Let’s talk about writing. I believe everyone is a writer and has something to say. Most of us lose our joy of writing in school, while being taught by teachers who do not write. Bless their hearts.
I was such a teacher myself. Bless my heart.
I suffered as did my students. I did not know how to teach the joy of writing then. I was told, “You will teach the 5 paragraph essay” style, which I did. I was better at blind obedience than I am now.
Now, when I go into a classroom for the first time, students and teachers write with enthusiasm and freshness. And we dispense with the suffering.
I know everyone is a writer and everyone has something to say.
One fourth grade boy wrote, “When writing is hard for me, my brain is at home taking a shower,”
“When writing is hard for me, I’d rather eat cake,” wrote a tiny first grade girl, the youngest of eight children. Previously the teacher struggled with her to do any work at all. When writing was easy for her, she said she was surrounded by butterflies.
Want to be surrounded by butterflies while, you write? Read Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write. You’ll be set free to discover your truth and your brilliance, every day for the rest of your life. No topic sentences required.
My Writing Process, as If You Care
1) What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m revising a section of my book Woman with a Voice: Daring to Live Authentically Ever After, which is available on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book. I’m revising a section on relationships with a new title: In and Out of the Doghouse.
2) How does your work differ from others in the same genre?
I’m funny. Name another visually challenged (AKA, blind) speaker-songwriter who considers herself a blind-spot remover. My husband, Murray, and I co-wrote a blog called “Where the Rubber Chicken Meets the Road Less Traveled.” We discussed our relationship challenges with candor, humor, and often creative solutions.
Here is an example:
Murray and the Ketchup Or When Attention Deficit Disorder Collides with Blindness
Excerpt from Woman with a voice: Daring to Live Authentically Ever After by Vicki Hannah Lein
Because of my vision problems, Murray and I decided to organize the refrigerator in a way that would help me find things. The leftovers would go on the top shelf, milk and other large items on the second shelf, and so on. Murray readily agreed to this plan. So why did the ketchup, among other things, keep getting moved? “How thoughtless he is,” I said to myself. “How incredible, especially since he is a professional!” I fumed. “Does he hate me?” I wondered.
If he really loved me, the ketchup would stay put.” We reviewed our plan. Murray again agreed that keeping things in the same place in the refrigerator was a reasonable request, and he should honor it. Yet the ketchup moved again, and I was confused and hurt, and no matter how many times I confronted him, the ketchup still wandered the shelves of the refrigerator.
Then I thought of a new story: “Murray doesn’t hate me. He has attention deficit disorder (really), and is easily bored. He thinks the ketchup bottle gets restless (like he does), so he moves it.” Now this version is probably more true than the “He hates me” story I told myself, but that isn’t important. What is important is that changing my story changed how I felt about this continual problem. Instead of being angry and hurt, I laughed. It became a joke, and (here
is the interesting part) the ketchup has stayed put ever since.
Maybe Murray’s memory works better when it is bathed in love rather than irritation. Although a little Ritalin doesn’t’ hurt either.
3) Why do you write what you write?
I am a natural born teacher. Once I learn how to do something, I want to teach other people how to do it. I’m all about freedom, and we can’t be free if we are stuck in patterns that make our situation worse.
I’m also a “BlindSpot Remover”. Partly because I am legally blind, so I get plenty of opportunities to deal with physical blind spots. I’m calibrated to look for and listen to what is unspoken. When I see a “spell” around a behavior, such as people-pleasing, I want to break the shackle of illusions and set us free.
4) What is your writing process?
Julia Cameron in all of her books suggests we write morning pages, daily, to free our minds and souls of clutter and to help us get in touch with the deeper truths in us that want to emerge. So I write every day.
Often when I am writing morning pages, a title will appear on a line will pop out to me. This title, such as Living from the Heart of What Matters, will turn into a poem. I’m Living From the Yummiest Part of Me became a song.
I write as long as there is energy of writing and then I take a break. I may go out on the balcony, sit in the sun, drink a little coffee, listen to a book on tape. Another thought will emerge, and I will go back to whatever project I’m working on. If I try to write “something good”, I get caught up in trying to please other people and meet perfectionistic expectations. I will have no fun writing and my writing will suffer because the subtext will be: “Is this good? Do you love me? Do I finally belong forever and ever?” Yuck.
My writing often makes people laugh or cry, think differently, or more expansively about their lives. That is gravy. I am amusing myself, fulfilling myself, and trusting the process instead of the product. I live my live this way and it is much more fun that trying to be perfect or right all the time. I am not afraid to fail or make mistakes in public, and this gives me enormous freedom and joy.
I’m not trying to write a good poem or a profound song or a book that will get me on the New York Times best seller list. If those things happen, that would be just fine with me, but I do not start out to write with those goals. My intention is to get as close to a truth resonating within me as I can. When I experience something I think other people might benefit from, or an experience I want to remember, I write a paragraph.
I have the courage to be disliked and that, my dear, has made all the difference.
I was able to sing it to her the day she died. When I finished she said with the last bit of pure Shirley-ness she had left in her, “I really like that!”