Taking Off My Clothes

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Jeff's tea I always say a birthday starts when you think about it, and ends
when you forget you have one. Can be a day, or a month.
Not having friends close in community here,
the moment I opened this b’day gift of honey was special.
*

Saturday was my birthday. I’m four years away from one of the Big 0 birthdays, and feeling the pinch to get on with things undone. To move into my Ideal Life. Because I changed as I’ve gotten older, and want to slow down, take life easier, let go of the go-go and guilt. The thing is I’ve been telling the story of my life for a long time a certain way. Fitting it to meet standards for outcomes or expectations. Face-to-face trusts. Business trusts. None a lie or fabricated, but I feel fractured. I’m an artist archetype. A natural empath, sensitive to energies, noise, and non-verbals. Everything else you see I taught myself or learned out of necessity. And now, when I want to choose the story I tell, I have this urge to tell you the stuff I don’t typically share. Say, I get it.

Last weekend I flew coast to coast for a three-day seminar experience about online business. My trip prompted by a strong intuitive hit as I watched yet another webinar. It made no sense if you balanced costs with what might be called realities. Right off the bat I stretched to show up. It called for business casual. I’m sitting in my jammies as I write this now! I let go, assembled outfits from my closet I liked, felt put together in. Found the perfect designer jacket with distinctive, artsy lines in the perfect color, exactly Me, at the consignment store. By the time I took off, I held my original intention of clarifying my niche and market lightly. A new one received the day before from my medium-psychic hair stylist (go figure, right?). Listen, he said, repeating the word twice more. Listen. And I did.

I did not volunteer for laser coaching tho I wanted it badly, or raise my hand when shares from the group were solicited. I went second when we pared off. Stepped to first only when four of us sat, others hesitating as the clock ticked. I listened to feedback, did what I do well, saw patterns. Style, my smile across the room, you belong with professionals. Asked why when I got a generic ‘you’re fun’ from someone I hadn’t met before. Understood I stood out, was seen, and it was okay. Realized I no longer want words like amazing, great, awesome, smart. Tell me how or why you think it. Give me something to hold on to. Saying my words speak to you counts. So does saying I’m a blessing.

I’ve been taking inventory since I returned. Two days ago I wondered what it would feel like to come out, tell you all the things I’ve experienced that make me a good writer. That prompted high-powered New York editor Marjorie Braman to say with her rejection that I have “a gift with character,” continue with it’s “something I’ve always thought took true talent because it’s not easily learned. I felt that I knew her characters and sympathized with them, even in their less sympathetic moments.” Because what I wish I could’ve told her is that it is learned. From life experience. From listening to your gut. Caring about why people who are different think and feel the way they do. From taking time to listen, see, accept stories without judging.

I’ve felt absolutely naked writing this blog since I started. I didn’t have a clue what I’d say when I sat down that first day last March, a year ago. Others actually told me what I was doing. Creating small journeys, sharing so others see how they might navigate life, too.

I long to take off the rest of my clothes, tell you more after you read this , which is all true. More, like I’ve experienced heartbreaking divorce, am married thirty years now and it’s not easy or perfect. I was a single parent for nine years, moved a lot as a child, was repeatedly abandoned by my mother. That I’ve cared for a younger sibling, and a husband who’d been run down by a car. I’ve been flat broke with no job more than once, and once accepted food stamps. Been cheated on and cheated, lied to and lied, done drugs and drank too much, had a season of promiscuity. I’ve been physically battered for years, carried myself calmly to the edge of suicide, been saved by a mystical experience with Jesus. I’ve had mystical experiences with Buddha and whales, too. I feel the world, see and hear colors, and things some would say are not there. I’ve had a boss from hell, been fired from jobs, disinvited from a group, and was once kicked out of a business I helped build & a partnership I loved. I’ve broken or sprained limbs 11 times, had 5 surgeries, barf everything but advil or tylenol, walk with an artificial joint. I’ve had my house catch on fire. Been stalked. Watched a home remodel go $150,000 over budget, landed us back on our feet afterwards. I walked away from an abusive relationship with no help or assistance, cured myself of an extreme phobia of spiders, faced fears that stole my breath and made my legs cramp for hours. I’ve stopped habits at will when they cost me what I wanted, and at times when I realized I no longer wanted them. I got my bachelor’s degree with a 3.99GPA on the 5th try, and created miracles others said were impossible. Found my passion while sitting two years in a writing group, facing mute response to my words, years after the half dozen psychics I’d seen ALL said I’d write. One seeing me at a golden desk with a golden pen. Another asking for my autograph.

In the end, I’m the heroine of my life. I sat with my father as he died. Held space for my sister when she lost her best friend of a husband. Have coached friends, family, and colleagues. That to the truth I’ve only begun traveling like I want, and could be judged, I believe we’ve probably experienced much the same, even with our different stories.

Now, will you have tea with me?

One day we will see everybody….

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

A secret: It’s weird with no poem here, but it’s weird standing naked, too.
A favorite: Birthdays

A New View. No Flash Fiction.

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Window w:Jennifer 2 Freaky big, in LA.
*

By the time I checked into my room in Los Angeles Thursday night, it was past midnight EST. I carried organic chocolate covered almonds for comfort food, lemons in case water was precious, raw bars, and my favorite loose tea. I was grateful for my tea as I ate my $10 oatmeal. Grateful for the almonds after I bought the $10 toothpaste in the hotel. A tad of grounding and normal in the start of three long days of workshop-seminar on how to grow an online business. It didn’t seem crazy to fly coast-to-coast, Florida shore to CA shore, to do this. I’ve been melting my brain studying and writing with little joy or satisfaction, by myself. And the pieces weren’t coming together. I felt less-than for not being further along in my plan for offers. By the time I flew out, it was all about my failing. Lack of sleep, being out of sync in another time zone seemed small potatoes.

I immediately connected with a coach whose clients need a writer (me?!). Chose a seat between an energy healer already in the presenter’s program and a kindred spirit actress turned coach with a fascinating story. Alright! I’m no odd duck. But end of Day One, after failing to complete the clarity exercises for niche and tribe I came to get, I sunk low…way low. Next morning others shared they considered leaving, felt like failures, too. Alright! Not just me. And we all decided to show up, anyway. Open, kind to ourselves, listening and trusting. What I don’t know is how they got there. Answering Yes screams in their heads as they watched yet-another-webinar, like I did.

Day Two, everything fell into place. Why what didn’t make sense in my months of study didn’t. The difficulty and time it can take to distill a clear message so you’re seen, heard in a noisy world. That meh to message can equal a quantum leap. I was buoyed. Convinced by who I saw in the person on the dais, the meat in my notebook, the format of the day with minimal rah-rah. And again, I wept that night, because I also learned I can’t do this by myself. Tribe is far more than the people who’ll benefit from our offers. More than friends or kindred spirits we meet every day or along the way. Tribe is those with us in the journey we’re in right now. And I could have every.single.piece needed for success at a reasonable price. And I wasn’t ready.

Because after I got past the money argument (never an issue once I decide to spend it), the husband won’t understand argument, it came down to me. Despite little income, my study and intent, the financial investment already made, my desire and ultimate vision, I don’t believe I can sustainably show up 120% for a solid year in a dig deep do-it fast train creating it program. It’s not a head thing, but a gut thing. And regular support + accountability won’t make a difference. Core foundational work’s missing. I had to sit, be sure this wasn’t an excuse or effort to hide back into comfort. Then I shared it with people there to help me enroll. And my shame dissolved. They nodded affirmation. Because Life is, after all, about how we show up.

I was calm flying home. Up at 2:30 for a 5am flight, only two hrs. sleep, the shift in direction strong inside me. I’ll write the book on the Writers Block Myth I put aside. Another Getting to Wise journey about getting past stuck for me and readers. Something I wanna write. I still wish I’d enrolled in the program, would have that tribe seeing me thru. Still feel scared I won’t pull off my intents. Still wish it wasn’t so much work. And I’ll find another way for help. Hire another branding coach. I feel brighter. John Lennon said, Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Bottom line, the view depends on which road you look down. I’ll start with my mirror, my evidence journal. What others said they saw in me. 100% where I’m at, open. It’s another good day.

What do you think? Tell me here, in the comments.

*
What we really need is to gather
in the street and talk to each other.
Any street. Lined with shrubs
or tenements. Paved or dirt
or cobblestone. With orange cones
or with wooden barriers
to set off the block so we can talk,
can talk and listen and watch the day go by.
Some will join us. They will wonder
why we’ve gathered. They’ll
pull out their binoculars
as if there’s something more to see.
There’s always something more to see,
like the way the light comes through the hedge
and makes it more gold than green.
Hey, did you hear that nightingale?
When’s the last time you heard one
All my life I’ve been too busy. Rushing
from one here to the next. But look
what happens when we gather
in the street and gawk in whatever
direction. We start to become a we—
you, me, the man in the yellow plaid shirt,
the cop, the woman in white tennis shoes.
It does not matter how we vote or
where we’ve been or how much we make
or if we pray, here we are in the same place
on the same day. Not because someone died,
not because someone’s done something wrong.
There is no one to cheer for but us.
We’ll go back to our homes soon enough,
but for now, here we are
doing the most important work,
gathering in the street to notice together
the scent of fall, the warmth of mid-afternoon sun,
the way all our shadows fall the same direction.”
~ Rosemerry Trommer (It Won’t Make the News)

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

A secret: I’m learning I glean from the musicians who uniquely show up. I hear their messages.
A favorite: John Lennon

11 Things Being an Author Taught Me About Life

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Heloise Jones

I like stories where women save themselves.
~ Neil Gaimen

Writer

I remember the first time I learned fiction writers research. A surprise though I was writing a book set in mid-century Appalachia, a time and place very different from my experience. 2006. I was at the Taos Writing Salon, far from my home. There from an ad in a local magazine. I’d turned the page, but went back, gazed a long time at the ad before folding the page open to mark it. I’d written to prompts every week with a core group of eight women for four years. Attended three weeklong retreats with the same facilitator-teacher, members of the circle at all of them. New writers came and went, but I always sat safely in familiarity. In New Mexico I was on my own.

Once through the door, the excitement of a test and insecurity of new wings took over. Sharing raw work in response to exercises not my fear, but stepping out of the shadow of affirmation from people who knew me. Into a group that included men (so different!), and published authors. Three things occurred in Taos that changed my life forever.

Allegra Huston critiqued a short story of mine, the seed for my novel. An author from England asked if I wrote professionally, responded ‘why not, you oughta be’ when I said no. And an author I respect, whose style and skill I admire, said yes when I asked if she’d edit my book. I became a writer in my mind.

If you read blogs or articles on writing, listen to interviews, you hear writing is a small part of being an author. What surprised me is how being an author shores me through the rough patches in life. Not in the work-thru-it sense as in journaling, but in the ‘this is true’ guideposts sense. My guess, it’ll surprise you, too.

1. First draft is never the final draft.

I trained two years on systems therapy with the Satir Institute of the Southeast. The one thing I knew for sure at the end of that training is life’s not about how often we fall down, it’s about how fast we get up. But I’d also grown up a perfectionist. Writing and rewriting, editing and revising finally taught me to let go. Forgive mistakes. Move on. Practice and do it better next time.

2) Rejection happens. Cheer the triumphs.

The level of rejection authors experience would astonish most people. Sometimes (often) hundreds of rejections, sometimes year after year. Stephen King spiked his rejections on a nail over his desk for years until Carrie launched his career. You read about the big winners. Rarely do you read they are less than 1% of published authors. That the average sales for self-published books are 150-250 copies. That good writers are not immune to rejection. And the reasons for rejection often have nothing to do with the work. Publishing is a subjective business. Perseverance and adopting an attitude of inspiration from the triumphs of others, learning and moving on all key to success as a writer and in life.

3) You define success.

The word ‘success’ is everywhere. Media. Descriptors for individuals. Books are written about it. Blogs discuss the attributes of successful people. A writing teacher once described me as successful. She viewed my publications, my completed novel, my literary agent, my teaching, my long list of professional retreats and workshops attended as setting me apart. Her assessment was a shock, because I didn’t see myself as a successful author. Because my goals and intentions hadn’t been fully realized, yet. And the quality of my life didn’t spell success to me. In that moment I understood only we can define success for ourselves.

4) What you do can be great even if no one sees.

Thousands of fine sentences no one will read. Hundreds of kindnesses and actions no one knows. It all matters. Another’s eyes do not make it more or less than it is.

5) Connection is alchemical.

For a writer, it’s that space between the written words and reader. When words turn into something new in a reader’s mind. Same as between people, when relationship and impact grow from the place they meet. It starts with me, ends with us.

6) Comparison is deadly.

It can stunt a life. You’ll always find someone or something better or worse than where you are now. Use comparisons as benchmarks for where you stand today, and where you aspire to be or go. The present is the only place where you can start to move forward.

7) No new stories, only new ways of telling them.

Pay attention to the people in the stories and the ones telling the tales. They show us what it is to be human. Can teach, open our mind, broaden our perspectives.

8) Every person has a story we don’t know.

Thirty years ago I read a story by Stephen Covey. A man enters the subway with his out-of-control children bouncing off walls, bothering passengers, including Stephen. The man sits next to Stephen, apologizes for his kids. “We just left the hospital. Their mother just died,” he says. I never forgot that story. In moments when I’m irritated or hurt, it helps me gain perspective, not internalize what’s happening as only about me. I may not forgive or forget, but I can be more objective. As an author developing characters and story lines, I’m thrown back into this again and again.

9) Let go of dead-end distractions.

In writing it’s the sidebars, distracting ‘smoking gun’ exposition in a scene. It’s the subplots that don’t tie-in, the rambling. It’s the backstory that slogs down a story, what leaves a reader asking ‘so what?’ In life, it’s the things that take us away from what we believe we want. And the things we ignore that help us feel whole. So, if a neat clean home is important, find a way to have it without costing you time on your goal. If time with friends is important, schedule it. There are threads that guide our lives same as threads that guide a book.

10) Do what answers Yes.

I’ve shared I believe each of us has an abiding question at the heart of everything we do. Mine is Am I Okay? Not ‘safe’ okay, but the okay meaning acceptance as I am. Nothing puts me against my abiding question more than my writing does. It forces me to answer ‘Yes’ for myself so I can continue my craft, reach toward that immaculate creation of work and my best self I’ll never achieve. It’s the Yes that moves me forward.

11) You are the author.

Others can give feedback, state their opinion, give you educated advice. In the end, the author writes the story.

Author (from Merrium-Webster dictionary)
1. a : one that originates or creates
b : capitalized : GOD
2. the writer of a literary work (as a book)

What story are you writing? Tell me in the comments.

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

A favorite: All things writerly, which I didn’t know until I started writing.
A secret: All this dumped into my head in the kitchen the other day.

Photo: Free share by Joanna Kosinska

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The Magic Between Writer & Reader

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Morning glories are one of my favorite flowers.
Considered a weed and nuisance for their vining that entwines anything near.
But the flowers! So gloriously rich in color. Such a greeting for a new day.
I like the metaphor, including the vining.
*

morning glories *

I’m starting my New Year two weeks late. One might say swirling new energy in a new space is a start, in which case I’m not really late. That late’s in my head, tied with expectations, plans, arbitrary things, because after all, I’m healthy. True. But I feel as if I’ve been away on a far-off journey. And you know how that is. It takes time to regain everyday rhythms, even if you’re glad you’re home. I’m still clearing mental dust on the Heloise Jones 2016 track, which includes you.

Here I am….Piles of orphan stuff tucked away. Pictures on walls are all that’s left to claim home. My ideals are written down. Outline for my first non-fiction book’s printed out. I’m asking who are my readers, who do they think I am, what can I give that anyone wants which also lets me write what I write.

Four days into our new digs, I read a facebook post by author Christine Hale that stuck in my bones: ‘Upside down in yoga class today, looking at my (unlovely) toes and the utterly utilitarian ceiling joists way up above them, I found myself thinking about how much tedious, close-focus work goes into the production of a book. Work that readers never notice, unless you don’t do it well. I’d spent the morning proofing spacing and fonts in the publisher’s galley of my memoir. The book deviates in its typography from prose conventions, and getting the typeface and spacing right is about to kill me and the publisher. Upside down, tiring, sweating, but holding the pose, inhabiting its discomfort fully, nothing before me, temporarily, but those toes and those joists, I thought about how you gotta love it: the tedium, the sweat, the fierce quiet satisfaction of a commitment to GETTING IT RIGHT’. . .

Yes! I thought. The tedium of every edit, decision on every word, comma, space. How it sometimes feels like my brain’s melting, and how much I love it. Especially the moment I get it right, knowing there’s no perfection. And yes, I think about writing all the time.

Virginia Wolf wrote, ‘Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I <she> sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm…profound, what rhythm is, goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing…one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it’. . .

And again I thought Yes! Rhythm. Exactly. And it transforms into something inside me, and the reader.

After David Bowie died, I read about him. Watched videos. Here he says the work’s not finished or complete until the audience comes to it. And I read this by publishing media specialist Jane Friedman: ‘The real magic of a book happens when an author’s words and a reader’s mind make something new: page as telepathic intermediary. . . ‘

Yes! Yes! I thought, again. I write not because I must, as many seem to express. Or because I have something to say. Or because a story burns inside. I write because I love the journey, the process, the challenge. The beauty of the moments when I can answer Yes to my abiding question (Am I okay?) in my choice of a word, completion of a sentence, a paragraph, a page. Feeling that rhythm, finally imagining that space between me and reader. What happens when we feel something, think something new. The connection. It starts with me, ends with us. Because we’re always tumbling somewhere into something.

I want to make this year intentional tumbling. Intentional requires conscious awareness. I can do that. I’m a writer who believes in magic, including the magic that happens in that middle space between you and me. Join me.

Where and how do you feel the magic of connection?

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

A secret: David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glynn Frye. I remember the moments I ‘met’ each one. Like I remember the moments I heard Kennedy and John Lennon were shot.
A favorite: Sunshine and big skies.

Photo: Jamie K. Reaser

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Hearing Angel Messengers

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Heloise Jones

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.
~ David Bowie (Let’s Dance)

*
wings-angelsm

Last week was the first time I didn’t write since I started this blog in March. Endless bending over boxes packing and unpacking, puzzling to fit both in and out, my brain melted in ways deciding words and commas never causes. My bones ached. I sat down last Monday thinking I’d be there a moment, woke two hours later from a dream I still ponder. One where I completely spaced my flight to Santa Fe, so hopped a plane sans bags, clothes, money, anything. Landed with thoughts I’d find my friends. And people familiar to me I’m not sure I know pull up, know me, and my best friend changed her name to Cathy. I woke knowing neither Art nor I will let go our winter clothes because we’ll go back to the mountains, but I wasn’t clear enough to blog.

This week I planned to tell you how I loved my two kitchens in Asheville. The one I designed I worked with granite fabricators cutting counters so the garnet-studded crystal quartz arms splayed from the center, ran diagonally across surfaces. And after four years, this third home in FL, I finally love my kitchen again. We both love it, in fact. Express joyful pleasure twelve times a day. Was gonna tell you how 2016 is the year I reclaim my writer’s life. How once I spent 7 months clearing obligations and commitments to create the life I envisioned full of psychic space, writing, and reading. How I lived it 7 weeks before my husband was run down by a car 48 hours after our return from a research trip in Yosemite for my second novel. How all that space I carved dissolved.

But this morning I learned, long after others knew, that David Bowie died yesterday. And something socked me in the chest when I read it. His passing felt like an embodiment of so much passing these days in the world. I can mark my decades by Bowie, all the way back to the 70s. And when I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s words, I felt the middle of the earth move…

“For the last 18 months (we learn only today) David Bowie has known that he was dying. He kept that information private, while spending his final months doing what he’d done his whole life — making outrageously original, beautiful, complicated art. He made a gorgeous album. He created a show, playing right now in New York. And then he released his final video just a few days before he died — on his 69th birthday.

‘Look up here,’ he sings, “I’m in heaven.’

Can you imagine, to be making art like this (fearless art that both comforts and challenges) right up to the moment of your death? How do you do that? How do you BE that? To work with your death so imaginatively, in order to perfectly time out the last beats of your life? What a magnificent creature of creation, right to the end.

I am sad today, but mostly I am overwhelmed by awe. This is what it means to be a great artist…Inspiration, to me, is THIS.”

…because the truth is I’m courageous, sometimes bold, but I’ve rejected myself as flawed every time someone’s said I’m weird, different, particular, raised their eyebrow when they said artist. I internalized the blank stares at my Wonder and Awe as evidence I clearly see things with alternative perspectives, ones that exclude me. I interpreted messages of me being too much as meaning not good enough. Because I don’t stand out on the street, have no flag that says I’m artist or out there, I thought it must be about me. With Liz’s words of fearless art timing the beats of one’s life, on the heels of two people saying they missed my blog last week, I finally get I was wrong. I loved Bowie and other originals for courage I thought I’d never have. I listened to others’ voices instead of seeing messenger angels in kindred spirits like Bowie, Yoko, O’Keeffe. Messengers who told me to simply BE, and embrace what the BE of Me is. Now I claim that kind of courage. Claim my assets.
Who’ve been your angel messengers?

And the stars look very different today…
~ David Bowie (Major Tom)
*

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

A secret: My Bowie markers were early yrs. – Major Tom, Heroes, Cat People (Putting Out the Fire), China Girl, the film “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”
A Favorite: Angels. I seem to have one in every room.