A Sharp Pencil

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Heloise Jones

What is it inside our imagination that keeps surprising us
at odd moments
when something is given back
We didn’t know we had had
In solitude, spontaneously, and with great joy?
~ Charles Wright

I love the smell of just cut green grass. Not the camel, gold, and sage grasses of the desert where I live. The smell of cut lawns. So rare here where water is precious, and where smells die in the dry air with nothing to hold them. On my walk the other day, before every trace of moisture evaporated with the rising sun, just as a mental grumble over the roar of the monster mower at the park settled in, that smell of cut grass hit me. I calmed, and noticed the mower was moving further away, to a different section of the park, the sound becoming buffeted by trees, felt less grinding. I leaned against the huge tree I visit each morning, and took a long breath. We smell grass, I told her.

As I walked on, I wondered when I fell in love with that smell of freshly cut grass. A question I’d never asked myself before. I’d only paused, basked in the pleasure.

A conversation with poet James Nave the day before was the prompt for my when & where question. ‘Knowing you,’ he said, ‘I’d ask you about pencils. When I was a kid, I loved the pencil sharpener. . .’ Tho I can’t remember now exactly what his remembrance was, I feel how much I LOVED his question. Because I immediately jumped to the old fashioned, now ugly, tarnished metal crank desk pencil sharpener I’ve had for 40 years. It’s gone across country three times with me. I don’t think I will ever get rid of it, because it’s perfect.

From the moment I pull it out, flip the level that lifts the rubber pad on the bottom, creating a vacuum that holds it tightly to any flat surface (brilliant!), I anticipate the long sharp point, and the ease, cleanness, and beauty of the line I’ll get. A satisfaction that no other pencil sharpener has ever given me. And I realized I’m taken back to myself. I’d never thought about that, either. Only felt it. Like I felt the pleasure of the smell of that grass.

These experiences bring me back to my writer Self. This is how we write what we know. How I can write from the POV of a 10 yr. old boy, not being one. Or experience the meaning a cello holds for a woman, not ever having owned and loved such an instrument. This doesn’t mean we don’t do our research. I played a cello. Noted how it felt in my arms, and the weight of it against me. How the notes vibrated thru my body, filled me and pulled me with them. It means we find the place where we meet, human to human. Connection. What writing is about. First with ourselves, heart to mind, mind to page, then with the reader.

It’s about observing and living with awareness, something all good writers do. The awareness of noticing how something fits in the context. The rarity of the smell of cut grass in the desert. How something holds more than the object in hand, leading to values and meaning. A sharp pencil. How these awarenesses can expand, take us deeper into ourselves and creativity.

We can shift awareness in the real world when the hard stuff assails us. We can see the multitude of what’s before us, including choices. Which is what story and creativity are about!

We’re in a dance with creativity when we write. We’re expanding the dance floor! Taking it to the edges of possibility.

James Nave has a favorite story I’ve heard him say many times. When he was young, his mother quoted lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses to him. She changed the I to You, making it a message he carried with him. I’ll say it like his mother said it to him:

You are a part of all that you have met
Yet, all experience is an arch
where thru gleams that untraveled world
whose margin fades forever and forever as you more.

We suspend belief each time we write and the words come from the heart and the imagination, and all that is part of us.

What do pencils bring up for you? Tell me in the comments.

(Photo: Alistair Macrobert)

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

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Becoming a Writer

Posted on June 15, 2018 by Heloise Jones

‘You identify with what you do!’ He said it with more of ah-ha than surprise. ‘I sure do,’ I said. ‘I’m a writer, and mentor, and I love all the pieces.’ He asked for more. I rarely get this sort of interest from someone who’s not a writer. ‘It’s different for everyone,’ I said. For me, I love the challenge of finding a way to say it so others can experience something for themselves thru my words. I love following a story, getting to know a character, the surprise and discovery in the journey. I love the connection writing & mentoring creates. + It’s cool to see someone feel empowered in their process, and share their triumphs.

He’d never thought about it that way, he said. Then he asked the big question: Did I always want to be a writer. Ha! No! Writing was something that happened.

I planned my first book in 2nd grade. I had a theme, a table of contents, a few stories written. My parents thought it wonderful. I let it go. It felt like drudgery, despite being fairy tales.

My first writer’s block was in 3rd grade. Prompted by a poem in a school newsletter, I thought a poem something I could do. I never showed it to anyone. I was unsure it was really a poem, or if was any good. I was afraid of rejection.

My first award for writing was in 6th grade. The story displayed at a school arts fair. Heloise is good at creative writing written in my report card. I don’t remember what the story was about. I know it was long. . . 11 handwritten pages.

At 18 I failed creative writing in college. Every Friday we had one assignment: Write. Each Friday I turned in a blank sheet of paper. I didn’t know what to say, or how to start. I told myself it didn’t matter. I wanted to be an artist, anyway.

Nine years later, I left a physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusive marriage. I was alone, felt devastated and full of fear. I got my first journal, and poured my heart into it—questions, doubts, joys, yearnings. And as if by magic, poems flew in like angels and birds, unbidden, fully formed. At all hours. When I laid in the dark, feeling the pain. As I washed dishes, wondering how I’d get thru. I was in awe whenever it happened. Those poems were evidence I was OK, even when I did things I was ashamed of. They left as suddenly as they appeared.

Over the next ten years I let my journal go. I wrote for jobs. Wrote letters and cards to friends. And I went back to school for the fifth time to complete my bachelor’s. You know how you look back, see the turning point of your life? How it led to where you are now, even if years passed before you picked up the trail, again? This was it.

I heard the word patriarchy for the first time, and heard young women students talk about date rape as an accepted risk. Something inside me ignited. I became a tireless activist for women on that HUGE university campus. I fought for awareness and sought alliances, speaking to groups, students, faculty, and the provost. Another student and I founded a campus-wide newsletter for women students and faculty.I announced at a student leaders retreat there’d be a Women’s Center on campus before I graduated 18 mos. later. Something they said was impossible.

In that experience I found my Voice, and learned the power of using it, both as a student writing what matters to her, and as an activist. When the Women’s Center opened on the eve of my graduation,I didn’t know how to own this thingfar bigger than me created for others. It took seeing it in writing to realize the true power of my Voice.

Ten years later, I realized I’d lost my Voice. Something vital was stripped from me. I remembered that empowered feeling I had.

By accident or by angels, I met a woman who led prompted writing circles. For one afternoon each week we wrote to prompts, read our raw work aloud, and responded to one another’s work. Every time I read, I left the group mute. I vowed I’d quit. I was encouraged to stick with it, until finally I asked the right question. . .what can I do to connect? I took her answer and perfected my craft, and dove into all the things writers do. And I learned the power of story and connection. And that I was a writer.

The other day I noticed the most extraordinary things on my morning walk. One could call it budding. I call it babies. Young, short cholla cactus with what I know are their first blooms ever in life. Young, short prickly pear cactus with what I know are their first ‘apples’ plumping up. New growth on a longleaf pine, how the long needles cling tight in a shaft, in their birth tribe, before spreading out. The beginnings of pine cones, something I didn’t know.

I stopped at the very,very big tree I visit each morning, paused like I do before walking to the rose garden across the long grassy park sprinkled with clover. Above me, the clearest, loudest song caused me to look up. A small sparrow, with a blushed red throat, 10 ft. up on a limb sang those clear, really loud notes. I watched its throat move in and out, amazed. That little body, using its Voice!

There are so many beginnings happening all the time, inside and outside us. Song to a new morning. First blooms and fruit. The cluster of needles before each stretches, becomes part of the tree on its own. Thoughts and emotions. Words on a page. Birth. It may be a tree or a cactus or a bird, or words. . .and, by golly, it’s not *just* a tree or a cactus or a bird, or words.

Those poems that flew in those many years ago. . .they were me, telling my story from within. In a lyric I could feel thru the pain. I didn’t think myself a poet. I never thought to be a writer.

And the books I’ve written. . .the characters and stories chose me. I never thought I’m going to write a book. I got curious.

That need at the huge university campus. . .it touched my heart in a way that sparked passion, and gave me my Voice.

“All of us are scared: of looking dumb, of running out of ideas, of never selling our copy, of not getting noticed.

We fiction writers make a business of being scared, and not just of looking dumb. Some of these fears may never go away, and we may just have to learn to live with them.”
~ Jack Bickman

We show up, say Yes, try it on. And find what matters. What I know for sure, our Voice always matters. We are made to create. Writing chose me.

What creative projects have you ‘tried on?’
What matters to you?
Do you feel empowered when you write, even if it’s not perfect?
What can you say Yes to?

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The Gift of Curiosity

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Heloise Jones

“Life on earth is a written language
that is read through the
living of it. . .”
Jamie K. Reaser (from In This Way)
*

Curiosity was the theme at a talk I went to this week. Our name badges had the line ‘I am curious about…’ I finished it with Your story, and what excites you.

Not knowing they built 30 minutes in for mingling, I arrived long before the presentation. Unlike when I’m speaking in front of a group or crowd, I’m shy in these open room meet-n-greets. I followed the other early birds upstairs, found a seat in the rows of chairs.

I like to chat with people sitting beside me at these things, so I turned to a couple, learned it was not their first time at one of these events. I noticed neither filled in the line on their name tag, so I asked. She was curious if I grew my own food. She was a gardener, and used to sell at the farmers market. As we talked, she said the most amazing thing: she didn’t like or appreciate flowers. She only grew them after she realized people would buy them. Function seemed important to her, so I asked if she ever planted marigolds alongside her vegetables to discourage bugs, or if she liked the flowers before they turned to seed or fruit. She shook her head. I’d never known anyone who didn’t appreciate flowers. A tiny purple flower sprouting on a rosemary sprig in my vase thrills me.

It was my turn. I’m curious, of all the stories you have, which would you like to share? He said nothing. She’s trying to be an artist, her words. As I do when I hear writers and artists say the words ‘trying to,’ I asked if she was making art, and affirmed her as an artist. Adding, ‘I wrote a book about this, so it’s dear to my heart.’ She got it! Then surprised me again. For the first time in the year since The Writer’s Block Myth was published, I wasn’t asked what the title of the book is.

Art isn’t necessary like food or clothing, she continued. My eyes widened. She was a fabric artist, found it wrong small art quilts got more money than quilts for the bed. I thought about Amish and Appalachian quilts, the functional Navajo and Turkish rugs, all commanding great price. I said again what’s close to my heart.

Art is a language. It evokes something inside us. It creates connections, within us and between us. Art and writing are so powerful, artists, poets, and writers are executed in some countries, even when their works aren’t blatantly political. ‘Art’s not the same as a burger or salad,’ I said, ‘and it’s still food. It has always been a part of us humans.’

She mentioned prehistoric cave drawings. Yes! And it was art. They rounded the bodies of the animals, put figures in different poses, doing different things. Art told their stories. I shared I’d just learned about the Cuerva de los Manos (Caves of Hands) in Patagonia. Wondered out loud what stories those early peoples were telling. Blank eyes stared back at me.

At that moment, 100 people poured in, took seats all around us. The quiet room noisy, I turned away.

I recently bought a book that sits on a table where I see it. The entire book feels like a work of artistry to me. The paper is luscious. The poetry simple and real. The cover & images inside lovely. It’s not art you’d see on my walls, and yet, I feel good when I look on–and in–it. It’s comforting, like certain foods. And the whole feels impeccable, like I envision my own books to be.

I didn’t notice the title until I got home. Leaves. I’ve loved leaf motifs forever. I have leaf finials, leaves on lamps, cards, tiles, and once across my bed on a duvet cover. I got rid of the cover in a move, and regret it. It was soft green with cream colored leaves woven all over with silky threads. Like the book, it held a mixture of things that feed my soul – texture, color, comfort, touch, a sense of home, a particular beauty.

The experience of these things is tied to what defines it in my mind & body beyond their physical bones. Just as we’re defined beyond blood, bones, and skin that holds us together. They’re more than talismans or symbols.

Many years ago I saw a short film that’s never left me. Rain falls in heavy sheets from a thick cloud-covered sky. 10 yr. kids in a classroom tease and taunt a girl who draws picture after picture of sunshine and flowers. We understand this is nuclear rain. They know sunshine and flowers are impossible. One day, they lock her in a closet. Moments later, the clouds part and the sun comes out. The kids rush outside, forget her. She bangs on the door, looks thru cracks in the wall at the sunshine she’s only seen in her imagination, and now can’t experience. Flowers spring up everywhere, cover a field. The kids laugh and play in the sunshine, gathering armloads of blossoms as they run. It lasts only a short time. The clouds close over, the rain falls. Once indoors, they remember the girl in the closet. With remorse on their faces, they unlock the door. One holds out the flowers as an offering.

On Valentine’s Day, in a high school in Utah, every single student received a rose. No one was left out because good people came together, donated time and money to make it happen. A student said the entire vibe in the school that day was one of smiles and sharing. Even the kids who act like they don’t care felt a part of it. What those roses represented transformed the entire school. Because one person was curious enough to see how every kid could get a rose.

At the same time, in a high school in Florida, one beautiful girl got nine bullets in her back as she ran from a shooter. 16 others died with her. The question here is are we curious enough to hear each other.

When the presentation around curiosity began, we were told to exchange answers to what we wrote on our name tags. The beautiful woman beside me was curious where I was from. I answered, thinking as I spoke, of all the things to be curious about in this moment with this theme, why that. There were so many possibilities, her answer could be fascinating. I didn’t have a chance to ask.

I went home, wrote on Facebook: Do you consider yourself a person with a good dose of curiosity about life & the world? Why or why not? What tweaks your curiosity? I really want to know. What people said is exactly what I would say. And it says it all:

Being curious – pursuing the unfamiliar, unknown, and even the uncomfortable opens us up to discovery. . .the view is much bigger. Experiencing nature. Knowing how things work, or grow, and what they turn into. Spirituality. People. And a fellow writer follows her curiosity wherever it leads her, whether it’s how to buy a camel or uranium mining. We’re a citizen of the bigger world.

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

What are you curious about? Share it the comments below.
When writing, let curiosity guide you. See where it takes your story.

Photo by Polychrome Creative

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Stories, Our Connective Tissue

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Heloise Jones

So it surprises me now to hear
the steps of my life following me ––
so much of it gone. . .
as though a prayer had ended
and the bit of changed air
between the palms goes free
to become the glitter
on some common thing that inexplicably shines.
~ Galway Kinnel (from ‘The Still Time’)
*

I saw the author of ‘The Artist’s Way,’ Julia Cameron, give a presentation recently. A friend who knows her introduced us. I was thrilled. I’d read her book in the early 90s when it first came out, and participated in a weekly group around the its principles. These groups grew into a worldwide phenomenon, and continue today. When she heard about my book ‘The Writer’s Block Myth,’ she wanted to know more and where to get a copy. I gifted her one. Somehow that felt special.

My take-away of the evening was the value of ‘morning pages.’ Three pages written in longhand first thing upon rising. Clear the mind, get the frets and broiling stuff up and out. What if you write 4 pages, someone asked. We get full of ourselves, Julia said. You’ve hit the real (sometimes hard) stuff by 1-1/2 pages. At three you get the heart of what you need and the magic happens. Seems there’s always a number before it’s too much or something else, doesn’t it? I made a vow to get back to morning pages.

I’ve been thinking A LOT about empowerment lately. This is no secret. I’ve written about it here. I’ve planned a retreat around women’s empowerment. I wrote a book of empowerment for writers and creatives. Behind my thoughts, the power of our words, spoken and written. How our stories are key in the narrative of our lives, and in a society’s narrative. Because stories are the glue of relationships and cultures. They drive us. They guide compassion and fear, biases and action. In the best of worlds, they have the power to light us up inside so we feel strong and confident, and we see we’re not alone. They’re a way to connect with ourselves and others, and have a Voice.

The truth of this is everywhere. I asked the lab tech if it was an iwatch I saw on her wrist as she drew my blood. It was. Do you like it? How do you use it? I asked. The questions I’ve had about this thing I perceived as frivolous, mainly because I couldn’t see a reason for it except as a gadget to further bombard one with info. She changed my mind with her story. ‘I have a special needs kid. He’s sight impaired,’ she said. ‘I get messages from his teachers during the school day. Now I can respond fast when I couldn’t before because our phones have to be off in the lab.’ A moment of connection with another person. A shift in perception for me. And for her, she had a voice, was more than her lab coat to this stranger.

I have a friend whose son is autistic. Speaking to people, especially in public, is hard for him. She home schools him, and posts some of her experiences with him on Facebook. The kid is brilliant. His response to his environment fascinating. Such as he knows and spells words I don’t have a clue the meaning of. Words far longer than the four & five letter words they had him read in public school. He saw a need, and decided he’ll found a university when he grows up.

I particularly love his answer to a woman who posed the question whether it’s OK to explain her child’s autism to strangers, or if privacy is more respectful and less ‘labeling.’ His spelled response: MY STORY IS SO TOTALLY WORTH NICE PEOPLE HEARING BECAUSE I REALLY LIKE MY DIFFERENT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD. (caps his) It’s not just his answer I love. I love the message inside it.

He’s a kid with no throwaway comments like you and I have. This one sentence took significant time and energy to say. And it was important to him to share it. Because he wants the world to hear it. He has a Voice, he sees and processes the world differently than most, and he’s empowered with that knowledge. He’s OK. I rather like that he says ‘nice people,’ too. As if he knows some people aren’t owed an explanation of who he is. The simple fact is his brain works differently, his way of communicating is often difficult to understand, and that makes him different. I think different is OK.

It always gets down to how we stay focused and move toward the goals we desire. How we live a creative life. Especially for writers. What’s the secret for seeing and listening with the assumption the story will be interesting, and ignoring, as poet Maya Stein says, the catcalls of the deadlines.

My intent for morning pages the day after I saw Julia Cameron didn’t happen as planned. I wrote 2 pages the first morning. The following two mornings, I forgot. It’s been off and on sporadic since. I heard others’ stories, and wasn’t hearing my own. Then last week, I got pulled deep, deep down into sleep. A nap in the afternoon, and again all thru the night. My dreams full and fat with presence and lots going on. My limbs weighed a thousand pounds when I rose the next day. Mid-afternoon, the BLUES came on with all caps. They curled up inside me, made a nest of my heart. I felt inconsequential and questioned myself, what I’m doing, & not. Those stories felt more real than all the good stuff in my life. At 2:30pm, I decided to write my morning pages.

I followed the pen, didn’t lead when I wrote, as I know to do. I was present and paid attention, resisting the urge to judge words or myself. I connected with both sides of the narratives running thru me. The one that squeezed my heart, and the one that stood in the shadows and needed a Voice. My perspectives shifted. My view of myself grew. I felt the blood move thru my arms and legs once more. I didn’t have answers. I had my Voice back. I wrote myself back up & onto my feet.

I live with these truths. . .Our Voice is our Superpower. Our stories are our connective tissue.
Tell your stories. The true ones. The ones in your strong heart without fear.

In the morning when you rise, write 3 pages longhand – your morning pages. Stick with it, finish the three. Note what you discover, what shifted, and how you feel at the end.

Photo: Jonatan Pie

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Follow the Story

Posted on November 29, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“Stories let us find the lesson.
They don’t demand a particular one.
You pick the meaning you are ready for.”
~ Art Jones
*

I started writing late in life. Like, way past qualifying as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35.” There were periods – recognitions for stories in elementary school, poems coming thru me unbidden as I processed a painful divorce, works in college that earned praises like ‘platonic ideal.’ And yet, it took realizing I’d lost my Voice to deliver me to a writing circle where I discovered what being a writer is. Where I learned to let go of control, follow the work and be surprised. Where I was encouraged to stick with it, and finally asked the right questions to learn my craft. That led me to write books.

Letting go was even part of my process with “The Writer’s Block Myth.” I gathered supporting materials and conducted interviews without judgement, expectation, critique, or organizing. Saw it all dovetail and fall seamlessly into place, in desired order (something I wrote about here).

I’m not saying writing is easy. Only that there’s wisdom in the process beyond the limits of our imaginations. That having a beeline to our imagination is the beginning.

So, whether we outline, hold strong intention, or write as a pantser like me, who rarely knows beyond a loose framework ’til I’m in it, trusting the work gives us more to create with. Because the work has a life of its own.

Let me tell you a story how I know. I believed my novel done when I sat down to compose a log line, the one-liner that starts ‘This book is about. . .” Before I wrote one word beyond those four, I heard the little voice: ‘You don’t know what this book is about.’ I leaned back in my chair, didn’t go on. I wrote 10,000 more words in the novel. Allowed the second protagonist to have her full say. And not ’til then was the book Done. Not ’til then did I see the real & full story revealed.

This process of following the story can be dramatic. One day my husband walked thru the room where I was writing, saw me crying. Why was I crying, he wanted to know. ‘This is so beautiful,’ I said. ‘But you’re the writer. You know how it ends,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know this,’ I told him. ‘She wasn’t in the room where I thought she’d be.’ That scene is still one of my favorites, where even my editor cried on reading it.

Did I mention, yet, that it’s fun writing this way?

I believe memoir (story of memory) is like this, too. The memories like characters in our minds with voices, feelings, and ways they lived during moments of time.

Recently I heard actor and voice-over artist Cameron Gregg in an interview. His words sent a shock of recognition thru me:

All art is selection and arrangement.

Shift perspective. Give new meaning to the human condition, and insight into the different forms human condition can take. Help knit that story together. Think, what is the singular thing that happened in their (a character) life that made them who they are?

My gosh, Yes. In Life, too. Now more than ever.

We’re always in the works we create. We’re documentarians who can’t disappear in the photo or film, our position and person is revealed. Like Ken Burns who says all his work is about waking the dead. That he knows the story he’s retelling is waking his mother who he never saw out of bed before she died when he was a boy. Or in my novel, my retelling a part of my childhood, and connecting to nature, something I love deeply. In life, it’s how we select and arrange memories, pain points, intentions, ideas, beliefs, biases, name it, creating a lens we see the world thru, from which we tell our stories.

All to say what I know writing and life is – showing what it is to be human. That words are important. Observing with awareness is critical to being present. And writing is connection, period. Writers are powerful. Here, said much better by author Richard Bausch. The last sentence the bottom line:

“We think too much about the meaninglessness of existence; we have taken in the idea of life as an absurd proposition, and all our suffering becomes ridiculous. But a writer senses meaning in ‘the mystery of things,’ and reports about the discoveries that come from merely setting narrative in motion, letting people move and breathe and be in the prose, and that is what finally connects us all, across time and distance and the grave itself. We are about SHOWING the human journey as itself, what Conrad meant when he said that above all he wanted to make us SEE. Wanted to make us feel the ‘solidarity of the human family.’ This is why it’s such important work, what Bill Maxwell in a letter to me called ‘this blessed occupation.’ So the reward is in the act itself, of giving forth meaning through expression in this miraculous way, with words. Our coin, our spark and music, the bread of our daily existence. It isn’t work, so much as it is the central element of our nature: our beautiful tending toward expression. Set it into motion again, friends. It’s what we have against the dark—no less than that.”

Everything he says, + we never know who our words will touch, or when. That quote at the top is by my husband. He read little fiction until one Christmas 15 yrs. after I claimed being a writer. That Christmas he asked for a novel. I bought him a short stack of novels and short stories. Now he shares what he reads with me. He didn’t read my novel “Flight” until 8 yrs. after it was done. He carried it to work with him, not wanting to miss a thing. He didn’t read my blog for two years. Now he comments, and subscribed to get it in his inbox. We never know.

It’s the holiday season. The greatest time ever for stories, both personal and seasonal. I admit, some days I’m in the midst of the muck. And my wish remains, now and always, we all live and love our best creative life. It’s what we have against the dark.

Set up a bag, box, or container you enjoy looking at in a place where you see it easily and often. If you’re working on a story or project, put whatever you come across that may apply in it. Do not edit, critique, or consciously think about it once it’s tucked away. If you’re not working on something specific, put quotes, paragraphs, and whatever touches you in your container. Two-four-six weeks later, pull it all out. Prepare to be surprised as you see what stories and threads show up. For your work, and for you life.

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