and mandolins. A purpose existed for this music.

I was right. When I bought Shady Grove, I immediately turned to the liner notes, and John Cohen, one of the original members of the New Lost City Ramblers, wrote poignantly about the passion each had for the ballad, the folk song that captured a deeper, more genuine spirit of the traditions of American music. On separate coasts in the early sixties, Jerry and David pursued relentlessly that soul of America.

This got me thinking. What do I pursue?

Some of us pursue the origins of our ancestry; others pursue our collections, ranging from Dead concerts to stamps to first editions; still others pursue that return to innocence, our spiritual births, our origins of balance. More than a few psychologists have professed that we live our adult lives striving to return to our Querencia, or home, the place that brings us complete and unconditional comfort and the feeling of invincibility.

I wonder if Thoreau had this last group in mind when he wrote about the “masses of men leading lives of quiet desperation” in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” from his Walden collection of essays.

I can probably say that any one of these (except for the collecting of stamps) fits me to some extent, at various times in my life/year/month/day/moment. But that’s just the problem. I flit back and forth between them so frequently that none of them get the attention necessary to sustain momentum, growth, progress toward that specific pursuit.

That’s why I feel pretty good about the choices I’ve made this new year. I’m pursuing the yoga and the walking with an ever-strong pace that is strengthening with each passing day, where I can say I was committed to this small choice. And there’s this virtual walk I’m planning for this spring/summer; that will be fun.

But is that enough? Maybe I am the desperate man Thoreau speaks of when I believe that I should be pursuing something greater, something nobler.

I dig deep, deep down inside of me to see what I pursue. . . .

Remove the road blocks, the obstacles, the lesson plans and endless (but wonderful) family commitments, and I’m left with this:

I pursue the absolute, pure expression, through writing and various art media, of who I am as an artist, as an individual, so that I may leave my mark on the world as I witnessed it, lived it, wished it to be.

I write this with confidence because I had a piece of writing rejected recently, and at first, I was upset about the rejection. The feedback was that the work of fiction “crossed over” into the nonfiction genre and made it too essay-ish. Initially, I thought about how I might change it, what I might do to make it more amenable to this specific audience. In other words: what can I do to satisfy my audience?

I’ve written previously that the good writer is sensitive to her audience and needs to consider what is expected of the piece. But we can’t apply that general statement to all writing. In my work with developing the concept of the metalogical writer, I’ve created a graphic where the focus of the piece can shift to the author, the audience, or the piece itself. As authors, we decide what is best for our piece.

If you were to graph out all of my published works, I am sure you’ll find that the large majority of them were for somebody else, some audience I whored myself to with my writing. Very, very few of the pieces I’ve had published were Pure Rus: uncensored, with a focus on me and a style that I wanted for that particular piece for my particular reasons. These are the pieces that were written with what I would call “artistic intent,” where the artist knows her voice so well that she isn’t afraid to use it, even if it goes against the mainstream genres. When we do this with intent–use our voice and select our form–we need to make critical decisions about how far we will compromise our gift to give the masses what they say they want.

This rejection made me smile. I write for me first now. There was undeniable “artistic intent” when I wrote that piece, simply because that is the style I chose to connect with my readers. So now, I’m going back to Cold Rock and a few other pieces, revise the parts that I think need work, and then publish it. I’m no longer compromising who I am as an artist for the sake of giving the masses more of what they are already getting.

If I can’t pursue my individuality in this fog of conformity, then what’s the sense of writing anything at all? If I can’t claim my voice, my soul in my work, what’s the difference between these pieces and the work I’ve whored in the past?

Really, folks. Pursue you. Whether it’s in your photography, your yoga, your writing, your anything: pursue you fully in all that you do. It’s the only way to let the world know that you were really here at all.

My “check engine” light came on last Thursday, but it wasn’t like I was surprised. A few months ago I heard a report on NPR that the 3 months/3,000 miles mantra for changing your oil no longer applied to cars that had been made in the last 5 to 7 years. Apparently, cars are built now to need oil changes every 10,000 to 16,000 miles. Good news for most; bad news for me. That’s how long I usually waited to get my oil changed when I was following the  3,000-mile rule. With the new guidelines, I’ve created my own mathematical equivalent. Up until a few days ago, I thought I’d be able to make it to at least 30,000 miles before I would have to change my oil again.

Um….I was incorrect.

So, I’ll take care of this in the days ahead, probably even Monday or Wednesday. I know that, once I get a fresh few pints of oil running through my car’s veins, every little thing’s gonna be all right.

My own internal “check muse” light came on a few days ago, as it had been too long since I took the time to stop by the Bean Hollow in historic Ellicott City and share good coffee and even better words with a good friend. We’ve been meeting on a monthly basis, for the most part, and sharing our own work as well as what we’ve experienced in attending conferences and readings as well as entering competitions.

A month is a good span of time where each of us is fueled by the discussion, but for reasons mostly beyond our control, we’ve had to cancel several of our monthly meetings. In fact, I believe the last time we met was at the end of the school year last June. Far too long to deprive the muse of such nourishment.

We met for only 90 minutes or so yesterday. He talked of his recent successes with his playwriting, not to mention the completion of his first novel; I talked of my shift in focus from giving to taking, so that I may give a little differently in the months and years to come. After two glasses of iced tea, one mug of black Hollow Blend coffee, and a bagel with hummus (let’s not forget the yummy vegan chocolate espresso chip cookie, too), we both left filled in a different way, motivated to carry on another month with our writing, our vehicle that gets us creatively from one place to another, perhaps a little more safely than we realize.

Personally, it’s more than all that it ever seems to be on the surface when we are there and right after we leave. In the bigger picture, it’s the muse maintenance I need to keep going with the belief that there is a genuine, inherent importance in what I am doing. It’s not about fame, or success, or recognition or even acceptance; it’s about moving on to the next piece that needs to be born, shared, experienced, so that the next idea, the next work, can have its time, too.