A space of your own

When you’re trying to write, it’s critical to set aside a space of your own that has no distractions, a place where you can let your imagination roam free and take flight without fear of falling.

It’s a place where you can play without fearing criticism or judgment, a place where you can fail as many times as you need to fail without feeing embarrassment or shame.

It’s a place where you can simply sit, if you so choose, and watch clouds float by or listen to the gurgling of a stream or shut your eyes and dream or sleep, if that’s what you need to do.

It’s a place where there are no rules, where there’s nothing you have to do and nowhere you have to go, as my yoga teacher likes to remind us when we step on the mat to begin our class.

It’s a place where you can laugh or cry, open a door to the past and let memories flood the room without worrying about where you’re going or when you have to return home.

It’s a place where you can savor the sight of a blank page waiting for words.

It’s a place where you can sprout wings and fly from the present to the past or into the future, a place where your pen is like a magic key that can open the door to a world that you’ve never seen before.

All of us need to set aside time so we can spend a few minutes each day in these spaces to create the work that we need to create.

May you find the space you need today and in the days ahead to create the work you’re meant to bring into the world. 

Inside, Outside

In order to write, I need to go inside.

Not literally inside a room or a building but inside myself.

I spend weeks, months, and often years on a project learning how to do this, how to get past my outer self and step into the inner imaginary world that I'm trying to create.

It doesn't happen automatically. Even after years of writing, this process takes time and thought, and the willingness to go into solitude, to leave behind the outer world and the people in it and enter this inner space alone.

It’s in solitude, inside this inner space, that I can lower my guard. But to reach this space, I have to be willing (and able) to shed my shell, to meet life without any armor, without defenses, so that I can absorb life in all its variety without anything coming between life and my skin.

Learning to write without any defenses--no judgment, no expectations, no assumptions-- means learning to listen, the kind of listening that can occur only if I've managed to shed my armor in order to welcome life's trials and challenges and joys and triumphs without a protective shield. 

Whenever I leave this inner space and set foot outside, I am conscious of leaving this inside world and returning to the outside world, a world filled with conversations and tv and internet and college football games and NBA basketball and handymen re-tiling the shower and bank statements and publishers and agents and errands and food shopping, all the stuff of life.

It's always a strange feeling to emerge from this inner state of mind, to let go of the images and voices in my head, and find myself in this outer world again. It's like stepping from the darkness of a movie into the bright light outside the theater. 

Does every writer share this same demarcation line between inside and outside? And when you attend a writing conference, do you notice how it's harder to return to that inside world after spending time in the outside world?

Writing conferences like the Rutgers One-on-One Plus in New Brunswick NJ that I attended a few weeks ago offer wonderful ways of exploring the outside world of publishing and help writers make connections to the world inhabited by agents and editors who are always looking for new and compelling work.

But to create that work, a writer has to leave that world behind.

If we want to write, we need to shut the door to that world, cross over the line between outside and inside, and remove the armor that we had to put on in order to step into that world so that we can look inward again.

It's what we have to do as writers.

As much as we might enjoy spending time with others and delighting in life on the outside, if we want to write, we need to pull ourselves away --pull ourselves inside the theater of our imaginations—and listen closely for the words waiting inside us to be written.