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A Native Home of Hope

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Heloise Jones
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“. . .like a dream between the crease of shadow and light.”
~ author Terry Tempest Williams

I want to tell you a story, and this week is not about my stories. It’s about yours.

I’ve been quiet, considering the shape of my life. I bought a small seated buddha for the yard. Placed him where I see him easily from my kitchen window. On the ground in front of him I shaped a lei made of grasses and shells from Big Island, Hawai’i into a heart. The islanders create these leis as a lasting blessing to encircle something treasured. . .a photograph, an item, whatever. I’m blessing the ground of my home. In the buddha’s hand I placed a white heart rock. It glows against his earthen colored body, even in shade.

My unexpected gift is a small book I’ve known about for 5 years: “When Women Were Birds” by Terry Tempest Williams. I wanted to like it when it first came out, and I didn’t. I felt disconnected to her rhythm, and couldn’t get past the first chapter. Perhaps it was because I’d left a home I liked, with a kitchen I loved (so important), in a town I really liked where I had community, to move to Florida. I’d relinquished 5 days a week of solitude (a writer’s blessing) to live with my husband every day for the first time in 17 years. I was tangled in adjustments. 

Now, having read the book, I believe I wasn’t supposed to read it back then. Because she’s talking straight to me and everything I’m creating & passionate about in my life now.

As a reader, I won’t write, underline, or highlight in books. I copy beautiful sentences into a notebook. I’ve never placed more than a few tabs in a volume. Even when researching, I photocopy. This small volume has more than a dozen tabs, color coded. Yellow for writing & the writing life. Purple for a sentence about creativity that adds to what I say in my own book, “The Writer’s Block Myth.” Pink for the women’s retreat I’m co-facilitating with visionary artist, Kendall Sarah Scott, in March (Madonna – Contemporary Ally for These Times). 

One story I didn’t tab is about the secret language created by oppressed, illiterate women in China centuries ago. The script (Nushu) was embroidered on handkerchiefs & kimonos, written in the folds of fans, inside slippers covering bound feet, and in small books passed mother to daughter on wedding days. The language shared only with other women. Tradition and a culture intentionally created around it.

The script was distinctly feminine. Curving, fluid,  linearly flowing. Much different than the boxy, angular lines of Chinese words we’re familiar with. (my son who lives in Taiwan corrects me when I call them characters. they’re words, not characters, he says)  Strangely, the word for a bird’s head in this language is the same as for a woman‘s head. What story and meaning lies there?

Writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous wrote, ‘We must learn to speak the language women speak when there is no one there to correct us.’ I believe it’s because when the principles of the feminine are embodied, change occurs. And we’re in those times when change must come from the desirous heart.

Another story I didn’t tab is about a small group of writers who saved thousands of previously protected wildlands from disappearing to gas and oil exploitation in Utah. In the state and national congressional hearings regarding the legistlation, Senators unequivocally ignored the populace and silenced testimony from anyone other the extractive energy industry.

What can we do, Williams and her colleagues asked. Their solution: a collective voice. They petitioned twenty-five writers committed to language and the landscape. In the end, a congresswoman and historian added their voices.

With the help of volunteers and donations, they compiled the writings, biographies, and signatures of the contributors, and maps into a small bound anthology edited for an effective progression of ideas that spoke directly to their intended audience. In three weeks, “Testimony: Writers of the West Speak on behalf of Utah Wilderness” was delivered into the hands of every member of Congress, Vice President Gore, key members of the administration, and others.

Following a press conference, a Washington Post reporter told the organizers, ‘What a waste of time. Do you have any idea how much paper gets passed around in Congress? You are so naive. This will never see the light of day.”  The organizers reply, “Writing is an act of faith.’

What happened? When the congressional land management act contested by the populace went to the Senate floor, every essay from that book got read. And six months later, a new national monument was created to protect 2 million acres. The President holding a copy of “Testimony,” saying ‘This little book made a difference.’

We’re in a different world now. Many feel there’s no hope. Author and naturalist Diane Ackerman warns, “Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain yet they color and clarify everything. They can stain the mind or warp the feelings.” What she says is true.

And I believe in words to do good and enact change. Because they have power. The Nushu language was destroyed when the thought behind it became a threat to regimes. The first thing forbidden in cultural genocide is the culture’s language. And in some countries, poets and writers are executed. It’s how we use words that matters. And how mindful we are of intent.

20 yrs. ago writers changed the course of what seemed a sure trajectory. Not with words of argument, logic, righteousness, or blame. With words that bought a place and a different vision alive. Can it happen now. I believe it can. Even knowing all I know about the hard hearts, fear, terrorism, division, and devastation that plagues this country and planet.

Because a writer’s gift is the ability to touch others. To make connection. And we never know when or how that happens.

Terry Tempest Williams’ words in her book gave me what I need 5 years after I first picked it up and put it down. A successful author found my book & called me after 6 years of feeling stuck, and started writing again. The ah-ha moments we experience as we journal, connect with ourselves. The family stories that shift our understanding of the tribe we’re born into. The novel that expands ideas inside us of what it is to be human. The Chinese women who found a voice. The senators getting ready to vote away thousands of acres of wildlands for oil. It is not naive to hope.

In nearly every spiritual tradition, Word created the world. Scientists have linked words to physical vibrations that affect the brain. The power of our words hold consequences beyond the intent of the messenger. So, write. Write what matters. Writing is an act of faith.

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Posted in books, writers, writing | 2 Replies

Every Writer’s Superpower

Posted on June 8, 2017 by Heloise Jones
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I’ve been giving a series of mini-workshops drawn from my book, The Writer’s Block Myth. I learned the other day in a writing group someone drove to the wrong library a week early for one of them. A library 20+ min. from town. I was quite moved. We chatted for a long time. I learned she was a lawyer, a story chose her to write it as a book, she wants to write a blog, and a host of other things that solidified a connection between us.

I talk a lot about writing as connection, and it certainly was that day in the way it brought us together. While talking with her, I couldn’t help thinking about our writer’s Voice. How it develops, and we grow into it, learn to accept it. How it changes across genres.

Because I heard her skill with words when we shared our raw work in the group. Something I’m sure writing & oratory as a successful trial lawyer helped her develop. And I got curious when she shared her blog, how she’s incorporating a device that’s quirky to the serious topic she’s passionate about, could be considered by some off the wall. This would reveal the heart of her Voice, it’s the only way she can pull it off, I thought. And the book will require a storyteller with sensitivity to tell it. Another sort of ‘different.’ She’s embarking on a journey with Voice, I thought.

My journey started as a novelist and poet. When I joined Facebook, I found my online voice. Then used Facebook as a writing practice. Meeting the challenge of engaging readers in a way they experience something. Editing much of what I share like poetic stanzas. And that practice and those stanzas feed my poetry, and sometimes my blog.

When I started my blog, I learned to write essays for online reading. Learned how to weave in narrative and stories.

When I wrote The Writer’s Block Myth, I discovered how much the economy of online writing and reading had affected my writing Voice for the page. My process is longhand, pen to paper, for rough drafts of fiction and poetry. Something that takes time. That in my discipline I don’t allow edits while I write. The finished piece a form that calls for breath.

And for the past 2+ years, I’ve been writing essays and nonfiction, where it’s fingers to keyboard from get-go. Editing part of the process moving forward. Even in my blog ‘Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life’ blog, which is a sort of journal about navigating life. Journals something we think about writing by hand. I had to write the entire manuscript of The Writer’s Block Myth twice to shift into the Voice that works as well on paper as online.

I’m calling up my courage these days to once again learn to write in longhand the stories with breath that satisfying long-fiction requires. And I’m also learning a new way of writing as a speaker and mentor in front of groups of people. I’m embracing all sides of my writer’s Voice.

Because our writer’s voice is our Superpower. It’s the one thing only we can deliver. It’s where our genius lies, in all its aspects and forms. I know I’ll have this discussion with her. And it will be exciting to see unfold.

I bought Brian Andreas’ book, Bring Your Life Back to Life – A Guide to Effortless Joy. On the inside he wrote, “To Heloise – Just a reminder of the great joy that sings in the heart of you. With Love, B Andreas”

It came to me our writer’s Voice is what sings in the heart of us.

  • Consider your writer’s voice. How it’s different, or the same, across genres. How comfortable you are with all aspects and forms of it.

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Revelations in Narrative

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Heloise Jones
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“I think I’ve been making the same film over and over again, asking who are we. . .”
~ Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
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The other night I watched the movie Dark Places, created from the novel by Gillian Flynn. My only thought when it was over is she has one wickedly good mind. I’ve read her work, know what a good writer she is: Tight narrative drive; twists and turns that readers love; a tad on the dark side, something I think all humans love. But what struck me was an element I saw that I’d seen in another one of her books.

In both “Dark Places” and “Gone Girl,” someone who’s innocent consciously makes an ultimate choice that condemns them and shapes the entire story. And quite frankly, both choices creeped me out. Not only because of the consequences for the characters, but because they’re wrapped in so many layers of contradiction that they left me supremely uncomfortable.

Narrative and all the ways it’s in the details of life, cultures, and our own heads has been up for me lately. Narrative being the telling of a story, the point of view, the consistent themes and patterns. That includes the perspectives spoken and unspoken, known and unknown of the storyteller. And often, for writers, contain a recurring theme or element such as Flynn’s central choice made by an ‘innocent.’

Consider John Irving, how he always has a writer in his novels. Elizabeth Berg writes intimately about women’s inner and outer lives. Frank Herbert created worlds with new languages. Societal moral dilemmas show up consistently in Philip K. Dick’s work. Personal moral dilemmas in Jodi Picoult’s work. One writer I read regularly describes the sky.

We can’t know what these specifically mean for these authors, or what exactly it reveals about them, but we can be aware for ourselves.

For now, look at the books you read and the movies you watch. What do you notice consistent amongst them beyond genre? Now, look at your own work.

  • Find the recurring elements in your work, and you find out a bit about yourself. Sorta like looking in a mirror and noticing something for the first time. And if not the first time, seeing another layer. You’ll become braver in your work. And your work will go deeper.

I’ll be writing more about this.

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Posted in books, writers, writing | Leave a reply

You Define Success. Bottom Line.

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Heloise Jones
1

You know what I mean when I say success, right?

Because the word success is everywhere. Books are written about it. Attributes of successful people are discussed. We use the word to describe and evaluate businesses, careers, individuals, processes, and products. So, when you consider yourself, your creative pursuits, your circumstance, and your future, how do they stack up?

I’ll tell you a story. I moved to a new town. Left a writing community I’d had for years. One where writers had turned into friends I felt connected with, no matter where we were in our creative process. My first act in my new town was to join a writing group. The leader & teacher sent an intake form to see who I was. In short order after I replied she let me know she didn’t think I was a good fit for her group. You can imagine where I went with that.

But what she wrote was ‘you are much too successful for this group.’ Those exact words. Successful. She viewed my years of classes, workshops & retreats, my publications, the fact I wrote a novel, once had a literary agent as success. In hindsight, a gift. But it hurt. I didn’t feel successful. I hadn’t reached my goals. I’d reached levels. Like a bestselling book & fine tea, successes as part of the process on the road to being a success by my definition.

This is big for creatives, especially in an atmosphere where it seems so few have success by traditional standards. Where myths abound, like the starving artist, the disappearance of print books, and the doom of slow writers. Where lessons, teachers, and gurus tell us the ‘right’ way to create. And the truth is we’re the only ones who can define success for ourselves. How we define it affecting our experience in life and our writing.

Take a moment now, ask yourself:

  • What do I want in my life?
  • What do I choose?
  • What does my writing mean to me?
  • How do I want to feel as I live my best creative life?

These questions are not simple to answer. And your answers will evolve.

For each thing you do, ask again. Notice your expectations shift.

As one author said about her book launch. . .she didn’t sell books, there weren’t as many people as she’d hoped, but it was a success. Because she knows what her writing means to her and she’d defined success as connection with new people, and she connected with each person there.

We’ve got big stuff happening in the country right now, including who and what we are as a nation & people redefined to the world by those in power. The arts and humanities may well be defunded. Supports eliminated for writers and creatives. I believe this is, in part, because there’s a huge divide on the definition of success people hold for themselves. But writers and artists hold the Vision for those who can’t see, the words for those who don’t have them, and the conscience of society. It’s truly up to us to consider how we define success for ourselves. To ask those four important questions above.

Author & artist Mary Anne Radmacher says, “. . .even from a dark night songs of beauty can be born.”

We can create songs of beauty.

“Set an intention for yourself at the beginning of each month, writers. Write it on a Post-it
and stick it to your dashboard, to your corkboard, to the door so you’ll see it on your way out.
Find out what happens when you remind yourself on a daily basis of
something that’s meaningful to you, or to which you aspire.”
~ Brooke Warner, publisher & author

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Posted in art, books, publications, writers, writing | 1 Reply

Do What Writers Do

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Heloise Jones
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I took this shot of the Royal in a consignment store here in Santa Fe.

Ernest Hemingway wrote on a Royal. Every time I see one I think of him. I also read he wrote standing up, not at the big desk we always see him at in pictures. And that he had a signature way to get past stuck–never empty the well when you stop, leave something to write when you start in the morning. He didn’t tire of editing, either. He stayed in the process, doodling with the words for as long as it took. He was once quoted in an interview as saying he rewrote the last page of ‘Farewell to Arms’ thirty-nine times before he was satisfied. When the interviewer asked what stumped him, if there was some technical problem, his response was,“Getting the words right.”

I have a shot of an old Remington, too. Seems vintage typewriters are everywhere here. A friend at the Santa Fe historic foundation El Zaguan was once discarding two. I knew author & actor Sam Shepherd was in town writing at the Santa Fe Institute. That he only works on a typewriter, never a computer. I asked him if he wanted them. He didn’t. But what I noticed when we spoke is he looked me in the eyes. Was completely present until we were done. One might say, observed with awareness, too. Two attributes of a good writer.

Both these authors modeled what I write about in my book, The Writer’s Block Myth.

  • Focus on process.
  • Observe with awareness.
  • Doodle with words for as long as it takes (meaning, take as long as it takes!)
  • Find the ways that work for you to succeed.

Pretty darned cool. Right?

btw, author Cormac McCarthy is a trustee at the Santa Fe Institute. He has a library named after him there where he writes on a typewriter, too. I love what he wrote about their mission. You can see his typewritten draft in the video:

And here, in my World:  #1 Bestseller on Day One.

I’m pretty darned excited.

Tell me. . .what’s the one thing you know works for you to succeed.
I’ll tell you a secret. . .making Bestseller felt so surreal, I waited 2-1/2 hrs. before I shared it on Facebook.

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