Do What Writers Do

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Heloise Jones

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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Excitement City with an Oops. And Free Download!

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Heloise Jones

Isn’t it hard to let things go? Well I let my “free download link” go last night and I had the dates for the FREE download of my new book wrong, in 2 places! I was a day early. Excitement City, even with an Oops, tho.

Free download is Saturday, Sunday, and Monday on Amazon.

And in case you missed it. . .here’s my beautiful note and the link!

Hi! It’s time, it’s time! My book’s coming out March 14th!
Could you do me a favor? I have the book downloadable for free on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of this week (Kindle and to your computer). Could you download it on one of those days?

The book, The Writer’s Block Myth, is something I’m so excited about. Every day I hear, read, or experience discussions that talk about being “blocked” in writing. Sometimes it stops individuals from even starting! Isn’t it hard to get to that anticipation place and then get stymied by your own thinking?

I’ve got your process and you’re going to truly value that you’re not alone on this journey. The Writer’s Block Myth will free you from so much more than your perceived block in writing.

C’mon, here’s your free ticket to learn! Let’s talk about writing and if you order on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday you can receive it absolutely FREE.

The book is intended to support writers and creatives to get past stuck, complete their goals, and experience lasting creative freedom whatever life looks like in the ‘real’ world.

Please, let’s get the word out, for any writer or want to be writer that this week the book is even free! I’d so appreciate your sharing and if you truly love the book, and the work within it, would you consider rating it on Amazon?

This is an exciting tool and I hope one you keep in your tool shelf of good things to read and share!

Warmly,
Heloise Jones

My Three Poems

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Heloise Jones

‘If you were to write 3 poems this week, what would be their titles?’
~ Maya Rachel Stein, poet and creative adventuress

My three:
– Saying Thank You 100 times as if It’s the Name of God
– What Space Looks Like
– We Don’t Have All the Time in the World

Maya and I are friends. We met nearly a decade ago, tho it seems weird to think it’s been so long because we both confess feeling a special bond despite seeing each other only twice. I discovered her poetry through a mutual friend. When I heard she was touring the country to meet some of the 600 people who subscribed for her 10-line Tuesdays (poems in our inbox!), was holding writing workshops in living rooms, that Charlotte was on her list of stops, I called her up. ‘Come to Asheville, stay with me,’ I said. ‘Asheville loves poets.’ I still have friends I made in my living room that day. Peeps I didn’t know who drove hours to sit with us. And Maya. Watching her adventures putting poetry and creative arts into the world, and her very special relationship with Amy. I couldn’t attend their wedding, but as I said in the sentiments I sent, I know there’s fun where-ever they are.

Maya and me. We share belief in the power of words and art. There are a dozen Thank You’s I have for Maya.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I found a poem I wrote for my husband Art on our 24th Valentine’s together. I don’t think I ever gave it to him. Yesterday was our 31st. In the beginning he gave me a dozen red roses. Always. Until I fell in love with the raucous color and dance of cut flower bouquets. Something only rare florists master. We may have gone out to dinner, too. Until I decided the crowds & bad food of restaurant rush weren’t worth the money, either. There were cards and candy, all the other ways Valentine’s defined for couples. In that poem, I snuck from bed, placed foil-wrapped lips on a stick in his toothbrush holder with my heart filled with tenderness. Today, him in NC, me happy here in Santa Fe, I think that’s what Valentine’s really about. Tender hearts. For a loved one, for friends, family, humanity, the planet, for ourselves.

There are a thousand Thank You’s for those 31 yrs. with Art. I put one on the Acknowledgement page of my book:

I wish to thank my husband Art for the space and his willingness to see me through
years of creative pursuits. His insights during the times I needed a different perspective
made me a better writer, coach, and person.

I have multitudes more for tender hearts, our beautiful universe, and moments on this earth.

At the post office they always ask, ‘Need any stamps?’ My usual response is I’ve got plenty. Then I saw Wonder Woman. Of course I bought a sheet. I heard other women bought sheets when they didn’t need more stamps, too. An artist-healer friend in New Zealand wrote, asked for a note with the stamp. It’s been a very tough year or two, she said. ‘I’m sending you four, one of each image,’ I told her. ‘You’ll do something creative with them, and place it where you’re reminded what a Wonder Woman you indeed are.’ In the bigger sense, I believe Wonder Woman is women claiming the space we’ve always held.

I could talk for years about space. My Thanks to Art in my book mentions it – the space to create. Now, the space of solitude to flow with my life rhythms, commune uninterrupted with my imagination. The space out my windows to far horizons and mountains that always imply more on the other side. Like the space I used to feel when I looked out on the ocean. ‘What do you see,’ Art used to ask. The world, I told him. It’s the same when I look at those colors in the shot above. Because color in all forms gives us space.

I was in Santa Fe three days when I ignored my ragged face, the 8* weather, and dressed to go out for a Women2Women lunch. The agenda – introduce ourselves & hand out cards, have good food & good conversations, and hear someone in the community speak. I (very) briefly connected with a gal there. We met for brunch two weeks later. ‘Where do you live,’ she said. I told her the neighborhood. Then. . . which street? what number? Turns out she’s a neighbor and one of her best friends is my landlady. Exactly how I fly in Santa Fe, with magic. But honestly, we really don’t have all the time in the world. We gotta show up, say our Thanks, and find the space between us.

Because Life can shift in a heartbeat. Less that that, a breath. To the good, and not so good. I know because I’ve been there. . .chance meetings, a poem accepted, house on fire, husband run down by a car. Yesterday was a hard day. A brief, gentle dressing down for doing something that comes natural to me. A reminder the clock’s ticking on something very important to me. At the end of the day I felt myself in loosely-glued pieces with thoughts of failure, while every bit of me wanted space to give what I do well: support empowering writers & creatives to move forward, live their best creative life. Because I think they hold our Voice when we can’t speak, and Vision when it’s hard to see. Our conscience when we get snarled and tied up. But at the end of the day, all I could think was author Mary Anne Radmacher’s famous words: “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’ ”

I had Thanks on my lips and a deep belief in restored space on the morrow when I went to bed, even knowing we don’t have all the time in the world. Despite feeling small. Because what I know is I’ve cracked the code to help people live their best creative life and that’s something grand. Sometimes it’s just hard doing for ourselves what we do for others.

Another Small Journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .what would the titles of your three poems be?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .we really don’t have all the time in the world.

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Using What I Have

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word.
He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices:
the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.”
~ Federico García Lorca
(poet, playwright, & theatre director executed by Franco).
*

I typically scan facebook for the patterns in what’s been up for me. The sum today is I slept many hours last night, starting 8pm on the sofa, moving to bed at 11:30, & with waking only once, rising late @ 7am. After weeks of scant sleep + insomnia the night before from which I rose, pulled out my courage & contacted folks for book reviews, and others with a dissatisfaction. My publisher told me launching a book is a marathon, not a sprint. But the fact is I’m sprinting to catch up from the late start in the process, and the move to Santa Fe, creating a functioning home with box-lined walls, plastic bins at the ready in the garage for re-packaging from the cardboard mousies love. Sprinting to regain a rhythm in my life.

The other day I went to a movie for the first time in a year. As I pulled from my driveway, I saw clear through the picture window of my little home to the light & view out the kitchen window at the back of the house. It rather stunned me. I thought, this is why I’m here. To do my work with a sense of space and expansiveness outside me and inside me. This does not require a sprint.

By my front door is a ceramic vase with two delicate oriental cranes on it. I bought it in Jacksonville. It’s not my style and made no sense to get it then, nor any time I’ve looked at it in the ensuing 4 years. But I was, and still am, completely drawn to it. Then this. . .

For a year before I returned to Santa Fe, I subscribed to New Mexico magazine. I’ve moved magazines before. They’re heavy & never worth the cost. But the little voice said ‘throw this one in the box.’ Sandhill cranes and the caption ‘Flocking to NM’ on the cover. I flipped through it the morning I pulled it from the box. Read ‘Preparing for Liftoff’ + an 8-pg. spread on writers and indy bookstores. This note stuck out: “. . .the National Endowment for the Humanities has ranked New Mexico first in the nation for the number of working writers per captia.” Those unseen guides, talking to me even in Jax.

A family member wrote on fb I should quit sharing my thoughts about the world and focus on selling my book. (I’m really nice in my posts, focusing on love of the planet & humanity, empowerment) Two people responded. One said she vehemently disagrees. ‘Your influence as a writer is far greater than any of us less articulate folks. Please use it as your conscience dictates.’ Another said, ‘Yes!!! Love your voice and the strength that fuels it.”

I’ve always been an artist, creativity at the heart of every job I’ve had. I asked my mother when she was dying what she remembered I loved to do most when I was a kid. ‘Draw,’ she said. ‘From the time you could hold a pencil.’ At eight, I made folders out of 2 sheets of notebook paper, the front sheet folded down. forming a flap. The sides taped or stapled. I colored pictures with themes on the front – holidays, myths, animals. I wrote stories & drew pictures to fit the themes. My first experience of writer’s block was in 3rd grade. I sat at a brown lunch table composing a poem, prompted by one I saw in a school newsletter. I thought a poem something I could do. But young as I was, I questioned myself, never submitted it. The next year I wrote stories for a book I planned, complete with Table of Contents. At 18, tho, I turned in a blank sheet of paper to my college professor every Friday in response to our single assignment for the day, Write. That failure kept me from having the GPA to continue school. Took 5 tries to get my degree and find my worldly heart. Two while in an abusive marriage. Five. Persistence.

For months I’ve come out with aspects of my past that I’d kept to myself because, well, I felt ashamed about some of it. + I didn’t want to be identified with stuff that happened years and decades ago. . .when I was a diff woman. But it’s all part of my history that informs my understanding of human-Being. Not my identity, but parts of me that’s shared with others who are battered, broke, stalked, on food stamps, dismissed, have homes that burn, lost children, husbands run down by cars, businesses lost, little income for months on end. Who’ve lived in places very different than they’ve known. Have been thought weird or different. All part of human-Being that when turned into something besides fear, opens to empathy.

I’ve not shared my book on facebook the past few days. I’ve shared this:

Let’s support writers this week. I’m all about it. Because words have power.
Writers in other countries have been executed for that power.

Nearly 20 yrs. ago I joined a circle of writers to regain a Voice I’d lost. Writing and all things authorly have been my passion since. I’ve known I was a writer thru trauma, move after move, & distractions. I know the power of the written word for my insides and our outsides. I know the ways we get waylaid. It’s why I use my Voice now. We use what we have.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

What empowers you?
I’ll tell you a secret: Today I say action with heart.

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I work with people who have a vision & desire to write.
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Waiting on Me to Catch Up

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Heloise Jones

Are you ready at a cellular level
for the fact that
you can not change the course
of all that has been set in motion
long before you even knew about motion
or had met the course
but now your heart has had its recognition
and as the river moves forward
the realization hits that your heart has already
grabbed hold, when you weren’t looking. . .
waiting for you to catch up
~ Kathryn Schuth
Are You Ready

Just out of the solidity of immersion in a completed work I’m fully familiar with, I’m not ready to step back onto steep learning curves or dive out into air, which is what it often feels like before pieces of the Vision coalesce in the world. So I’m taking you to my (once) home in Asheville, when I was writing a novel.

First, pause a moment at the top of the Charlotte St. ramp, gaze upon the gray, blue, purple waves of the Blue Ridge. When done with awe, turn away from the downtown skyline, drive past the gas station and Starbucks on through the remnants of a neighborhood where signs and parking spaces squeeze amongst the trees beside large and small homes. When you get to the tiny rock house on the left that once housed the art museum, see the rock wall with pillars like giant beehives, the park beyond with genteel old homes on its far border, turn right. Go past the 10’ tall crucifix and stark white Jesus on the corner, the miniature Spartan cathedral behind it. Wind up through the narrow lane chiseled from a broad boulevard by plump medians and painted lines. Past stately residences with lawns and hedges. Past condos where the view of the valley and mountains beyond are the sole possession of empty rooms, saved for a few human eyes now and then. Past the entrance to the huge rock edifice and red roof reminiscent of a cottage gone crazy on steroids, to where the road veers right up into trees promising wilderness. Here the bank drops to a deep overgrown ravine on the left, and driveways snake up the hillside on the right. Turn at the second left, curve and coast down through a procession of remodeled 50’s ranchers. At the yellow mailbox beside wintering plants, turn toward the house with artsy bronze chimney stacks under two ancient oaks. A brick rancher morphed with tall ceilings and large spaces, dressed like a cottage.

Inside, walk through the neat, light filled rooms with comfortable furniture, handmade side tables of lovely wood, all color and texture designed to please. Pass the abstract paintings on the walls, shells and stones amongst art pottery and glass. Go to my office where the art turns personal and symbolic. Where photos of me in Hawaii and Santa Fe, my spirit-homes, are pasted on walls without fanfare. To where my everyday life’s divided into stacks. Spiral notebooks with sturdy cardboard backs, colored flags at the edges, their pages filled with scrawl in blue ink. Pictures, papers and periodicals for research and reference. Notes and books on the business of book marketing. Folders for my daily current events. My lives most recently passed, such as producer of The Honeybee Project, tucked away in file drawers. The files and artifacts of my previous lives – business woman, artist, project manager – all moved to the basement.

At night I turn my computer off because its moonglow shines into the hall outside our bedroom. My husband doesn’t mind, but it teases me. Perhaps I’m missing an email. Perhaps this thing stomping my brain can’t wait. Perhaps if I just got up I wouldn’t feel as tired as I feel in that moment.

Often the book’s characters talk to me at night. Whisper I’m doing okay telling their stories. I know come morning they’ll hover at my ear, or catch me in the shower. That they’ll forgive me, wait, when I neglect them for long stretches. I never tell them they aren’t my bliss because that’d be a lie. I look forward to the discoveries in knowing them, in their stories. I could never tell it as good as they do.

And seems I’ve done a circle, because that last paragraph is where I catch up to the here and now. Big or small, things that give meaning, offer more to the world than the sum of me alone create solid ground beneath my feet. It’s when I catch up with my heart. We know how that happens, don’t we?

Another small journey to mindfulness. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

A secret: Surprise insight this very moment (gasp) I really want to do this hard stuff in front of me that I thought I was doing because I had to.
A favorite: Hearts, Stars, and Spirals, all kinds