Faultlines & Cracks

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply
and doesn’t stop where it once used to.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

We’re all cheering the monsoons here in the desert. This is the kind of place where people walk outside and look up when it starts to rain. The kind of place where green blushes the golden-red brown landscape overnight, and any weedy sprig may bloom with a little water. Last night the rain fell gently for hours after the thunderstorm. It felt different, slightly strange, to a friend and I as we stepped out, walked down the block. Later in the evening at home, I forgot that feeling. I was comforted by the sound.

This morning I started for my walk after 6am. Late. Immediately it turned different. I came across a large garden snail in the middle of the road 1/2 block up. Just as I thought wow, a snail, I heard the eggshell crack of another I stepped on. Which (after apologizing profusely to the crushed creature. . .yes, I do that) I noticed 10 to 12 others across that section of road. Nowhere else up or down.

Then, 2/3 of my way up before I start back down, along the block where I enjoy bunnies and ravens, no bunnies or birds. Not one. First time since I started these walks 6 wks. ago. I wondered if the bunnies got flooded out. Why do we humans go to catastrophe first? I heard a hawk call as I crossed the street to the park.

I walked the sidewalk toward the rose garden rather than go thru the middle of the park like I usually do. A rare move, as the path thru the lawn offers some relief from the rush & roar of early morning vehicles. A ways before the paved entrance to the rose garden, the little voice said turn onto the lawn here. I followed. 15 ft. in, I came upon a semi-circle of white mushrooms. I stood in the middle of their arc, looked at them a short while. There were 8 buttons. I’d seen the phenomena before in the woods. As I walked away, I glanced back. Darker grasses formed a perfect waxing crescent moon, tips and all. The buttons ran thru the middle of it.

Past the bushes cut as hedges, around the ideally shaped blue spruce standing 25′, I stood at the top of the rose garden, surprised by suds on every level of the fountain at the bottom of the walk.

I thought as I walked home how one detail – rain for hours in the desert – changed the entire trajectory of this story of my morning walk. How things that are hidden came out. Did those location centric snails wash from a yard? Or did they crawl out onto the wet hard surface to get here to there like they do in FL, covering sidewalks like tiny booby traps for inhumanity. There are no sidewalks on that stretch of the snail covered road.

I talk a lot about following the story, letting characters lead, getting out of our way so to expand and deepen the possibilities in ourselves and our work. Even in nonfiction, what would emerge if we followed threads of thought.

Author Richard Bausch says, “If you’re struggling <with your writing>, it’s because your talent is acting on it, seeing into its fault lines, and you have to learn to trust the difficulty.” What if we just wrote & created to see where it led us. To see what questions and challenges might come up. What if we shifted to openness-adventure-surprise vs. expectation & assumption. And let our talent act.

I believe we would feel more space inside. Our work would grow bigger. I know what I’m talking about.

I didn’t start out to write a novel. I followed a little boy who showed up in the very first story I wrote at my very first writing retreat. I wrote to see what would happen to him. To see if I could write long enough in a bigger story.

I never intended to write “The Writer’s Block Myth.” In fact, I got a message like a charge from the Universe, along with the message I’d be telling the world about myself, 3 full years before I wrote it. I said No, I’m going to the hot springs today when I got that message. Those exact words. And I did. But the book dogged me.

I started a blog for no particular reason except it seemed time to start. I shared what was up each week, never realizing it would develop into what it is now. The title for the book flew thru my mind as I wrote a scene for my second novel. I noted it in the top margin of the page. Months later, a list came like another magical download that turned into a blog. That list is the over-arching structure of Part One of the book. There’s more, but you get the picture.

Author and songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote the cracks are how the light gets in. I say let’s face the cracks and fault lines. Be explorers thru the challenges. Follow the unexpected. It’s quite a glorious feeling when it sings just right. I can tell you that for sure, too.

Look around the room, choose a prompt. Write for one minute to see where it leads. Keep writing if you want to follow.
Take something you’re working on, believe you know where it’s going, and throw something new in. The morning after a rare all night rain in the desert. The woman across the room walks over, trips, falls into him. A total eclipse of the sun.

Can you see how huge that thunderhead is? Can you see the light inside it?

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A New Frontier

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“Pink is my new frontier.”
~ participant in an intuitive painting workshop led by Chris Zydel

I remember when Pink became my new frontier. I was in my early 40s. I’d disliked and avoided the color my entire life. No pink kid dresses. Only one doll with a pink dress. She was not a fav. I could enjoy a pink rose, and I turned toward red or peachey toned flowers. I appreciated soft washes of the color when mixed with greens, ate off the china with pink flowers my mother gave me , but pink wasn’t a choice, ever.

Understand, COLOR is important to me. I see it like I smell aromas and taste foods with a thousand taste buds. Grasses are never simply brown or green. I can tell the color of an M&M in my mouth. I will change clothes if the color doesn’t feel right on my skin. So, pink was not simply something to like or dislike.

My relationship with it changed dramatically at a Monet exhibition. I stood immersed in Monet’s signature blues/greens/aquas on a round canvas. The colors were deep, intense. As my gaze drifted to the top right of the painting, I wasn’t prepared for the vibrant burst of pinks shaped loosely like a human heart. It physically & viscerally knocked me back a few steps. As if by electrical shock, or a shove by a sudden gust of wind. I staggered, stood in a daze, unsure what had happened. On my way out, I bought a snack at the small museum deli, entranced by the pink netting it was wrapped in. I hung the netting on my rear view mirror for the long drive home, where it stayed for months.

I was in a new frontier, uncharted terriroty with pink.

Frontier: a line or border separating two countries; the extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness; the extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area.

We often enter new frontiers, tho we don’t think of them that way. We move to a new city or neighborhood. We start a new job or line of work. We change our style of dress, the sorts of earrings we wear, the sorts of ties and jackets we buy. We downsize or upsize our homes. We travel. Life delivers a blow, such as illness and we’re in new frontiers of pain, or loss and we’re in new frontiers of grief, or like me when my husband was run down by a car, new frontier of insurance and medical worlds. For artists and writers, when we follow the work, allow the dance floor of creativity to expand, every painting, story-poem-essay, creation is a new frontier. Heck, what’s happening across the globe, our knowledge and relationship to this changed world is a new frontier.

In every frontier, we can choose to explore, learn and adjust, expand who we are. Or stay same-same. Whether in comfort, resistance, or futile control. Even pull the horizons of the frontier to the boundary lines of what we know.

For me, why this, why now is because that painter’s statement about pink, and my remembering my own experience, made me realize I’m in a new frontier. And it lifted me from (confession) doubt. Back then I let pink show up in all its intense glory, didn’t water it down as a wash when it called. I experimented, bought a pink scarf, discovered I look really good in pink. Not coral, the color I typically went to when pink tapped me. I let myself live with it and decide, not react, what my relationship and interaction with it would be. I even let pink Beings show up in my paintings.

This may seem simple. And simple & safe are our best teachers for the bigger stuff.

I’ll tell you a story. Last week the little voice said ‘take your camera’ as I stepped out for my early morning walk. 3 blocks up is a 12 ft. rough carving of St. Francis out of a dead tree trunk. The style common here in Santa Fe. I stopped to take pictures. A raven lit on the edge of the branches closest to me in a tree to my right. Bent his head low, cawed. I told him he’s beautiful, and he gurgled, clicked, chattered. I’ve never heard them gurgle before, I thought. Then he flew to the tree on my left, did the same. I felt satisfied with myself. This bird wanted to talk to me. Ravens remember faces. I wondered if he was the bird I’d seen another time that flew from the tip-top of a very tall tree to the middle branches so he could observe me better.

He then flew to a tree 20 ft up the road. As I caught up, he flew to a tree 30 ft. further on, landed on a sawed off limb with no cover of leaves. He sat silently for minutes, me standing below in the road, before he flew to a pole where I could see him. Too far for me to catch up.

Not until a friend exclaimed there’s a message in that last landing did I see it. My new frontier is not the work I’m doing. I’ve done it for decades. Nor is it simply showing up as All of me, adding the words deep intuition to my job description on my website. (it’s one of my greatest Super Powers, for Jiminy’s sake) Nor is it expanding what I do to thousands of people. Or exploring new ways of recovering things that matter to me, like writing fiction in longhand, because this busy-ness of my current life requires it. My new frontier is going out on a limb like I’ve never done before. Choosing the broad open field of the sky as my arena and horizons, and staking my place in it. Having faith I’m here for a reason, and I can meet it. Faith is my new frontier. What a new way of thinking that is.

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

Tell me. . .what frontiers have you entered? How did it feel?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’d be lying if I didn’t say this new frontier is both exciting and scary.

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Focus, the Sorcerer

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Heloise Jones

I’m taking a class at the community college, Movie Going as Memoir. As with most things I start that don’t seem to make sense, intuition got me there. Our first assignment – think about a movie that was meaningful to us as a child or adolescent that we haven’t seen since, and free associate on the experience seeing the film. Having engaged in personal inquiry for 35 years, I’ve re-watched nearly all of the films that stuck with me, either for story or images. The same reason I reread childhood books. . for a glimpse inside myself or my life at that age.

I didn’t jump on the assignment. The week turned intense. Long satisfying meetings and new connections. Tech snaffus. Creating and launching really cool projects. Two hours before class I got to it. I free associated, but the juice that emerged clearly wasn’t in the assignment.

I explored my history with movies and film, starting at age 3. Heidi, the little girl so like myself who lived in a different world. ‘Fantasia’s’ sorcerer’s apprentice. The unstoppable brooms, the waves, and magical night all coming alive with agency of their own. I moved to those Saturday mornings at age 6 I was dropped off at the big, dark theatre for double features. Then the Saturday mornings as an adolescent. My diet of movies never regulated, or even considered.

I saw how character, moments & freeze frame images, the cinematographer’s palette & tone were what stayed with me. The whole vs. specifics of the story what I remember. As Maya Angelou says, “. . .people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My take-away is the very things I noticed and remembered as a child are the very things that inform my relationship and being as a person in the world.

I understood that the very fact I was left at such a young age to whatever showed up on the big screen, left to make sense of the world on my own, is most likely the start of my interest in sociology, psychology, and life on earth. A fine toolbox for a writer. My piece was not so fine for the class, however.

While others shared vivid descriptions and stories of their experience with their chosen movie, I shared a too-full account of my relationship with the genre without specifics. And a too-long list of images relevant to me but not specific enough to engage them. I was talking about how I learned to assess life thru film, and it wasn’t fleshed out so they understood. I hadn’t edited. The piece wasn’t focused. I didn’t connect with the listener. . .one of the main tenets of writing. I felt chastened.

Focus is a huge gift of editing, and I got my reminder.

One could say Focus has been a theme the past two weeks, it’s popped up so often.

Three authors contacted me about it. One who’s writing a memoir, wants to know how to focus her large story. Another has boxes of files of her writing, wants to know how to approach them and organize. Another has a chapter he isn’t sure hits the marks of either his editor’s or his own intentions.

And two weeks ago, I envisioned and launched a Focus Group – Keys to Writing Success. Am calling people to it now. A group where members gain fresh perspectives, insights, tips, & tools. Connect fully to their writing & creative life. Feel supported, motivated, and confident. In short, write more and write freer. What I’m all about.

Focus. It seems I hit a mark.

Ask yourself as you edit, what is the thread in this work. What’s the spine of the story that the bones of scenes, exposition, and narrative hang from. This helps discern your focus.
Ask what your intent is for the piece you’re writing (book, essay, story, poem, article). This informs the narrative.

Here’s the sorcerer’s apprentice. I’m still enthralled. Animation starts at 20 sec.

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The Evidence Journal

Posted on June 29, 2017 by Heloise Jones

The man at the door was tall, thin. His face was nice. Angular with smooth skin. And open, ernest expression. He looked to be in his 30s. ‘Paint your address on the curb,’ he said. I noticed the small portfolio with stencils, the caddy of spray paint. I told him I was renting. ‘I do it for $10, but I’ll do it for free,’ he said.

Most of the time someone hears I’m a writer, they say they want to write a book or they know someone who’s writing a book, or like one neighbor who sauntered over as I stood in the street watching numbers go down, says anyone can write a book, it’s easy. The young man fell into the first category. He had a book he wanted to write.

It was late, toward dusk, so I didn’t ask right off what he wanted to write. When I did, he launched in with a long story that didn’t sound like a book, though the person telling it did. Because while I learned why he was painting numbers on curbs for $10 a pop, that his smooth face belied the scars covering his body, and that he’s experienced a long line of sad ironies in his life, his character came out in the telling. Including his deep desire for connection and to be heard, revealed as he packed up for the curb across the street. ‘Come over,’ he said, ‘we can keep talking.’

In my book “The Writers Block Myth” I talk about the Evidence Journal. A piece of paper, notebook, or small book you can leave on the counter, the corner of your desk, or put in your bag. I emphasize it must be something tangible, because memory is a trickster. As humans, we dwell in expectations and judgements. We focus on what’s not there vs. what is there. We discount triumphs, possibilities, and any evidence things are different than the stories we hold in our minds of what’s true. And as writers, we’re pulled out of our process where creativity dances. Our creative life can feel squeezed by life in the real world. When what we want is to feel we’re writers no matter what’s going on in our lives.

I’ve had a desire to get back to writing fiction and poetry. I’ve mentioned it before. I’ve written several poems. Yea. The stories in the ethers have been more elusive. The good part is I’m an intuitive writer. I hear characters and stories. I know to be open and release judgement over what shows up. Still, I feel frustrated at times.

What happened in the street that evening while the guy painted my curb went into my evidence journal, because I saw I’m on the edge of receiving those fictional stories. Because I thought about a novel when the neighbor said anyone can write a book, it’s easy. I was present as the young man told me his story, and later, I thought of prompts from what he shared: He worked for the railroad. The girl’s father. . . The evidence is clear.

We write everyday in ways we don’t consider true writing: Facebook posts, emails, lists. We take walks, go about our homes or work, and don’t consider what we see as feeding our writing life. The truth is, every one of these activities holds a prompt we can view and hear without judgement or the long story attached to it. Every one can be used to move us forward, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, poetry or that essay about how to change the world. Call it observing with awareness, something writers do. Call it being a writer.

When you notice and observe what’s around you, write those minutes down in your evidence journal. Put a star next to it.
Look and listen for 5 objective prompts for your writing. Make a list.

The curb was rough, so it didn’t turn out exactly pretty. I paid him, anyway. The following morning, I realized the gifts I got in the process.

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Every Writer’s Superpower

Posted on June 8, 2017 by Heloise Jones

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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