It's like dreaming

Each morning I listen to the silence

and hope to hear a voice and words

I've never heard before.

I listen with my ears

but, really, it's a different

kind of listening

that requires you to open

your heart, to hear

what you're afraid to say

or what you don't yet know

you need to say.

It's your voice and not your voice,

it's your hand holding the pen

and writing down the words

on the page and not your hand.

You hear something, a voice

beyond words. (Are there even 

words to describe it?)

It's like being bathed in light

or immersed in water

and you feel like you're floating

on the page as words 

emerge from your pen

and you see the letters

taking shape and the words

forming on the page

even before the words form

in your mind--as if

you are witnessing your thoughts

coming into being,

what you think and feel

unknown until you can

see the words floating 

in front of you.

It's like dreaming,

and when you open

your eyes the dream vanishes,

and you see instead

a page filled with the words 

you collected from a world

before it disappeared.

You hear a voice

You hear a voice inside your head,

Often, it's just a whisper, barely a sound at all.

But, still, you can hear a voice.

And you realize that you have a choice.

You can choose to listen to the voice and follow it wherever it leads you, or you can decide to ignore it and pretend you didn't hear a thing.

If you follow this voice, you may discover something about yourself that you fear or dislike. 

Or you might discover a new world waiting for you that you've never seen before, or you might see the world you know in a new way. 

You might meet people who you've never met before. 

Or you might meet people who you know and who are disguised as strangers.

If you ignore the voice, you risk losing your ability to hear such a voice in the future. 

So, when a voice speaks to you, whispering in your ear to catch your attention, you can choose to listen or not. 

You can follow the voice wherever it might lead you.

Or you can pretend you don't hear a thing and remain wherever you are ...  rooted in silence.

It's your choice.

It's that time of year

It's that time of year.

Close your eyes. 

Sleep.

Let yourself dream.

You need to trust the process 

of rebirth, of dormancy, 

of silence turning into words

when the words are ready 

to appear.

You need to stop writing

in order to keep writing,

to close your journal so

you can open it again,

to put down your pen

so you can pick it up 

after you've had a chance

to rest,

revived, 

restored.

You need to feel the rhythm 

of life without holding a pen 

in your hand, to meet life 

head on, bare-handed, 

without protection,

vulnerable.

You need to let each day 

sink into you, let the world 

turn, let yourself accept

whatever comes with gratitude 

for where you are, 

for who you are.

A week from now 

you can pick up 

your pen to express 

in words what you 

can't say 

without it.

For now let yourself 

embrace the silence.

Be still.

Listen to your heart.

Open your ears to the wind.

Let your heart open, too, 

so you can sail in

whatever direction

your spirit takes you 

in the new year.

It's quiet this morning

Poems are hiding lately--

playing hide-and-seek

over the past few weeks--

unwilling to answer

the door when I knock.

Are they sleeping

or just shy?

Too tired to play

or busy working 

on a secret project?

The page is lonely and

sad without words

running across it today, 

words chasing words 

playing tag and peek-a-boo

laughter and cries of glee

rising from the page.

It's quiet this morning

the page wrapped in silence

the words still asleep

hibernating 

waiting, perhaps, 

for spring 

Savor the silence

Take a moment to breathe.
Just wait before touching
your pen to the page

and let the blankness
of the empty journal
wash over you

like the waves of the sea,
like the silence of an empty house,
like the pause between breaths.

Just listen for a moment to
how the white page, not yet
filled with words,

sounds like walking through
falling snow, and not a single
footprint marks a path

and the possibilities
of where you might go
are endless.

Take a moment to breathe,
to savor the silence of
the empty page.

Just wait before touching
your pen to the page,
and then begin...

End of Year Musings

It’s the end of the year and who can count how many hours we’ve sat at our desks waiting for words while the minutes passed by and our lives slipped off in directions that we could never have predicted?

Who can count the number of words or sentences or stanzas that we’ve written or the journal pages onto which we’ve poured our hearts?

Each year December comes like this, dark and dreary, with freezing rain and sleeting snow and a sense of doubt and hopelessness—and yes, with regrets, too—and then the sun makes its turn, and days begin to lengthen again as the earth sails into a new year.

And just as surely as the return of the sun and the dispersal of darkness, our words come, too—if we believe in the process and in ourselves—shyly, at first, perhaps, but they come again with a fresh urgency and need, seeping up out of the thawing ground, pouring forth like a melting stream onto a new page.

If we can hold onto our belief through the darkness and doldrums and frigid days of silence, if we can trust in this mysterious process to bring us what we need when we need it, if we can keep sitting at our desks and doing our work, waiting however long we might need to wait, then we can say we have written without regrets.

We’ve done our best.

And that is all anyone can ask.

It doesn’t matter whether we write fiction or poetry, memoirs or investigative journalism, short stories or novels, journal entries, notes on scraps of paper, forgotten thoughts in the margins of books that we've loved over the past year.

What matters is that we are still writing, still using pen and paper to explore the world and our life, still curious about what we might be thinking and eager to find out (thanks to the words that we put on paper) what thoughts are swirling through our heads, what emotions are hiding in our hearts.

It takes a stubborn determination and unrelenting perseverance to write.

Some writers may give up after only a few minutes of facing a blank page, the critical voices in our heads growing louder and louder until the voices become unbearable and we can’t stand to hear them anymore and have to push away from the desk and shout “Enough!” 

But other writers may just glare at the blank page and say, “Really? You think you can scare me? You think you can win?” And we stand up and go into the kitchen and brew a fresh pot of coffee, or steal a cookie from the cookie jar, and return to our desks and wait for the words to come.

And we wait for as long as we need to wait believing that patience is stronger than impatience and that words are stronger than silence.

Thanks to all for stopping by Wordswimmer this past year. Your presence in the water has helped keep me afloat more than you can know. May the the year ahead bring you a sweet-flowing river of words and stories.

The Only Thing That Matters

I sent off another story yesterday. Now I’m wondering if I sent it to the right place. It’s how the self-doubt starts.

In a few weeks, if I don’t receive a response, the question will shift in a subtle way. It will become something very different. It will turn into “Was it ready to send out?" And then “Did I need to do more work on it?”

And all of a sudden, like a trap door dropping beneath my feet when I least expect it, the question will become: “Was it good enough?” Meaning, of course: “Am I good enough?”

Maybe each of us asks this question, or maybe it’s only me questioning my own worth as a writer.

Even after years of writing, I notice, I find myself still seeking reassurance from an external source that what I do is valid, that the words that I put down on the page are legitimate. It’s as if I need to hear a voice say, “Yes, the words are fine. You are good enough.”

In the end, though, writing isn’t a question of whether anybody else thinks we’re good enough or that our words are fine. Rather, it’s about determining just how much writing means to us, regardless of how others might view our work.

If your writing doesn’t thrill you or make you happy or move you, well, you don’t need to ask anyone. You know. And then it's a question of why it's not pleasing you... or what you can do to make it more thrilling, more moving. 

Sure, sometimes you may make a mistake. You may think your story is ready to share before it’s actually ready to go out into the world. That’s okay. We all make that mistake.

Does your story still pull you into it?

If the answer is yes! then keep working on it. Send it out again.

But if it has lost its pull, put it aside. Work on something else. Let the story simmer on a back burner. Wait for it to cook a little more. See how it develops.

You have to trust your opinion, not someone else’s, to decide when your work is ready to send out. It’s your choice. The fate of your work rests in your hands.

Try to remember this: silence—even rejection—is not always about you or your work.

Ask yourself how you can sustain your work in the face of silence and rejection. How can you keep writing?

Sometimes it’s just learning to ignore the silence and critical voices.

Sometimes it's just this: keep your hand moving across the page.

In the end, with or without recognition, with or without readers, you’ll write because of one reason: your need to write.

That’s the only thing that matters, really, and the only reason to keep writing.

Lessons of Silence

Earlier this week, as I was finishing Adeline Yen Mah’s book, Watching the Tree, a collection of insights into Chinese culture and philosophy which includes her own reflections on happiness, tradition, and spiritual wisdom, I came to a chapter titled “Lessons of Silence.”

In this chapter Yen Mah examines her relationship to silence and the lessons that it has taught her over the years, recalling a conversation that she had years earlier with her grandfather about one of the scrolls that hung on the wall above his bed.

On that scroll were four words–“ The lessons of silence”–written by Lao Zi in the Tao Te Ching.

More than fifty years after her grandfather suggested that one day she might discover the importance of silence, she reflects on what silence has taught her:

“Writing has obliged me to spend long hours searching for those voices which we never hear except when our inner self is at peace and everything else is suspended.”

And this:

“...it seems to me as if our youngsters are fearful of stillness, and are attempting to avoid certain emotions that only descend with the sound of silence.”

And this:

“...sometimes, in the hush late at night or with the dew of early dawn, there suddenly unfolds a special element of serenity. And it is often at these moments that we ask ourselves whether we are hearing in the silence the whispers of our innermost being.”

The whispers of our innermost being.

Many years after her conversation with her grandfather, standing in the silent stillness that she finds atop the summit of a sacred mountain in China, Yen Mah comes across the words that she first saw as a child on her grandfather’s wall.

They are accompanied by another row of words which are new to her: “The lessons of silence are peerless and are unmatched by anything else under Heaven.”

These words help her listen more closely to “the majestic hush of the early morning air...” and to understand in a startling revelation “... what my Ye Ye was trying to say so many years ago.”

In our work, as Yen Mah reminds us, we must search diligently for silence rather than seek ways to escape it if we are to hear the whispers of our innermost being.

For more information about Adeline Yen Mah and her work, visit:
http://www.adelineyenmah.com/index2.html

To read interviews with her, visit:
http://www.writerswrite.com/childrens/yenma.htm
http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=26575&displayType=interview

Streams of Silence

"I have discovered that all of our unhappiness derives from one single source--not being able to sit quietly in a room."--Blaise Pascal, 17th century French philospher

How do you respond to streams of silence in your writing life?

Does silence feel like a wall that keeps you from getting at words, a barrier standing in the way of your stories?

Or is silence more like a blank canvas waiting for colors, or, perhaps, like the pause before an orchestra bursts into a cacophony of sound?

On my pre-dawn strolls, ambling past dark houses and star-lit lakes before the date palm trees and longleaf pines stand out like India-ink silhouettes against the reddish horizon, I feel as if I can swim in silence forever.

But less than an hour later, sitting at my desk to write, the silence is a painful reminder of what I don't know, and it takes all of my inner-strength to remain in my chair and not bolt for another cup of coffee or reach for the phone or flick on the radio to keep from drowning in silence.

It's strange how silence can feel so liberating on my walks ... yet so isolating when I'm staring at a blank screen or piece of paper, alone at my desk, waiting for words.

Silence can feel at times as thick and impenetrable as the walls of a prison cell.

What writer hasn't felt this silence like an enormous weight pressing down on his or her chest...a painful reminder of his isolation, a thick fog cutting her off from the rest of the world?

"Silence," writes Christina Feldman in Silence: How to Find Inner Peace in a Busy World, "can be both heaven and hell."

Feldman offers important insights into the nature of silence that can benefit writers as we struggle in our own streams of silence.

How we respond to silence, she suggests, can determine how each of us gains access (or fails to gain access) to our inner worlds.

"Silence is a way of being deeply honest with ourselves," writes Feldman. "We long for this inner wholeness and self-understanding, yet fear being overwhelmed by the fears and uncertainties that may be revealed within us. We fear that silence may open the door to insecurities that we have locked away throughout our lives."

What is it about silence that we fear?

Perhaps in our minds silence means that we have nothing to say. (And if that's true, if we have nothing to say, then perhaps in silence, without words to rescue us, we fear our own worthlessness?)

Or perhaps silence reminds us of times when whatever words we used to fill the silence were not heard or valued.

Or it might raise long-buried memories of what we learned (long ago) that we could not say and what we feel we are (still) not permitted to say?

It requires enormous courage to face silence, according to Feldman.

For some, she notes, silence means invisibility and recalls memories of childhood when speaking without permission may have been cause for punishment.

Silence may prove dangerous to face for many of us precisely because of these hidden memories, suggests Feldman. Yet she encourages us to enter into silence to find words.

It's our inner silence, Feldman writes, that empowers us to speak the truths that need to be spoken.

She encourages us to explore the unknown silence and, most importantly, to learn from it.

On this morning's walk, as the sky lightened and a reddish glow appeared in the east, I became aware of sounds: the chirp of crickets; the call of a mockingbird; the hum of an air-conditioner; the distant thrumming of car tires on I-75; the scrape of my sneakers on the sidewalk; the simple sound of taking in a breath and releasing it.

These sounds within the silence reminded me of Feldman's observation:

"In silence we are present with just what this moment offers and are invited to explore the richness of that invitation. We also come to realize how, for much of our time, we have grown accustomed to living in the past or the future, seeking for something we have so far been unable to find in the present."

Now, facing the day's silence at my desk, I want to understand what it is about silence that makes me uncomfortable and how I might "explore the richness of that invitation."

Today I want to accept silence's invitation, and, little by little, learn to stay at my desk in the moment, listening to what silence may reveal.

What can you learn from the streams of silence in your writing life?

How can you embrace what you don't know... and learn from it?

For more information about Christina Feldman and Silence: How to Find Inner Peace in a Busy World, check out: http://www.rodmellpress.com/silence_author.html

For an excerpt from her article on "Stillness and Insight," check out: http://www.dharma.org/ij/archives/2001b/cf_still.htm

Other resources on silence and creativity:

Charlotte Bell on "The Music of Silence": http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:wHFbjnSAcK4J:www.nyspirit.com/yoga_guide/Silence.pdf+silence+and+creativity&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=48&client=firefox-a

Fred Pfeil on the "Silence Between the Words": http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/writcent/115Vernon2004_24.htm

Spiritual Practices--Silence: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices.php?id=28&g=6