Jan Marquart's Blog - Posts Tagged "write"

You sit to write. The voice on your right shoulder says: tell the story when you were six and got that birthday present, you know, the one you loved so much and how it determined the course of your life. But the voice on your left shoulder says: that's a stupid thing to write. Who wants to hear about that old backpack anyway? Who wants to hear that you loved carrying it so much you asked your father to take you camping all over the country and that it eventually turned into your own travel business. Who cares about your stupid story? And so you have it. The writer's dilemma,two voices battling it out over worthiness.

When we meditate, we practice being. When we write, we do the same thing. The biggest enemy for a writer is lack of trust, period.

Writers have been diagnosing this as writers block but I am here to tell you there is no such thing as writers block. I'm here to redirect your attention to this matter to a new culprit: your relationship with yourself. But there is a cure for this problem and that is to get to know the way your mind works. Watch what happens to the voices on your shoulders when you do anything you really want to do. What do they say and how do the sabotage you from living out your expressions? What else does your mind do when you want to express yourself? Make a note of it and see if that isn't what happens every time you pick up your pen.

Don't be a victim to your own mind. Do not let your childhood conditioning make you a victim. Pick up your pen and write. Your story might just be the one to change a child's life.

And if you have other moments that keep you from writing, for instance, you get antsy or can't find a topic to use for a warm up, consider my book The Mindful Writer, Still the Mind, Free the Pen www.createspace.com/3546101 now an ebook on amazon.

Everyone has to start somewhere, but there is no start unless you have begun.

It makes you wonder, doesn't it, why we write? In what other job would any of us stay up all hours of the day and night sitting uncomfortably at a keyboard, slow-bleeding ideas, ignoring emails, TV, the heavy knock on the door writing jewels of entertaining stories and high points of wisdom appallingly doomed to become an addition in a folder of rejection letters and yet still continue to prostrate before blank screens and pages for salvation each day?

What other job would keep you working exhaustingly for 1 cent an hour once you add in all the writing time before publication (if you get one), with no health insurance, no vacation, and no holidays? What other job would keep you sitting in a chair breaking your back, keeping your fingers moving, your mind flowing and your bladder holding in four cups of tea until you get the last page written because you can't stop until you do lest you forget the perfect ideas you have right now?

I'm telling you, sometimes I have to truly wonder what's inside me that has kept me intimately connected to the pen or the keys on a daily basis since 1972 typing poems that get ignored, stories that go unwelcomed, books that go unsold, essays that disappear once they enter a mailbox, and query letters that go unanswered.

I used to save all my rejection letters but I stopped being a masochist (somewhat) years ago;there aren't enough moving vans in town to carry all the rejection-packed filing drawers.

I read that the book, If You Meet The Buddha On the Road, Kill Him, received 122 rejection letters in the 70's, and yet it is still selling well today. (I love that book). JK Rowling got turned down by 12 publishing companies. Aren't you glad you're not the person who turned her down?

A little rant and rage here as I sit trying to figure out a curious matter about a writer and its place in the univere and wonder, while I count my eight books and two booklets and look at my looseleaf folder full of stories and poems, why I'm not being sought after by agents or called up by Random House. So what is it? What is it in me and what is it in you that keeps us showing up with stories and tales of hope and woe to startle the blank page day after day after day, and if that weren't bad enough, we blog about what we have written because now its burdensomely upon us to market too -- what a reward --oh yuk!!

I take a sip of my tea, vanilla chai my cousin was kind enough to send me for Christmas last year, yeah I'm just getting around to it now, and relax just a little. Then it dawns on me, oh, I write because the tiny voice inside me has a lot to say and hates being tiny, it thinks all the time, it creates even when I'm sleeping. I can't keep that voice quiet no matter how much Cote de Rhone I down. In fact, give me half a glass of wine and I can write a 400 page book. Get me relaxed and my ideas flow like a pent up river released from a fallen tree obstructing its flow. I'm not a big drinker by any means but sometimes it takes the edge off the painful quest to find just the right word and eases the torment of my mind as it struggles to come up with an accurate expression of a mood or scene. No wonder most authors are drinkers.

In another vein though, it is the tension, the suspension, the excitement of an idea that keeps me writing without stopping even when I hear the onions sizzling in a frying pan and know that they have been sizzling too long. I'm not done with the sentence, the paragraph, the scene. I can't stop now. I have been seen saying words over and over so as not to forget them until I find a pen that works and write them on something tangible. In moments like this I want my mind crisp and sharp, alert and crackling. Don't try to relax me, you'll just tick me off. You should see my house. I have pens and pads everywhere. There is no remembering the perfect thought later on. You won't even remember that you had the perfect thought later on. No surprise there.

Sometimes, without warning, in a split second, eveything can make sense and I think, I'm made from the creative gene of God. What else was I made for except to be creative, right? The Bible says, first there was 'the word'. God's word was 'light. My word is 'write'.

I began studying philosophy in 1972 not because it was my intention. I went to college to find another path for my life because working for a lawyer on Wall Street, even though it offered excitement, wasn't working for me. I was good at my skills but taking shorthand at 110 words a minute, typing at 90 words a minute, and organizing an office for someone else only made me wonder what I could be capable of for my own life. I decided I should get educated and thus my search began. I was twenty-two when I took my first step on this journey. At the time, my friends were getting married, having babies, or graduating from college. I felt like the lone ranger.

I set out to Santa Cruz, Ca. for a summer session at the University to see if college was even what I wanted. I never saw myself as smart because I was a girl, and as far as I was told, smart was for men. Times have changed.

I chose to study philosophy for one reason: it allowed me to understand my own mind and made me aware that I actually had one. Thanks to my recently deceased professor, Dr. Carlos Norena, who inspired me with such passion for the thinking process, and to study philosophy,I matriculated in it. I ate it up. I absorbed it. I studied it ravenously.

Then I moved on to the psychologists, Carl Rogers, Ram Dass, the new agers, as they were soon referred except in those days they were just the thinkers of my time.

I moved on to become a psychotherapist and loved being a counselor. And here's the most amazing thing I discovered. People don't live by psychologies. No! Psychology is just the study of how people behave which does not a single bit of good when you are sitting in front of someone in great distress. Remembering a theory has little effect and anyone who has been in that position knows that the first emotion they feel when someone treats them like a 'theory' is anger. Rightfully so. No one wants to be reduced to a research finding.

Here's my enlightened realization: people live by their philosophies. That's what holds their lives together. That's what helps them build a series of actions, reactions, and decisions.

Listening to Oprah as much as I have over 25 years, the one human experience that has been on her show dozens of times is the concept of forgiveness. When it came to forgiveness in my own life with significant figures, I found it difficult to apply the easy and neat theories expressed on her show.
How do you forgive? What is your philosophy about forgiveness? Who have you not forgiven simply because you didn't know how?

Writing about these deep needs and the wounds that usually accompany them is quite powerful. In The Basket Weaver, www.createspace.com/3553668 I resolved, through forgiveness, a sharply painful wound I carried for decades. I tried and tried and could not work through it until I took pen to paper, gave the experience to a fictitious character and worked it through. Once the manuscript was completed by me, edited by createspace.com, and printed, something in me released, let go, forgave, and healed.

Writing is a way to healing. I have experienced a path to healing in each of my books. I have written a book to offer guidance for those suffering the way I used to. It is titled, Write to Heal. It can only be purchased through my site: www.JanMarquart.com.
I do hope you check it out.

I write a great many things for enjoyment but the most powerful aspect of my own experience of healing has been through the act of writing. Writing is a powerful act. Need help with this? I'd love to be there for you.

Until next time,

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
Friedrich Nietzsche

If you've ever read Nietzsche you know he did just that. If you want to write and be powerful in your writing read authors who changed the world with theirs.

Although not everyone wants to write as densely as the German philosopher, it doesn't mean that your writing can't be as powerful.

Remember, it isn't the dictionary that tells readers the definitions of words, it is the definition your heart gives to them and how you write them on paper.

Keep the pen moving - write,
Jan

I've lost count of how many writers I've spoken to over the years who dismiss their story or book idea because friends and family tell them it doesn't sound like a successful story. This can be a painful death to someone excited about a story line.

It is important to stand by the story pulling at your leg to be put on the page. Twelve publishing companies told JK Rowling no one would be interested in wizards. I bet they are kicking themselves right now. But she listened to herself and kept seeking publication.

Listen to the voice inside your soul. If it wants to speak - let it. Grab your pen and write your story. Hire a good editor and get an opinion on whether your plot is well laid out. People will read anything if it is well-written, meaningful, or adventurous.

Listen only to your inner voice. Proceed from there. Write - no matter what!

Jan Marquart, CEO and Founder of About the Author Network

Hello readers and writers,

Are you reading something you enjoy? Is there a character in the story you would like to emulate? Maybe you simply find a character delightful to read about and would like to write your own story about that character. Whatever answers you gave can all be food for thought for something you would like to write. May Sarton describes inspiration as white heat in her book, A Journey of a Solitude. Are you waiting for that white heat before you pursue your desire to write because I am here to tell you that most writers, myself included, don't have the luxury to wait for that white heat. I write everyday starting with the date as if to say, "here page, here I am!"

Pick up your pen, and write about the inspiration you wish you had right now.
Keep the pen moving,
Jan