One Continuous Mistake

Gail Sher

In One Continuous Mistake, Gail Sher describes the four noble truths for writers, they being:

Writers write.
Writing is a process. You don’t know what your writing will be until the end of the process. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.

She approaches writing as Zen practice by expressing the idea that having the “right” intention is the key to being a writer. By that she means having a regular practice of writing everyday and making a “single minded effort” to keep up the practice of writing. This single minded effort consists also of “plodding onward,” writing even when you don’t feel like it , are in a bad mood or outside distractions call you away from the practice.

Another reward of this effort is the deep satisfaction that comes from the regularity of the practice and the deep dissatisfaction that comes with abandoning it.

“I know a doctor who wishes he could teach literature. I know a lawyer who secretly writes children stories. I don’t know any writer, however, who hankers after an alternative profession. If you are a writer and you are writing, there may be problems but never doubt.”

Sher advocates that in order to be fully present during writing practice the peripheral aspects of the writer’s life must be managed properly so that there aren’t any distractions during the writing session. She explains that “right “ livelihood isn’t so much concerned with what a writer does for a living but what her “state of mind is able to cultivate while she does it.” A writer needs to find a job that supports her intention to write .

“While most writers understandably dream of making their living practicing their craft, there are advantages to making your living in other ways.” such as not be isolated and not being motivated by the money to get things completed but letting it find its own pace."

The bottom line to writing as practice is the ability to “be there, but out of the way”, to show up at the allotted time and allow the subconscious to flourish. The title of the book refers to the idea that writing, like life, is about learning from the inevitable mistakes and not allowing these mistakes to cause you to stop the practice. It's from these “mistakes” that the most exciting aspects and the richness of life emerge.

POST SCRIPT TO MAY'S PALABRA PURA

Once again, Palabra Pura brought Chicago audiences a vivid, sinuous, muscular night of compelling poetry in the forms of Adrian Castro and Febronio Zatarain. Starting with a lively pre-performance dinner at a local Cuban restaurant, the conversation ranged from Yoruba spiritual practice to Portuguese poets and literary cannon. Zatarain's opening set was a moving pastiche of musica romantica sung in a whiskey voice, bracketing a look back at love and loss.

The night's featured poet shared work that radiated a strong connection, to the divine, to a living and breathing Afro-Cuban sensibility. Adrian Castro was a consummate reader, commanding, yet conversational and compelling. His work, infused with imagery of the natural world and its healing properties reminds us of the gods in us and around us. Both readers brilliantly illustrated the poetry in music and the musicality of poetry.

Bravo, bravo!

Lisa Alvarado

Writing Without Teachers, What a Concept!

The basic philosophy of the book is that there is no ‘bad writing’ and that we have to give ourselves permission to write everything that is in our thoughts in order to get to the writing that has more focus and energy to it.

The first three sections of this book are set up to help anyone interested in writing to do just that. Section one is an explanation of how the freewriting exercises work. It's a simple method for generating writing by simply timing yourself for ten or twenty minutes, then writing as fast as you can without stopping. The key is to not think about what you're writing but to simply write. There are no rules to worry about. Grammar, spelling, syntax, logic are put on the back burner. You simply write what ever is on your mind as fast as you can until the time is up.

The reasoning behind this, according to Elbow, is that when we worry about whether we are doing it right we're in the process of editing and we don’t just edit out grammatical errors but also thoughts and feelings that could potentially enrich our writing. The writing time should be exclusively set aside for the the process of producing, an editing as a discrete function should only come later. Elbow suggests keeping a freewriting journal that consists of daily ten minute entries that he calls ‘mind samples. These ‘mind samples’ can then be combed over for ideas of what to further write about.

Here's more from Elbow himself:

"...look to see what words or passages seemed important -attracted energy or strength. Here is your cue what to write. Or think of a person, place, feeling, object, incident, or transaction that is important to you. Do one or two freewriting exercises while trying to hold it in mind. This procedure will suggest a subject and a direction."


In Chapter Two, Elbow describes the method he refers to as ‘Growing’. Using this model, I'd do a freewriting exercise on everything I know about a particular piece I'm working on for forty five minutes, writing everything that is in my head, without stopping. At the end of the forty five minutes I would then, for fifteen minutes re-read and extract the core of the writing: words, phrases, feelings, moods anything that ‘stuck its head out’ at me.

Then I'd jot down a summary of what all these essential things were telling me. Then, I'd do another forty five minute freewriting on this assertion, exploring whether I believed what came up or or not, but with the main focus being the same as in the first exercise, to write as fast as I could, and not edit myself.

When I was done, I would again sum up what I had just written and once again make an assertion about its main idea. For a third, and final forty five minutes, I would freewrite around this last assertion to explore any thing that might still be lurking in my mind. In the final hour I would again extract the essential elements and then do the task of editing what I had into a more coherent piece.

This has freed me up at some level from part of the anxiety I feel in initiating writing. Beginnings are always the hardest part, and like a lot of people, the panic at having to come up with words has left many a page and screen blank and left me feeling frustrated. The process of distilling and summarizing the underlying assumptions behind the writing has also strengthened my ownership of my own approach, my own aesthetic, and has helped me build a deeper gut-level confidence.

I’ve done a lot of freewriting in the past, but never explored it so deeply before. Most of my ‘finished’ writing has come from ‘internal cooking’, letting ideas percolate inside until some burst of inspiration caused me to sit and write them down and, many times, it’s a process of fits and starts. Elbow advocates the balance between external and internal 'cooking,' letting ideas and words intermingle to find new, richer ideas.

Wild Mind, Disciplined Life

Wild Mind, Living the Writer’s Life
Natalie Goldberg, Bantam


"Natalie Goldberg, author of the bestselling Writing Down The Bones, teaches a method of writing that can take you beyond craft to the true source of creative power: The mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive and hungry." ~~ from the publisher

Here is compassionate, practical, and often humorous advice about how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, how to make sentences come alive, and how to overcome procrastination and writer's block -- including more than thirty provocative "Try this" exercises to get your pen moving.

And here also is a larger vision of the writer's task: balancing daily responsibilities with a commitment to writing; knowing when to take risks as a writer and a human being; coming to terms with success and failure and loss; and learning self-acceptance -- both in life and art.

Wild Mind will change your way of writing. It may also change your life.

Goldberg is an advocate of timed writing exercises. She compares it to Zen practice and believes that the practice of writing can free your mind of clutter by getting past the stuck points of our thinking. The best way to get past these stuck points is to just write until the predetermined time is up, in this case I’ve set a timer for ten minutes and am now writing my annotation by using her exercise.

The effect that it's had on me is exhilarating. I write as fast as I can and try not to wait for the next word. I just write, and then the words string themselves along. The key is to keep doing it, eventually the thoughts come together, but at first, don't expect to write anything too deep. The truly deep stuff comes with years of practice, just like in Zen meditation. (Damn!)

Beginning Zen students don’t find enlightenment just because they sit for a few minutes and then are hit on the head with it. It takes a whole lifetime of trying to be present with every single breath, accepting that everything is impermanent. We all die, the seasons, the birds, the clouds, the earth; all pass from this existence into the next without anxiety. The stream flows past without ever containing the same water and doesn’t stop to worry that it will never be as full as it was yesterday. Doubts move quickly and only linger and double in size if we let them. Goldberg’s book has many inspiring stories to tell about committing oneself to the writer’s life. She talks about "failure" as part of the process of living, with the only true failure happening when we stop ourselves from reaching for the life that we long for.

Writing is many times a solitary practice that leaves little room for the comforts of regular support. Consistent comfort comes from the continual practice of writing and moving pass the stuck points and getting to it.

I know I could not have developed the work of the last few years without a willingness to let go and let it fly. What I continually remember and forget, and remember and forget, is that those feelings of isolation or loneliness, as intense as they may seem, are impermanent. It's something inescapable in the creative life, and are part of just being human. Remembering that frees me to tap into deeper knowledge, and when I'm lucky, it's that knowledge that emerges in the best work. I try to stay conscious, holding onto that thread, that hint of what's really real that gets drowned out by the buzz and blur of living.

Having said that, I’d like to spend the rest of this review enjoying the simple bright beauty of these exercises. One of my favorites asks that I sit and simply describe the place that I’m sitting in-- so I’ll do just that to give you a flavor of how this works. This resulted from a fifteen minute attempt...

It's a second floor apartment with hardwood floors and walls that slant as they reach the ceiling to accommodate the roof of the house. The plaster job on the walls is splotchy, a lot of patch up jobs perhaps from past leaks in the roof. There are four small rooms; a tiny bathroom that just fits an old bathtub, the kind with the claw feet and sides that curl up to form a lip. The shower curtain hangs from pipe rods fastened to the ceiling and the shower head rises from the water fixture like an afterthought.

The bathroom is tiny. When the door is closed, my knees just fit if I lean them to the left and avoid the paper roll. At the back door (which is the entrance way because the front door leads down steps that take you to and old porch that doesn’t have any steps to access them) there is the dining table with three of the four chairs around it because the kitchen is too small to sit comfortably in a foursome.

Next to the table is a small wooden door, about three tall, that closes off a crawl space for storing things. As of now, it is storing the boxes from the computer accessories. The actual computer box wouldn't fit passed the door because a sheet of pink insulation has been stapled to the inside of the little door making the entryway smaller. The computer box sits outside of the front door at the head of the stairs that leads to the old porch. Next to the three foot door are a set of shelves that I purchased from Target.

On the one with four shelves, there are coffee mugs, three sets of four: one large round blue set, one regular size cream color with a blue stripe around the lips and matching plates, plus a complete set of dinner plates, salad plates and bowls. The three shelf unit has a set of four wine glasses and a silverware tray on the top shelf and cookbooks on the bottom two shelves. There is a cream and sugar set made of ceramic pottery sitting on top of the books on the second shelf--they were a gift from friends who live in Madison, WI.

The kitchen sink sits along side the smaller shelf unit and metal cabinets perch over the sink. In front of the sink is a counter with a coffee maker and toaster and papier mache calaveras of La Catrina y El Catrín. Several of the figures are brides and grooms, skeletal, in wedding cake poses, in coffins. I tell each new visitor that they’re a wedding album.

And so it goes...if you haven't tried free writing, I strongly recommend this book.

# ISBN-10: 0712602917
# ISBN-13: 978-0712602914

Lisa Alvarado