winning the word lotto

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Cynthia G.

Journal THAT

A Guide to Writing

cynthia gregory

I started playing golf a couple of years ago, and found that I loved it. I love getting all Zen with the process, holding my stance, addressing the ball, letting everything else in the world fall away except my focus on that girlie pink golf ball at the end of my six iron. There is a simplicity to the sport, an elegance. Never mind it was invented by the same people who invented the caber toss, or that it was first created as a diversion during the great plague, hitting balls from one great mound of dead people to another. Seriously? Yes. But there you are: those Scots are a resourceful bunch, and I mean that in the most respectful way . Golf: walk in a park, strike a ball, walk some more. Golf has to be one of the more refined sports in the world. Unless you count water ballet.

Whether you’re talking about water ballet, golf, or writing; sport or art, there is one consistent truth: practice. Terra ballet or aqua ballet requires a laser focus on practicing the fundamentals so that in performance, the movements flow. I went to the golf course the other day for the first time in about two years (short romance; long story) and decided to hit some balls at the driving range. When I learned to golf, I got over the stand-in-one-place-and-hit-the-balls quickly. I wanted to play. But after a hiatus, it seemed wise to hit a bucket of balls, get used to the weight of the club, the swing of the hips, the tock of the ball when you hit it just right. Or contrarily, the wild flailing that occurs when you fail to focus, jerk your head up in time with your spastic swing, and miss the ball entirely (hoping no one else has noticed the putz with the bad swing trying to look like she meant to miss the ball). Practice, baby!

I mentioned the Bear Street Writers group and part of our weekly ritual before, but would like to delve into it with more detail now. What made our practice effective was that we adopted certain rules, and fooled them to the letter. We wrote each week at the same bat time, same bat channel. We never deviated from the prime directive: write, read, NO COMMENT. The no comment part was essential, I think, to helping build trust among us, that no matter how weak our similes, how badly mangled our metaphors, how hackneyed our prose, no one was allowed to comment. Though really, we were more likely to burst into spontaneous applause at some incredibly clever turn of phrase than one or more of us had plucked from the air like filaments of spider web, than to boo and hiss.

The process is ridiculously simple. Here it is in six easy steps:

Assemble your group of writers in a place where you will not be disturbed during the writing or the reading process. Have extra supplies handy: pens, pencils, plenty of paper so you won’t be forced to beg off your compatriots. If you are meeting in a café, do the polite thing and buy a tea or coffee or pastry and support your local business owner.
Once gathered, have everyone write a word or phrase on a slip of paper. Fold the paper into a tidy package and drop it into a hat or cup or ashtray or whatever.
Over the agreed period, select one slip of paper from the stash, and write for a subscribed amount of time. For instance, begin with fine minutes. On the next round write for ten minutes. Hitting the zenith, write for fifteen minutes, and then begin the countdown. The next drill is ten minutes, and at last, wrap your session with a five minute free-write.
You can use a stop watch or egg time, or alternate watcher of the watch. But you must keep time. You can’t know how important it is to have one person keeping track of time – so everyone else is free to write.
After each round, read your work aloud. Do not use funny voices, do not use accents, to not alternate volume and tempo for emphasis. The writing, the words, grammar, syntax, sentence structure must stand (or fall) on their own.
Under no circumstances under the moon and stars are you permitted to a) apologize or warn about your writing, or b) comment on someone else’s work. If you feel badly enough about your writing, skip your turn to read but understand that if you do this too often, you will be dis-invited from the group because it is a shared responsibility to stand nakedly before your community and read what you’ve created. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel worthy or good enough or saturated with talent, you signed up for this shindig, and now must exercise the real courage it takes to write and be public. Everyone else is shedding pretense and defense and about a million insecurities to participate in this process, so just screw up your best brave face and read. It won’t be nearly as bad as you think it will be. No giant, gaping maw will open and swallow you into the catacombs. No comets will burn out of the sky and drop on your head. All you do is write. And read. And you survive.

But you didn’t “just write.” You wrote. In a public place. With other sentient beings and then demonstrated the audacity to read those thoughts aloud, risking judgment, ridicule, persecution, love. And you were loved. How cool is that? The scary part is never what you think it is. And after you get this process down, you will know what it feels like to win the word lotto. The words will just come gushing out of you like the mother of all literary rivers. And you will know what it means to have written.

write here, write now

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Cynthia G.

Journal THAT

A Guide to Writing

cynthia gregory

Once upon a time I belonged to an amazing clutch of writers who met every week to explore writing through timed exercises. It was one of the best writing experiences I ever had, and it did more to develop my skills as a writer than almost anything I’ve done since. Twenty years later, I still miss meeting with that group of women. We shared a very important time, you might even say a sacred time, two hours each week, supporting one another and learning to develop our writing voices. Few things were allowed to interfere with our commitment to meet. We gathered faithfully each Friday at an outdoor table at the Bear Street Café in Orange County, California. We parked our individual cares at the door in order to be fully present and nakedly honest during our journaling session. We wrote furiously, read aloud with quaking voices, listened respectfully, and grew as writers.

Now that I live in another state, I maintain virtual relationships with several of these fabulous women, and we see each other when our travels coincide. But the thing that remains one of the greatest gifts of my life is that even though what we mainly have in common is our passion for writing – no matter what, we support each other. We celebrate each other’s success, and provide insightful comments to help make each other’s work the best it can be. Writing groups are an excellent way to develop as a writer. You can find or form a group by taking classes, getting to know other writers, and then meeting outside of the classroom setting to give yourself more honest writing time.

Back in the day when we met at Bear Street, we maintained a strict routine that goes like this: write nouns or phrases on a slip of paper, and drop them in a cup. One by one, the words are extracted from the cup, and the group collectively writes a timed exercise based on the prompt. After the time is up, we go around the table and read our work. At first, it isn’t easy. But in the right group you soon learn that it is a safe place to expose your heart. Writing is like a slice of your soul, a trickle of blood. You put it out there and your bravery is rewarded a million times over. One unbreakable rule is that no one is allowed to comment on anything anyone reads. Ever. This is not about opinions or feedback; it is about expression. But I will tell you one thing: our writing got stronger and better and more deeply creative by just listening to each other.

I think we secretly tried to out-compose each other, but the result was that we pushed each other to spiraling heights of creativity without so much as one critical word. It was amazing and illuminating and a huge lesson in the art of paying attention.

The exercises were sometimes fun; and just as often downright grueling. But the important thing was that it pushed us to write beyond “inspiration.” If you wait to write until you’re inspired, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter. By pushing yourself to write for a set amount of time about a set subject you learn to write beyond the boundaries of comfort and the results can be profound. Sometimes, as we filled out those slips of paper, one of us would throw in a ringer and add the words “one sentence.” This meant that when we wrote our journal entry, it has to be all one sentence.

This might sound about as hard as a second slice of your favorite chocolate cake, but it’s more challenging than that. To jettison periods flies in the face of every eighth grade grammar drill you ever sweated through. It’s right up there with cutting your own hair – or wearing your painting pants to church. It’s simply not done, my dear. But oh, the freedom! You can’t even know . Have you ever been hiking on a deserted mountain trail and taken off your shirt to expose your skin to all that pure alpine air? The freedom is exhilarating. . .it feels like skinny dipping in a pond of oxygen.

This is what eschewing periods can do for you: it can open a door into your essence that you didn’t know existed.

Now you are probably afraid that if you drop the period out of your writing it will be pure gibberish, but this simply isn’t true and in fact, I suggest it will open you up to possibilities or maybe an indulgence like a dirty little secret, oh say, like those grapes you sample before you buy them because you want to know if they’re really sweet even though you’re paying for them by the pound but it’s a big grocery store anyway not like that wonderful little farmers market where they hand out samples of pastry and cheese and rich, ripe strawberries, and oh the onions were so beautiful today that I almost bought a pound of them and put them in a vase they were just that purple and shiny with skin so tight you just wanted to lick it and I really really need to plan my grocery shopping a little better so that I can come to the farmers market and listen to the man playing the guitar and think about the million little ways we are connected and what really matters and a meal prepared with love is better than sex and if you don’t believe me just go out and rent Chocolat one more time and imagine what it would have all meant without a little slice of mango and chipotle and bitter, bitter chocolate.

See? Writing is about pushing borders and you will never get to where you want to be as a writer if you don’t do something you have never done before, at least once, the end.

be a tourist in your own life

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Cynthia G.

Journal THAT

A Guide to Writing

cynthia gregory

One way to journal is to forget everything you know about the place where you live. You learn to look at the world as if you just popped through a worm hole from some other verdant, vividly lush and distant planet. Instead of going about your regular routines, I bet you would begin to really see the world you inhabit.

How many times do you go about your business and then suddenly realize that you can’t remember the last ten minutes? That you had been on autopilot, with your body operating the family car, stopping at lights and pausing for pedestrians while your mind had zipped off to distant canyons and gullies of memory and illusion? You’ve arrived safely and no one was hurt, thank goodness, but what would happen if you were fully embodied, fully present, each day of your life? Would you see the world differently? My vote is yes.

It’s a fact that we do not cultivate the practice of notice very well. We are bombarded by television, radio, the Internet, literally thousands of messages a day and so it’s natural that we begin to shut down. In many cases, shutting down is a natural mechanism of survival. The trouble is, once you begin to shut out the ugly of the world, you inevitably begin to shut out the beautiful and remarkable and miraculous, too.

In Eastern traditions people are taught to breathe mindfully. They are taught to sit quietly and focus on their breath for five, ten, fifteen minutes or more. They are taught to let their thoughts go, like confetti in a balloon, to just float away. If minutes pass and you realize that you have got caught up in your thoughts again you simply put those thoughts in a balloon, release them, and return to focusing on your breath. This is a powerful practice, one I heartily advocate not only because it inevitably brings you to a state of poise and charm, but because when you then turn your attention to the world around you again, it looks fresh and clean and lit from within. This is an excellent perspective to bring to your journaling.

So instead of tuning the world out, set the dial on high and tune it in. Begin to notice things like what is the sound of your breath entering and exiting your body? Is it a soft hush or is it a turgid gasp? Listen to your breath for five minutes and then begin to notice the other sounds you’ve been filtering out. Do you hear the sound of warm air blowing through the vents to heat the room? The ticking of the mantle clock in the den? Can you distinguish between the sound of a car going by outside and a truck? Does the lamp you’re writing under emit a faint buzzing noise?

Put yourself on a notice diet: but notice more, not less. Go for a walk and pay attention. How many varieties of garden sculpture do your neighbor’s exhibit? What kinds of flowers are in bloom just now? Have you noticed the faces of the people waiting at the bus stop just as someone who has a story that is probably quite interesting if you had a chance to ask?

Almost no one I’ve ever talked to about it thought their story was interesting. But I’m telling you, their story is remarkable. They just stopped noticing the details. They forgot that their life was miraculous in about a million ways.

So where’s an idea: write about your life like you don’t own it. Write about last Christmas like you’re a staff writer at a big agency and you’re creating a storyboard for a movie that will be seen around the world and sent into space by powerful satellites and viewed by people who have no idea what Santa is about, and why people decorate trees with shiny glass orbs. Explain what your house looks like as if you were describing it to a blind person. Paint a picture with words to describe your dog to a boy who has never seen a dog in his life. Illustrate a journal entry about last night’s dinner with words so smoky and succulent that your nostrils twitch and your stomach yowls. Visit your local grocery store like you’re a tourist from Hungary. Have you ever noticed, really noticed how many different brands of bread there are? How many varieties of potato chips are sold? Go to your local Chamber of Commerce and ask for a directory of its members and marvel that people do the kinds of jobs they do. Lick the inside of your wrist and then sniff it to see what your breath smells like.

Stop living on auto-pilot. Cultivate an appreciation for each Now that shows up. Now, I reach for my water bottle and the cool liquid slides down my throat. Now, my fingers pull away the skin of an orange. Now, I call on inspiration and she takes my hand and we walk.

embrace the writing geek

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Cynthia G.

Journal THAT

A Guide to Writing

cynthia gregory

The practice of becoming a writing geek will show huge rewards almost immediately. If you have mastered the rock concert, the dinner in a five star eatery, the transcontinental journey – utterly and completely alone, there will be rewards, there just won’t be as much contrast because you already know what it’s like to push the far edge of discovery, to test your parts.

You can’t write a journal or anything else if you aren’t ready to go out on your own. It’s true that writing is a solitary act, but you must take your act on the road because there just ain’t enough material hidden away in the attic. You must get out, you must. If you need fortitude, and this is so delicious, grab a book. Going out alone is easy, if you carry a book with you. With a book you can go anywhere. A book is a passport. You can go anywhere with any book and you will be assumed a) intelligent, or b) important. Once you begin to carry a journal and a novel around with you as backup for solo social adventures, you become a writing geek. You have earned your membership card, and are almost a candidate for the secret geek decoder ring.

As a writing geek, I am imminently qualified to offer the warning signs that you too, are becoming a writing geek. These traits are not listed in any particular order of importance; your characteristics may have a remarkable quality all their own.

You carry your journal around with you everywhere, and when you don’t have it with you, your brain becomes stuffed to overflowing with provocative ideas.
You have a favorite style of pen you like to use because you like the way it feels moving across the page. You actually write so much that you can tell the difference between different kinds of pens, and you have one kind that you highly favor.
You will not, under any circumstances, let anyone ‘borrow’ your favorite pen. No sirree, no way.
Sometimes your favorite pen leaks and gives a great, huge blotch of blue stain over to your fingers that no amount liquid detergent can erase. These distinguishing marks afford you great satisfaction.
You take your journal everywhere. Did I already mention that? I mean seriously, everywhere.
You take notes like a mental patient. Standing in line at the grocery, waiting for your double deluxe non-fat extra dry, no-foam latte, sitting on a stone bench at the car wash. Everywhere.
You write in the morning, you write at night. You write fast and furiously, lazily and languidly; you write like you’re making your own life up as you record each savory verb, each tangy noun.
You dream of writing and may actually be jealous that your dream writer is a more resolute wordie than you.
You arrive early at the movies and sit in the semi-dark, jotting notes about the way the place smells, the distant sounds that penetrate the think walls between auditoriums, the ordinary quality of light.
You sit in public places writing, and ignore the sideways glances of strangers who imagine that you’re a journalist, traveling through exotic locations to record the behavior of native dwellers in their habitat.
You keep more than one journal at a time, separating journals by subject and/or reference to time, distinguished by a a shade of nuance that only you understand.
You have a voracious appetite for fiction and non-fiction, in no apparent order.
Words dance around your head like the little birds in the animated version of Snow White. They even dance on your fingers when bidden.
You copy entire phrases out of books you love or by poets whose babies you would birth if only you could.
Your journals are filled with your inspired works and the works of those who inspire you because imitation is the highest form of flattery and beside how else will you fake it until you make it, and it’s okay as long as credit is given where credit is due?
You have journals so precious they never leave a particular room in your house, much less the house itself. You have traveling journals – so tattered from wear of the smashed in handbags, book bags, grocery bags, briefcases, that they have grown soft around the edges. But inside, they are clear and crisp as a mountain stream.
You mercilessly shun bad writing of any kind, lest it taint your own art. You eschew bad television, bad movies, even bad music as a bummer influence on your writing vibe.
You elevate your skills by seeking the company of other, equally intense writing geeks.
You are bewitched by punctuation, even the magical, seductive, subtle nuance of the semi-colon.

So get out there you geek, you, and be a secret agent for journaling. Be a reporter, a spy, a great, groovy Kerouac of a rebel, and write publicly, proudly. People may think you’re important. People may think you’re sent by the government to record their covert movements. People may worship you as a pagan goddess sent to illuminate their meager lives. More likely, they will take no notice of you; being too preoccupied with their own epic lives. That’s okay. You’ve become one of the proud and prolific, you are: The Writing Geek.

the voyeur as writer

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Cynthia G.

JOURNAL THAT

a guide to writing

cynthia gregory

Journaling isn’t, as they say, rocket science. You don’t have to be especially creative or hold an advanced degree to do it.. The barest minimum skill you must own to successfully journal is to be an unrepentant voyeur. Oh sure, you can go at it with purpose, review your day and record your thoughts, deeds, wishes, regrets, passions, traffic backups, lunchroom gossip, career conundrums, or epic visions. This is all very useful but as you can see, you are limited to one specific experience: your own.

Have you ever run across a photo album at an antique or thrift store? I adore old photos; especially the black and white ones with the little scalloped edges. I love to study the faces, wonder what their lives were like, who they loved, what they cared about. Photos are so wonderful because they record a single, simple moment in time. There is a girl in a light-colored dress. There is a dog. A clapboard house. A black car. There are no add-ons. There are no subtractions. The camera capturing a scene is emotionally blank, it just records the picture that appears in the lens. The best journaling does this too.

What you can also do – and actually what I whole heartedly recommend that you try – is to observe the world you inhabit not as if you were the master of it, but as if you are a camera. No feelings of good or bad, right or wrong, but impersonally. It’s good practice to have a regular place to write, but it’s also good to mix it up a bit. If you’re not in the habit of eating alone, go to a restaurant and bring your journal. Is there a waterfront park that you are especially drawn to? Book yourself out for half a day and take your journal along for the ride. Take a ferry boat across the water, park yourself on a bench at the mall, tuck into a table at the newest, hippest coffee house, and bring your journal as your sole companion. Draw it out with a flourish. Observe your surroundings. Dip your head. Listen to your heartbeat for a minute, and then write. Write about the rich detail of the scene around you. No aspect is too small to notice, not one so big you can’t break it into pieces and focus on a part of it. Who is sitting around you? What are they eating, and how do they approach their food? Do they savor each flavor or do they shovel it in with gusto? Is that nanny with the toddler a gentle grandma, or is she a young immigrant with an interesting accent? Details.

We live in a voyeur culture. Strictly speaking, we’re not talking voyeur here in a lurid, creepy way. It used to be that a voyeur was a guy who skulked around and peered into ladies’ bedroom windows. Now everyone is famous, and everyone has a Facebook page. Privacy and solitude have become quaint ideas – artifacts of another century. In the age of reality shows, underwear models, celebrity wannabes, and You Tube, the very idea of privacy is an antique notion. It’s all about the details, baby! Not that I’m suggesting you sink so low as to reveal all. Not at all. I’m just saying look around. Notice the world around you. It’s bright, it’s wired, it’s delivered to you in dazzling color.

So become a literary voyeur. One who observes the delicious soup of life in order to enrich art. Become a human surveillance camera. You think that geezer who peers in through a strangers’ is looking for generalizations? Not close, my friend. He’s looking for the distinguishing marks: the moles, the birthmarks, the ear hairs. They – you – me, we’re looking for those details that are not-me. She is not me – in a hundred ways. You know the love poem even Bugs Bunny could recite: “how do I love thee, let me count the ways”? Don’t let that be an idle promise. List those 100 ways and make every one of them sweet and juicy and poignant.

Don’t just write from the surface, dive in. Write about what is remarkable in the world around you, like an unblinking camera. Go deep and observe acutely. Nothing is good or bad, it just is. Look, and really see. Let go of who you are; who you think you are. Let go of the photographer; be the camera. Allow the photograph.

having written

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Cynthia G.

JOURNAL THAT

a guide to writing

cynthia gregory

Everyone has heard the old chestnut to “write what you know about.” But, cherished friend, it ain’t that easy. We’ve also been told to “write like you talk” – and that’s just foolish. This kind of advice just leads to unrealistic expectations, not to mention bad syntax, sloppy verb conjugation, and mangled grammar. This is not to say that you should worry about any of these in your journal because journaling ought to be at the very least an exercise in jumping into the stream of consciousness with both feet and an inner tube.

Journaling is not for sissies. You have to really want it with a desire born so deep only a seismographer can find its source. You have to do it; you just do. And you don’t have to explain or justify it any more than you have to justify breathing. Great genius is born of desire. And once the desire to write is established, the next most important part is means; and the method of true genius is to journal by hand. You know, the old fashioned way. Pen. Paper. Good lighting, a comfortable chair. Not too comfortable, just saying.

Why, you may well ask, is it important to write by hand when its so much easier to tap away on three rows of electronic buttons? Isn’t that why God invented Steven Jobs? The answer is that true writing is a tactile experience and because you think differently when you have to push a pen over a rough sheet of reconstituted tree pulp and because the process of writing is refined – just a little – when you have to make the words exact and legible and pretty on the page with nerves and tissues and with the fine muscles of your fingers. Writing becomes a whole body experience when you do it by hand. Transcribe your thoughts later if you must, but start first with an unblemished piece of paper and fill it with observations, feelings, and a million details. Write. By. Hand.

Writing by hand is visceral and it connects with the most primitive parts of the brain; also the most elevated and elegant parts of the thinking apparatus. However, don’t think too much: just write. A mentor once said to me, “Don’t worry about how it all comes together. Just write. The story will take care of itself.”

So I pass this along to you: write. Just, write. And I really insist: by hand. So, you get cramps in your fingers; so what. You’ll get over it. And when you do, you will have written – and you feel like you climbed Kilimanjaro.

to be continued. . .