The mysterious rhythm of words

The mysterious rhythm of words--

how they arrive on the tip

of your pen one moment

and are gone the next

how they flow onto the page

on some days, spilling 

so fast you can barely

keep up

how they refuse

to emerge from your pen

on other days, suddenly shy

reluctant to show themselves,

unwilling to appear

how you have to learn

to wait, to be patient, and

how to coax them

from their hiding places

and how you have to learn this:

it's all part of the mysterious rhythm 

of words, part of the mystery 

of the writing process

a mixture of silence and sounds

melody and harmony

poetry and prose

each word containing a secret

each word a key to a puzzle

you need to solve,

each word a secret path

leading to a doorway

only you can open.

Working on revisions

How do you know when you're finished revising your manuscript?

After the second or third pass, it's easy to believe that you're done. 

You've revised verb tenses and word choices. You've caught typos. You've polished each sentence until it shines like polished silver. 

But are you really done?

If you're working with an editor who you can trust, you can share the manuscript and listen to feedback. 

It's the same with a writing group. If you trust the other writers in the group--and why would you be in a writing group you don't trust?--you listen to their feedback.

If you prefer to work on your own, though, you have a slightly different challenge, which is, ultimately, the same challenge that every writer must face.

You need to listen to your inner voice, which can be deceptive at times.

You need to keep digging, keep asking yourself what's missing. 

What am I forgetting? What does the reader need in this moment? What does my character want, and what's keeping him or her from getting it? And what does he or she do to reach his or her goal?

To answer these questions, you may have to put your manuscript in a drawer for a while. 

A day, a week, or more. 

That's how you can gain distance and change your perspective.

That's how you can return to it with a clearer eye and see gaps or missing pieces that you couldn't have seen when you were so close to it, working on it from the inside, so to speak.

Each time you revise your manuscript, you need to see it the way a reader will see it. 

How might your words strike a reader? What images and scenes will make the greatest impact?  Why does the plot unfold the way it does?

Working on revisions in this way becomes a process of listening more carefully and looking more closely so that you (and ultimately your reader) are able to slip inside your characters and can feel what they're feeling. 

As you keep reviewing the manuscript, you're listening for inconsistencies, for the gaps that you couldn't see on the previous pass, for the issues that you can expand or delete.

The secret is patience. 

Give yourself time.

As many writers have discovered: "Time is the best editor." 

Unmoored

It's the beginning of the year

and I feel unmoored, unsure 

what direction to swim in.

Do you feel unmoored, too?

Here we are waiting for the wind 

to offer us a clue, treading water,

floating in place, befuddled by the way

uncertainty replaces certainty.

At the moment it's impossible 

to choose which way to go.

All paths have been erased,

all destinations hidden,

so how can we find the route 

we're meant to follow?

How long can we keep treading 

water before sinking to the bottom?

What is keeping us afloat?

Maybe it's all just a matter of allowing 

ourselves a chance to rest, 

to step out of the water,

to regain our strength. 

Maybe this is how to let the well fill up again?

Listen, it's the beginning of the year, 

and there's hope that a path will appear 

tomorrow or maybe the next day, 

and that we'll know what we didn't know 

a moment ago: the path we're meant to follow,

the way we're meant to go.

Where are you going

Where are you going

and how do you know

you're on the right path?

What are the signposts 

you look for?

How can you see a turn

coming in the fog?

Who is walking with you?

Why are you making this

journey anyway?

Whose voice do you hear

encouraging you to keep

going?

Whose voice do you hear

telling you to stop

before you hurt

yourself?

What is worth the risk

of venturing into the unknown?

How do you protect yourself?

How do you reach further

than your ever thought

you could reach? 

Where does the path end?

(And where does it begin?)

And can you rest along the way

or do you have to keep going?

And where does the path lead?

And how much farther do you

have to go?

Is anyone listening or are you

here alone in the fog?

How far does your voice carry?

Can you hear an echo?

A call in response?

What comes next?

Where are you going

and how do you know

you're on the right path?

Time and Patience

Writing takes time 

and patience. You wait 

for words, hoping they'll come 

from wherever they come and 

fill the page with whatever 

is hidden in your heart.

Some days they find their way 

to the page; some days the page 

remains blank. You can't know 

ahead of time what you'll find or 

what might appear.

Some days it's like playing 

hide-and-seek: I see you. 

No you don't. Catch me if you can! 

And what you wish you'd written 

remains just beyond your reach, 

still wordless, waiting for another time 

to reveal itself to you.

And so you keep writing, waiting,

hoping whatever is hidden in

your heart will fill the page 

with words.

The Shell Path

Even though I don’t live near the sea, there’s a shell path on the side of our front yard, a narrow swath of white seashells that marks the boundary between our property and our neighbor’s yard.

It’s not a very wide path, perhaps two feet across, and it’s not a very long path, maybe thirty or forty feet long, but it helps establish a clear line between the two yards, and I love the way the shells remind me of the sea, even if I can’t see or hear it from our home.

Every month or so I spend a few hours moving up and down the path pulling weeds. It is tedious work because the weeds are often long and stringy and deeply rooted. It’s not easy to grasp them, especially when wearing gardening gloves, and it’s never easy to pull them out entirely.

I’ll squat on my heels, stretching my calves and Achilles tendons, straining my quads, until I switch legs for balance or to relieve a cramp, and I’ll work with my back bent beneath the warm sun and think about the sea and how the sunlight sparkles off its surface and how the waves roll into shore and then retreat out to sea again.

After ten or fifteen minutes, it’s easy to lose my patience and perspective, to forget the larger picture—how the path serves as a boundary between our yards, how the shells, once weeded, look so beautiful, like a path stretching toward the sea—and it’s easy to become frustrated because the work doesn’t go faster.

But becoming frustrated doesn’t help the work. It only inhibits my ability to enjoy the sight of the shells and the vision of the finished path in my mind.

That's when I have to remind myself to slow down, to let go of my expectations of how the work should go, and to see—really look hard and see—what’s in front of me at this moment, to understand what needs to be taken care of now.

Maybe the weeds don’t belong where they are growing, or I'd prefer them to grow elsewhere, but rushing to pull them will only mean that I’ll miss more of the weeds than I’ll pull. And then I’ll only have to return to pull out the rest at some point.

This process of weeding, of keeping the shell path free of weeds, reminds me of the way the revision process works.

I’ll put down words in the same way a gardener might put down a shell path. At first, the words look perfect. The sentences appear straightforward, the verbs and adjectives strong and firmly rooted, and there isn’t a weed in sight.

But then I begin to see things that I didn’t see, not because I wasn’t careful or precise when I put the words down, but because I simply lacked the ability to see the weeds. I was too close to the material.

So, when I go back to the beginning of a manuscript to revise it, I try to slow down, to look at it as part of a larger picture, to understand what needs to be done in this moment. It’s the same process as weeding the shell path.

I have to pull unnecessary words the same way I pull weeds on the shell path. I have to go back to the beginning and start over. Neatening, straightening, clearing out clutter, cleaning up.

I want the manuscript to read cleanly, without any distractions for the reader, just as I want the path to offer a clear, unobstructed path, whether it leads to our back yard or to the sea in my imagination.

This kind of work takes patience. It requires a willingness to slow down and really see what is on the page (not what I might hope or think is on the page but what is actually there).

Most of all, it takes a certain commitment and devotion to work on the path, to keep working, even when my legs and back ache, even when my fingers start to bleed from reaching past the sharp edges of the shells and the gloves have torn, even when the mosquito bites itch and the red ant bites burn as if my skin is on fire.

Each writer must learn how to stay in the moment and do this work.

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Two steps forward, one step back

Sometimes writing can feel as if I’m making headway one day, only to find myself retreating the next.

Two steps forward, one step back.

It’s as if I’m swimming effortlessly through the water and then unexpectedly hit a strong current, and everything changes.

My pace slows, my arms feel fatigued, my legs weaken, and I fear sinking to the bottom.

And then, just as suddenly, the current changes, and I’m no longer adrift but swimming effortlessly through the water again.

This process occurs over and over, and the longer that I spend writing, the more familiar it becomes so that I no longer become discouraged by changes in the pace of my writing.

If the process requires that I slow down, I slow down… and view the world that I’m immersed in from a different perspective.

If the process requires that I speed up, I speed up… and enjoy a different way of relating to the work.

The key to writing over the long haul, I’ve discovered, is to understand its rhythms, which means understanding my own rhythms and how I work best.

If I’m feeling overwhelmed by rejections, I might stop sending out manuscripts and return to writing for the pleasure that writing brings.

If I feel stuck or lack the passion that I feel I need to go on, I might spend more time reading, or daydreaming, or just staring at the waves as they return to shore.

Words find their way onto the paper in a variety of ways—there is no one “right” way to write—and sometimes the words come at the most unexpected times.

The trick is to be ready.

To have my pen and a pad of paper nearby.

To keep my antennae attuned to the voices in my head.

To be willing to write whenever I feel the vibration in my heart inviting me to put that feeling, that thought, into words.

And, most of all, to be patient, and to have faith that words will come.

Time and Patience

It was while reading Brad Kessler’s Goat Song, a remarkable account of his life on a Vermont farm raising goats and making cheese, that I was reminded how much of a writer’s work relies on time and patience.

Time and patience to find the right word, then the next, and more time and patience to string the words together, one sentence at a time, into paragraphs that add up to pages, until after weeks or months or years all the words and sentences and paragraphs form, finally, a story.

The secret ingredient to learning and mastering any craft, whether it’s wine-making, beekeeping, knitting, weaving, cooking, baking, cheese-making, or writing, is patience, which is the ability to accept the time it takes to create a story, or a pair of mittens, or a cinnamon bun, and to accept, as well, the various obstacles that time may place in the way.

Most of all, I suspect, patience is the virtue of coming to understand one’s craft as a process linked to the greater rhythms of life, rhythms that you can sense in the words that Kessler shares with his readers as he describes how he learned to make cheese.

His thoughts on cheese-making and a life raising goats–meditations, really, as lyrical and profound as the most wondrous poetry–helped me begin to see how patience and time are essential ingredients for writing, too.

Here are a few excerpts from his work that might prompt you to think in new ways about your own writing and the time and patience needed to practice your craft:

English has no sufficient translation for the word tomme. The word in French means “volume” or “tome” as in a “book,” yet can also signify “a wheel of cheese.” Tommes are ancient mountain cheeses made historically from goat milk on small farms where the milk supply was limited. I like that my cheese is called a tome, because making a cheese is somewhat like making a book. Both take raw material from the world and transfigure it into art. Both are the products of rumination–animal and human. When you make a cheese you do a little work with the milk then wait and come back later and do some more, and wait again. It takes months to make a cheese. A book takes even longer. You can’t make either in one go. Time is the essential element. Time cures the imperfections, one hopes, in both.

It’s a helpful parallel that Kessler draws between making cheese and making a book, the way both the cheese-maker and the writer take “raw material from the world and transfigure it into art.”

In each case, the author and the cheese-maker must think about the process, engage in the activity of milking goats or milking one’s imagination, and then return a little later to do some more work... and then wait again for something to develop.

I loved learning that it takes months for a cheese to form, just as I loved hearing that it takes Kessler even longer to write a book, that you have to devote yourself to a process because it isn’t something that can be done “in one go.”

Time is the essential element.

With the help of time, Kessler reminds us, we can make our work better, eliminate imperfections (one hopes), create the best stories that we can create.

Here he describes the uncertainty of the cheese-making process, despite assembling all the necessary ingredients:

The conditions in the cellar seemed almost perfect for aging a tomme, 59 degrees and 90 percent humidity most days. The walls were stone, the floor earth. We had no idea if the right microorganisms would thrive there or the tommes turn out okay. There was nothing to do but make the cheese and see.

Again, Kessler has identified a crucial aspect of the writing process (by identifying the same crucial aspect of cheese-making). No writer can know if the work will turn out okay. Kessler reminds us the only way forward is to step into the unknown: “There was nothing to do but make the cheese and see.”

Word by word, that’s what writers do. We set down words and see if they turn out okay.

Only with the passage of time can we make our work better, whether it’s cheese or books:

The art of aging cheese is called affinage, which means in French “refining” or “making finer.” To become refined a cheese needs the correct environment. It needs patience and vigilance. The cheesemaker needs yet another thing: faith. The faith part was new to me. There are no recipes for that. Fortunately there are for making cheese.

Cheese is the slowest of all slow foods. It you want to get there fast, eat American. Each recipe is a journey, a meander toward perfection.

Indeed, each book, as Kessler suggests, is a journey, a meander toward perfection.

The next time you’re worried your book is taking too long or you don’t feel you can afford to take the time to make revisions, remember the words that Kessler uses to describe the time it takes to age a cheese:

The tomme I’m making today will age inside a cellar for several months; its character will keep changing from day to day, and week to week. At four months the tomme will have a wonderfully complex and savory taste, its body cream-colored and firm with small eyelets no larger than sesame seeds. Unlike my body, my tomme will grow firmer, not flabbier, with age. Time removes the excess moisture in a cheese and pares it down. But you never know how a tomme or a book will turn out. This is where the faith comes in.

The more time we give ourselves, the more our work has the possibility of changing into something wonderfully complex, just like Kessler’s cheese.

Time helps us begin to see where to remove the excess words, where to pare down the story, where to eliminate excess flab.

You never know how a tomme or a book will turn out. This is where the faith comes in.

You need not only time and patience but faith, too.

And in the end, if you approach your work accepting the time that’s needed to let the book grow inside you, you’ll find that you’ll have written the kind of book that emerges from the very core of your heart, each word clicking into place.

It's the kind of book that readers yearn for because it's like tasting a perfectly aged cheese. Such a book, writes Kessler, “is like a key that fits into the tumbler of the soul. The two parts have to match in order for each to unlock. Then–click–a world opens.”

Click. A world opens.

But only if you learn to be patient and accept that writing your story takes time to find the right words and place them in the right order so the meanings and sounds of the words click in your inner ear, letting you know when you’ve gotten the words just right.

For more on Goat Song, visit:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Goat-Song/Brad-Kessler/9781416560999

For more information about Kessler and his work, visit:
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/07/29/brad_kessler_takes_novel_approach_to_living_off_land/
http://www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org/2007-fiction_winner.htm
http://www.culinate.com/articles/the_culinate_interview/brad_kessler

For more on patience, take a look at:
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Patient
http://ezinearticles.com/?10-Ways-to-Learn-Patience-Now!&id=509437
http://www.tinatessina.com/practicing_patience.html