A couple of weeks ago, Sixty Minutes ran a segment on the rap singer Eminem. In a scene that caught my attention, he reached over and took down a large box sitting on a shelf in his studio. Opening it up, he took out a pile of notebooks and loose pieces of crinkled paper. Removing them from the box as if they were ancient texts, the rapper held up his prize possessions to the camera. The pages were dense with scribbled words and phrases composed in slanted, haphazard order. As Eminem proudly pointed out, this was the precious raw material with which he created his rap poems/songs.

Eminem’s enthusiasm for these “word collections” was inspiring. It reminded me that writing often boils down to one thing: words. These are the bricks and stones with which writers carefully construct poems, histories, biographies, memoirs, travelogues, investigative articles, novels, love stories, and detective mysteries.  Oh, and words make blogs, too.

A writer has to be economic with words: too many and the reader is lost in a tangled maze. “Something is overwritten when there is just too much of it. This may be because the writer has labored the point and made a mountain out of a molehill, or because too many words are used. As a result, descriptions are cluttered and the prose quickly becomes unreadable,” wrote bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith in a recent essay in The Wall Street Journal. Too few, however, and meaning is lost, rendering the intent of a phrase or sentence too abstract or vague.

But just the right words, arranged in an elegant, symmetrical order, have the astonishing power to make a complex idea understandable, convey emotion, make music, make a landscape visible or even become magic carpets that transport the reader to other worlds. Because words are the writer’s prime creative material, I listen as much as I write – to newscasts, the radio, or snatches of conversation picked up in passing. Like the seamstress who looks at a dress and sees darts, tucks, and seams, I also read with an eye for interesting words, and the way they’re strung together.

Just one word can make the difference between a sentence that lasts forever and one that lasts the few seconds it takes to read it. Imagine, for instance, Dickens’ infamous opening line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” rewritten as “It was a good time, it was a bad time.” Or what if Abraham Lincoln had begun his Gettysburg address by saying “Eighty seven years ago,” instead of “Four score and seven years ago.” This is why rewriting – the tedious exercise of fixing grammar, sentence structure, and rearranging and replacing words – can make the difference between a good piece of writing and a great piece of literature.

Because word substitution is an important part of rewriting, I collect, just like Eminem, words. Here are a few from a page in my notebook: hushed, loquacious, thundering, fugue, orison, sienna, stentorian, russet, incandescent, and iridescent. Because I have a nervous tic of using “indeed” more often than I should, I have an entire page devoted to replacement words and phrases. Among them are truth be told, albeit, truly, all the more, essentially, in effect, in point of fact, in truth, and so on.

I also subscribe to A.Word.A.Day.org. Each morning I wake up to a new word in my inbox, along with a short history of its linguistic origins. Each word is part of a series, such as colors (sienna), or Latin terms in English (for instance the wonderful “lares and penates,” meaning household gods, or household goods). The page concludes with a thought for the day, something that further inspires me as I set out to write, endeavoring to make each sentence a thought that lingers long in the mind.

Here’s a timeless phrase from one of the world’s greatest literary masterpieces, the King James Bible: “In the beginning was the word…” (John 1:1).

Hugh Delahanty, editor-in-chief of AARP magazine, recently passed along a link to a delightfully interesting story about his personal creative process. Having taken up painting in his mid-fifties, Hugh had been wrestling with a conflict between his “inner Vermeer,” an artist who rendered every detail perfectly, and his “inner de Kooning,” who was freer in his expression. In his article Hugh tells the story of his workshop with the artist and teacher, Steven Aimone, whose original approach helped push him to a creative breakthrough.

Hugh’s article is inspiring on many levels. For one thing, I’m always fascinated by the interplay of different forms of creative expression. In this case Hugh, who is a writer and editor by profession, was inspired and opened up in different ways by painting and art. During Aimone’s workshop, he was taught to paint with his whole body and to rely more on his physical instincts, a technique that brought out hidden parts of his deeper creative self. But more than that, Hugh’s story focuses on that conflict every artist has between obeying the discipline and constraints of one’s chosen art form, and giving voice to those prompts that prod us to toss aside our inhibitions, and to be more daring and unconventional. But enough said on my part: read the article, and feel free to post comments on what this stirs up for you. Don’t forget to watch the video to see Hugh and the other students in action – and I do mean action!

http://www.aarp.org/personal-growth/life-long-learning/info-07-2010/creativity.html  

A link and a note from writer and speaker Kathryn Ruud got me thinking again about an observation from the feminist historian, Gerda Lerner.  In Lerner’s book The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (Volume Two, Oxford Press) she writes that humans have always used history as a way to find their way forward in the future. Yet while men have had the benefit of recorded history to build upon, she points out, women have not.  This put women at a disadvantage, she writes, as “lacking knowledge of their own history, women thinkers did not have the self-knowledge from which to project a desired future.” Without knowledge of their past, she continues, women could not test their ideas against those of their equals, and were forced to argue with the “great man” in their heads instead of being encouraged by their foremothers.

Lerner’s observation, which I include in my introduction to Soul Sisters, is interesting on several counts.  First, she points out the importance of history in any creative endeavor, and the way creativity either builds on or departs from, the past.  Men have been privileged in this regard, standing on the shoulders of a hierarchy of mentors and following in the lineage of traditions that came before them.  Women’s experience on the other hand, as Lerner points out, with its poverty of recorded women’s stories, has put women at a greater disadvantage, professionally and as artists.  Disconnected from each other and blind to their own cumulative experience over the ages, women have been forced in their endeavors to work blind, and to start over, again and again.

Aside from these observations around history and gender, Lerner’s insights also show how creativity is a shared, relational experience.  Rarely does the book, painting, song, or poem spring full-born from our minds, but is always somehow interwoven with the experience of others, or the world around us.  Creativity is play; it is also play with others’ ideas.  The act of finding our own voice is at the same time a response to the thoughts and voices of others; speaking follows listening, which inspires a response, and so on in an unfolding spiral of creative call and response.

In that spirit, I received this lovely note from Kathryn, who’d just finished reading my chapter on “The Feminine Face of Courage” (Soul Sisters).  Inspired by the brave women whose stories I told, she penned a letter to the Washington Post.  Here is that link, along with her note celebrating the connections that helped her give voice to her own clear, strong, opinion on a language issue:

This letter sent in with energy gathered through my anchor committee of three women friends, helping me find my way in my writing/speaking project, and with Pythia Peay’s “Feminine Face of Courage” in mind.’ Kathryn Ruud

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/17/AR2010071702224.html

Please enjoy these additional excerpts from my interview on The Huffington Post Intewith Jungian analyst Larry Staples, author of Guilt With a Twist, and The Creative Soul. (Fisher King Press).

Pythia: How does working with our dreams help the creative process?

Larry: The dream itself is an enormously creative act, and it’s essential for creativity. It’s also the only place where we’re true; dreams contain parts of ourselves that we’re not so proud of. In that way dream work helps to keep us authentic by helping us become more sensitive to our real feelings and thoughts — and then we can write about them.

Pythia: You also write about the way therapy can be a creative process. How so?

Larry: The therapy process is like all the other creative processes. Someone comes into therapy and they feel like something is missing, or that something is wrong. The idea is that piece-by-piece, the client and therapist together build a structure. Both contribute to this process, and both grow from it. It’s like writing or painting, except that it’s done with talking. You eventually become an authentic, whole person because in that process those parts that were unacceptable to yourself and to others becomes acceptable because the therapist doesn’t judge it. If the therapist is critical, the patient holds back.

Pythia: If guilt is something that we have to suffer in order to be alive, and create, how do we deal with it so that the tension doesn’t become paralyzing?

Larry: We have to incur guilt – if it does its work it keeps us alive. But then we have to find a way to deal with its toxic residue.  Take the car engine: the engine needs fuel, but it also needs an exhaust. It’s the same thing with food and water; we absorb the nutrients, but then the waste has to be expelled.  That’s what we need to do with our guilt. We take it in, and it’s useful because it produces the energy for psychic life.  But then there’s this toxic residual that has to be dealt with. Confiding in a therapist is a form of catharsis that helps to discharge guilt, as when Catholics go to confession. Religion, in fact, has been helping us deal with our guilt for centuries. We can offer prayers and rituals, do meditations, or buy offerings. An awful lot of good in the world has come from people who are trying to get rid of their guilt!

Pythia: Thank you so much for our conversation. This has been a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the psychological aspects of creativity.

Larry: You’re welcome. I’ve enjoyed our dialogue.

As with any published piece, whether book, blog, or magazine article, something always ends up on the cutting room floor. One of the things that didn’t make the cut in my recent Huffington Post blog, “Slowing Down With the Stars,” was a section on the Czech author Milan Kundera.  An article by Giuseppe Raudino, “Milan Kundera, Writer and Closet Astrologer,”(daykeeperjournal.com) recounts how Kundera, a dissident intellectual unable to publish under the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, had to support himself as an astrologer under a pseudonym.

During that time of political repression, Kundera cast several thousands of charts.  But Kundera was no sham astrologer; he saw it as a method for divining the individual’s unique purpose, writing that the horoscope “resembles a composition that musicians call a theme with variations.”  As Raudino points out, references to astrology, fate, and destiny run throughout Kundera’s literary works.

Reading about Kundera’s love of astrology made me think about how what we do to put bread on the table can also feed our writing. The American psychologist Rollo May, like other well-known psychologists such as Jung and Freud, drew from his therapy practice to write “Free Will and Destiny,” and other bestselling books. The celebrated author, philosopher, and social critic Eric Hoffer worked as a longshoreman all his life on the docks of San Francisco. His writing, he wrote, “grows out of my life as a branch from a tree.”

The biographies of famous authors reveal that when looking for material as a writer, one place to start is with the life you’re living and the work you’re doing.  As with art of any kind, it takes vision to glimpse the deeper meaning in those things that others casually overlook. Following the narrative thread of ordinary life might reveal the extraordinary story you’ve been looking for all along.

“What do you do when you have writer’s block?” is one of those questions writers are frequently asked.  There are probably as many responses to this question as there are writers.  Over the years, I’ve developed a two-pronged approach to that moment of paralysis when the words simply stop. The first (as outlined in my previous blog) is to keep at it, even if it means that all I do for hours on end is stare at a blinking cursor on a blank screen—or rewrite a sentence ten times in ten different ways. Most working writers, in fact, take the pragmatic approach that just showing up each day is ninety percent of the battle.

On the other hand, there are some days when something else seems to be called for. Rather than force my way through the roadblock on those days, I decide to take a detour and have a “creative day.” This means spending time that is as devoted to creativity as the act of writing is, just in a different way. As my wonderful therapist used to say, sometimes the well is dry, and needs time to fill up. Writer’s block, in other words, can mean that my mind is tired. And writing tired can lead to tired writing that is rote and mechanical. Just like my body, the mind needs to be rested, fed and nourished with healthy kinds inspiration.

And so, over the years, I’ve developed a list of inexpensive, favorite things that fill my “creative well” with fresh inspiration. For me, this sometimes means visiting odd, out-of-the-way places.  Not surprisingly, these places often have to do with food. There’s my local Bethesda Coop, for instance.  Dropping in midweek at mid-afternoon, I find an oasis of quiet. Meandering through the aisles, I ponder the wooden barrels of bulk grains: red quinoa, brown rice, and all the amazing varieties of granola: blueberry, ginger, and maple pecan. Pausing to sniff the bulk spices—dark green sage, pink peppercorns, and golden curry powders—is always a treat. Then there are the gifts you can’t find anywhere else, like the beaded fabric stars, fragrant incenses, and handmade chocolates. For these same reasons I also love my local Farmer’s Market, with its aisles of fragrant spring onions, butternut squash, pots of daisies and impatiens, and home-baked pies and cakes. The craftsmen with their wares—hand-sewn purses, silver jewelry, and multi-hued quilts and rugs from Pakistan, India, and Tibet—create a sensory feast of sights, sounds, colors, and smells for my imagination.

Thrift shops, flea markets, and estate sales have a similarly stimulating effect. Maybe it’s because I’m a Scorpio, the sign associated with mystery and secrets. But I love a place where I might stumble on something I wasn’t even looking for. It could be a primitive pine box with a worn leather strap for a handle at the bottom of a pile of junk. Or the framed picture of a hand-drawn, medieval fleur-de-lis I once found hidden behind a stack of empty frames. It could be something practical I’ve been putting off buying, like plastic containers for my paints and tools. It could even be a scrap of colorful fabric, or the Hopi Kachina doll I once found with the missing arm that seemed to “speak” to me, and that now greets me each morning when I sit down to work at my writing desk.

Finding a new route for my daily walk; going to the movies midday; gardening and cooking are all activities that in their strange way feed my writing. Even lying on my bed, daydreaming out the window, and watching the weather can soften my resistance.  My theory on why this helps writer’s block is that getting away from my computer plunges me back into that river of creative consciousness that is always streaming through the universe. Writing on the surface may seem to be a mental act of thought and intellect. But written words are only as interesting as the non-verbal realm of sensory, even rustic images they spring from—the visual, tactile world that surrounds us, as well as our emotions that imbue that world with meaning.  Writing that tastes good, smells interesting, or that pulses with feeling is writing that engages both the reader’s heart and mind—as well as their curiosity to read on. That’s why, for me, writer’s block always means that I’ve strayed too far from that deeply creative, wordless source of life, imagination, and feeling—and that I need to realign my spirit with it.