Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 34
March 11, 2014
Smoke Screen or Window
Last week I talked about writing stories out of our questions, not as a vehicle for imposing our answers on the world. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
I began writing Blue-Eyed Wolf, the young-adult novel I’m working on now, to explore topics about which I hold firm convictions: war, religion, the desecration of our natural world, family loyalty, sexuality. The convictions with which I began, in fact, were so firm and so clear that I had to work hard not to dump them in t...
March 4, 2014
Giving up our Stories
The first time I heard a Buddhist teacher say that we should give up our stories, I was incensed. What was he talking about? Stories aren’t just the way I make my living, they are the way I make sense out of my life! They make meaning where otherwise there would be none. I sat in respectful silence, but all the time thinking, “If giving up stories is the price of learning mindfulness, then maybe mindfulness isn’t the answer I’m looking for!”
I went out into the night, fuming.
But as is often th...
February 25, 2014
The Creative Mind
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
C.G. Jung
When I begin a new manuscript, especially one that will require a major commitment of time, I pause to consider whether what I want to write will be marketable. I count on income from my writing to buy my groceries and pay my rent, so marketability is a question I can’t avoid. Nonetheless, unless my checkbook is e...
February 18, 2014
The Space between Discipline and Freedom
“Art lives in the space between discipline and freedom.”
I heard that in a talk recently, though I don’t know who said it first. It was, though, one of those statements worth grabbing onto.
The speaker also said, “In the great artist you see daring bound by discipline and discipline stretched by daring.”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr., author of Life’s Little Instruction Book said something similar, but in a more amusing fashion. “Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s ple...
February 11, 2014
That We May Live
From Sherwood Anderson to his son:
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
Any cleanness I have in my own life is due to my feeling for words.
The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.
There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most peo...
February 4, 2014
All I Have to Give
III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .
—Nazim Hikmet
We live, all of us in a cru...
January 28, 2014
The Healing Power of Story
It was Isak Dinesen who said, “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.” And I have found that truth to be one of the most basic of my existence . . . and my career.
I don’t mean to suggest that I have borne more sorrows than others. Every life holds sorrows, and I have had the good fortune of having a way to process and grow through mine that feeds me on many levels. The stories I spin teach me, encourage me, comfort me.
Stephen Grosz, author of The Exa...
January 21, 2014
Considering Fame
Chessie
Recently, as I was walking into a restaurant with my eight-year-old grandson he looked up at me and asked, “Nonny, do you think anyone in here will know you are Marion Dane Bauer?” (This is the grandchild who was once convinced I was the author of all his books.)
I laughed—how could I not?—and said, “Chessie, I’m sure they won’t.”
But I couldn’t explain to him what a blessing that is.
My successes have all been of a manageable size. I’ve published steadily for nearly forty years, producin...
January 14, 2014
The Origins of Inspiration
What the Heart Knows, by Joyce Sidman; illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski.
I’ve been talking lately about staying fresh through a long career, but what isn’t evident in what I say—I’m aware that I always sound so sure—is the uncertainty I sometimes feel myself about being able to continue to do just that.
A small voice has been riding in the back of my brain lately, an insistent, unpleasantly whining voice, saying something like, “Okay. So the novel you’re working on now is a challenge, but still...
January 7, 2014
The Art of Aging
Doris Lessing
“The Art of Aging.” It was a headline recently in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, my local newspaper. The subtitle asked the question I have asked in this space before: “Is creativity destined to fade as we get older?”
The article quoted Doris Lessing who once said about creativity, “Don’t imagine you’ll have it forever. Use it while you’ve got it because it’ll go; it’s sliding away like water down a plug hole.”
Alice Munroe and Philip Roth made a similar announcement this past year....
