Alan Watt's Blog, page 15

WHY I WRITE

When I go to the movies and the lights come down, I am hoping for one thing: that this movie will completely and irrevocably change my life. I want it to alter the way I see the world in the deepest and most surprising way imaginable. I want to laugh and cry until that thing I have lived with all my life, that thing that hampers my ability to see beauty simply and without judgement, becomes dislodged, and I am free in a way that defies description.

That is all I ask.

It is for this reason that I live in a state of near constant disappointment.

But then I see a movie like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or Breathless, or The Inlaws (the one with Peter Falk, not the one with Michael Douglas), or I read Jesus’ Son, and I know in my body there is a reason I am alive, that I have a purpose. J.D. Salinger said, “think of the book that you would absolutely love to read, and then write it shamelessly.”

When I was three my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I said I wanted a pencil. Oh God, so badly, I wanted one. I ached for my pencil. I dreamt about my pencil. I had no interest in toys, only pretended to be so you didn’t think I was strange. I would have traded you a stack of comics a mile high and a sea of noisy plastic for my slender shard of graphite. I would close my eyes so that I could see it, so that it was nearer to me. I imagined holding it in my tiny hand. And I didn’t want just any pencil. I wanted my pencil, a pencil of my own, one that belonged to me. It would be a pencil that I would choose.

Because, you see, I had a plan.

My pencil was going to be a magic pencil. It was going to take me everywhere. And it had to be a pencil, because you can’t fix mistakes with a pen. I remember thinking the eraser was the most brilliant invention. Incredible. You can write with one end, and edit with the other.

I still remember running through the store with my brothers and my sister, past all of the toys, my little forehead hot with anticipation at the prospect of having my first, my very own pencil. My precious mother understood. This was serious business, and she did not hold back with the pomp and the circumstance. She understood that nothing short of a parade was necessary to usher in the singularly most important moment of my life.

It was orange, with a green stripe around the metal top, and a fresh pink eraser on the end.

Of course, at three years of age I didn’t know how to spell, but my brother taught me how to write numbers up to one hundred. I went through a thousand sheets of paper, moving my hand across the page, writing from one to ten, ten to twenty, and so on across and down the page. My heart rested when I was writing. As my hand moved smoothly across the page, I knew I had found what I would do for the rest of my life. (Thirty years later this image of writing became the final image in my first novel).

So many of my students and potential students come to me wanting to know how to get published and produced. They want their work to be read, to be seen. But what they really want is for themselves to be seen.

Here’s the thing. We do not need to be seen!

We are adults now. That time is past. We need to see ourselves.

We need to be more curious about the world of our story than about any goddamn idea of security, of fame, any idea that some kind of validation from outside of ourselves is going to make one bit difference. Fame does not make you a better writer, so what good is it? Of course, I’m the first to admit that when the writing ain’t working, I would love a little bit more of it, something to soothe the bruised ego, to temper the doubt and silence the critic. I have had my small acre of fame, and it nearly destroyed me. It killed my writer for more than a couple of years. Doesn’t mean I won’t welcome it again, but next time I’ll pay it the respect it deserves.

There is nothing logical about wanting to be a writer. The lives of artists can be awful, despairing, regret-filled exercises in futility. Writers and artists are some of the most wretched people you can ever imagine. They suffer, often needlessly, and are no more noble or wise than anyone else. These are desperate people, junkies really, jonesing for a hit of truth.

Writing is not for everyone. Maybe not even for anyone. Years ago, I taught a class at UCLA, a summer class, to a roomful of kids who were heading into their first year of college, and it turned out I was teaching their bullshit elective. I came in with guns blazing and was devastated to learn that they didn’t love writing as much as I did. Hell, they couldn’t have cared less. I wanted to hate them, these beautiful children, but they were smarter than me. They taught me how dangerous it is to care.

They seemed so apathetic, like they had spent the past eighteen years staring at a glass-boxed babysitter that taught them how to murder. Except one kid. His name was Mike. Mike was from Jersey. He was a trouble-maker, and doubtless came from trouble. The second day, he showed me his citation for urinating in public. (This, in and of itself is not necessarily the sign of an artist, but it got my attention). The fact that he showed it to me . . . damn, he was telling me something. He was pissed off (no pun intended), and when he wrote, he wrote with madness and joy. The world came alive to him when he wrote. It was palpable. He cared about the words. He valued them. He wanted to smash down walls, and break through to something that felt real. His writing was dangerous. It’s dangerous to care.

You never know who the writers are. Some writers are dogged, and become writers by sheer will, and some of us got roped into it at three without having any say in the matter. I’m a lifer. My failures exceed my successes, if I can call anything I’ve done a success. Perhaps that’s up to someone else. Or maybe there’s no such thing. I tend to believe there’s no such thing. In my heart of hearts, we’re all already free and there’s nothing to prove. Vonnegut said, “We’re just here to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”

I became a writer because I wanted to change the world, and yet I know, so deep down in my heart that it is impossible. It can never be done. And that is why I write.

I am rebelling against entropy.

I think about that kid sometimes. Mike. He asked for my email, but I never heard from him. I wonder if he’s a writer. I wonder if he got scared or sidetracked, or got into trouble that he couldn’t get out of. I wonder if he found a real job and rationalized why this writing racket was just another one of his bad ideas. I wonder if someone hurt him, told him that his writing was wrong. I wonder if he got some teacher who tried to tame him and drove him sane. I think about Mike, and all the Mikes out there who have something to give and have been silenced, or have become silent. It embarrasses me sometimes how much I care about writers, how it is sometimes the only thing that I care about. My heart aches for the Mikes, because I know that when I write, it is because I want to belong somewhere, because when I go to parties and people talk about bullshit, I want to scream. I write because it is my job to hold up my end of the bargain, so that when I meet another writer, I don’t have to feel like I’m cheating on them, because that’s how I feel when I don’t write. Like a man who is cheating on his wife. Writing has given me a life beyond my wildest dreams. And tomorrow I get to do it again.

WHY DO YOU WRITE?

First-Time Novelist: Write the First Draft Quickly

Once you have an outline, it is time to begin your first draft. The goal is to write the first draft quickly. Why? Because we want to get it down before we have too much time to think. Logic is the death of creativity. There is nothing logical about human behavior. When I hear writers say “My character would never do that,” I think to myself, they are not being curious. Our job is to support whatever our subconscious is giving us. If we have the notion that our nun robs a bank, then we must be curious about why this happens rather than explaining to ourselves why it shouldn’t. I think of drama as “characters behaving uncharacteristically.” Don’t be logical. Don’t insist that your first draft be well-written. Don’t worry if your first draft is replete with clichés. Just get it all down quickly. Focus on character and story rather than on the quality of the prose. Polish the prose in the rewrite.

Write the first draft from your right brain and the rewrite from your left brain.

I always love to hear from writers. Please share with me your thoughts on this.

Why Writers Should Embrace Doubt

Doubt exists in each of us much of the time. We are unsure about our futures, our relationships, our new tile in the bathroom, our car insurance, etc. Doubt is the cradle of conflict, both internal and external. In the heart of every character lives a dilemma. As you become curious about that dilemma, it will lead you to what is universal in your story.

Action dictates character, and just like in real life, our characters are susceptible to temptation. This is what makes the human animal so endlessly fascinating. Any character could take any action at any time. It is our job as writers to expose the dilemma, and by being curious about our own hearts, find a way to support the situation in a way that is believable and compelling.

At any moment, a character can go either way. We are always at what I call a choice point. (Actually, I just made that term up, unless perhaps I unwittingly ripped it off an old Syd Field book). Character is never static, never rigidly definable (which is why character sketches are limiting and a waste of time). If you know a character is going to make a decision, it is by exploring the opposite decision that we can create conflict and reveal humanity. In the film, It’s A Wonderful Life, when Mr. Potter offers George Bailey the opportunity to come and work for him, George momentarily considers it. This is a crucial choice point. Potter is the man who is dead set on corrupting the town George loves so dearly, and George considers this?! Why?! Because that is how desperately George wants to get out of Bedford Falls. The stakes are life and death. He ultimately tells Potter ‘No’, tells Potter that he’s “nothing but a scurvy little spider,” but not before considering the offer! This is what makes George human, makes us connect to him. At any moment in your character’s journey, be curious about the opposite choice, the choice the character finally DOESN’T take. This can make your work sharper, more specific. Doubt and uncertainty are hallmarks of human experience. I think of story as a way to track those key moments or choice points (I’m really loving this term), where characters make significant choices that lead them to a fundamental shift in perception.

If I know my character is going to get the girl in the end, what makes my story compelling are the beats in between, the moments of doubt and uncertainty, the various and infinite number of ways that the boy might NOT or ought NOT to get the girl, all of the steps that precede this reunion.

Doubt exists in Romeo and Juliet as it explores the question of the possibility for a sustained love in the face of warring families. This doubt is universal. Is it possible to follow one’s heart in the face of societal pressures?

Cyrano explores doubt through internal pressure. Cyrano doubts whether he is loveable as he is.

Story asks me to question everything for a reason. Because in order for there to be a transformation, a shift in perception, I must be thorough in my exploration of my character’s dilemma. When I am thorough, the answer I arrive at is always love, but it is necessarily different from the idea of love at the beginning of the story. The desire to write is connected to the desire to evolve, to work through doubt, to understand that which I did not understand previously. “Is it possible to maintain love?” “Can I fulfill my purpose?” “Will I ever recover from this grief?” We are pushed to the brink by these questions. Transformation does not imply an answer to doubt, it merely allows for a reframing of one’s values in order to have greater clarity in navigating that doubt.

My job as a writer is not to rid myself of doubt. Too often I hear well-intentioned people talk of the human animal as if it were an object, a machine that simply needs regular maintenance. We don’t simply drink water anymore, we hydrate ourselves. According to recent popular thought, we are now to banish all negative thinking from our minds, because it is bad for the machine. To my mind this is a panicked objectifying approach which is particularly common in the new-age movement where the focus seems to be on arriving at some kind of absolute answer, mastering some secret rather than remaining curious about the experience. I have met more creatively blocked “spiritual” people than any other group. They seek “enlightenment” and become so engrossed by their idea of God that they become relatively incurious, seeing life as containing rules to be followed to ensure their safety.

Is it possible that enlightenment has to do with a widening of perspective, perhaps even developing a greater capacity to suffer by recognizing our common humanity, rather than having to solve some riddle of existence? None of us is getting out of this thing without pain and struggle, and for me to position myself as one with answers, one who has risen above it or mastered it, is a lie. It perpetuates shame, and frankly, it is immoral. The brave writer is ruthlessly curious about life as it is, not as they hope it to be. “Nothing human is alien to me,” said Terentius, the Roman playwright. An absence of doubt, which is really sentimentality, lacks true wonder, it keeps things vague, relies on aphorism and is ultimately the most cynical view because it fears the grandness of life. Life is plenty achingly beautiful without having to apply Turtle Wax to the deal. Sentimentality cheapens the whole experience by telling us that everything is going to be OK, all we have to do is know that deep down our families love us. Ironically, it is doubt which transports us. It is our curiosity, our unwillingness to be certain of anything, that carries with it the endless possibilities for a bold new world.

I always love to hear from writers. Please share with me your thoughts on this.

WHY WRITERS SHOULD EMBRACE DOUBT

Doubt exists in each of us much of the time. We are unsure about our futures, our relationships, our new tile in the bathroom, our car insurance, etc. Doubt is the cradle of conflict, both internal and external. In the heart of every character lives a dilemma. As you become curious about that dilemma, it will lead you to what is universal in your story.

Action dictates character, and just like in real life, our characters are susceptible to temptation. This is what makes the human animal so endlessly fascinating. Any character could take any action at any time. It is our job as writers to expose the dilemma, and by being curious about our own hearts, find a way to support the situation in a way that is believable and compelling.

At any moment, a character can go either way. We are always at what I call a choice point. (Actually, I just made that term up, unless perhaps I unwittingly ripped it off an old Syd Field book). Character is never static, never rigidly definable (which is why character sketches are limiting and a waste of time). If you know a character is going to make a decision, it is by exploring the opposite decision that we can create conflict and reveal humanity. In the film, It’s A Wonderful Life, when Mr. Potter offers George Bailey the opportunity to come and work for him, George momentarily considers it. This is a crucial choice point. Potter is the man who is dead set on corrupting the town George loves so dearly, and George considers this?! Why?! Because that is how desperately George wants to get out of Bedford Falls. The stakes are life and death. He ultimately tells Potter ‘No’, tells Potter that he’s “nothing but a scurvy little spider,” but not before considering the offer! This is what makes George human, makes us connect to him. At any moment in your character’s journey, be curious about the opposite choice, the choice the character finally DOESN’T take. This can make your work sharper, more specific. Doubt and uncertainty are hallmarks of human experience. I think of story as a way to track those key moments or choice points (I’m really loving this term), where characters make significant choices that lead them to a fundamental shift in perception.

If I know my character is going to get the girl in the end, what makes my story compelling are the beats in between, the moments of doubt and uncertainty, the various and infinite number of ways that the boy might NOT or ought NOT to get the girl, all of the steps that precede this reunion.

Doubt exists in Romeo and Juliet as it explores the question of the possibility for a sustained love in the face of warring families. This doubt is universal. Is it possible to follow one’s heart in the face of societal pressures?

Cyrano explores doubt through internal pressure. Cyrano doubts whether he is loveable as he is.

Story asks me to question everything for a reason. Because in order for there to be a transformation, a shift in perception, I must be thorough in my exploration of my character’s dilemma. When I am thorough, the answer I arrive at is always love, but it is necessarily different from the idea of love at the beginning of the story. The desire to write is connected to the desire to evolve, to work through doubt, to understand that which I did not understand previously. “Is it possible to maintain love?” “Can I fulfill my purpose?” “Will I ever recover from this grief?” We are pushed to the brink by these questions. Transformation does not imply an answer to doubt, it merely allows for a reframing of one’s values in order to have greater clarity in navigating that doubt.

My job as a writer is not to rid myself of doubt. Too often I hear well-intentioned people talk of the human animal as if it were an object, a machine that simply needs regular maintenance. We don’t simply drink water anymore, we hydrate ourselves. According to recent popular thought, we are now to banish all negative thinking from our minds, because it is bad for the machine. To my mind this is a panicked objectifying approach which is particularly common in the new-age movement where the focus seems to be on arriving at some kind of absolute answer, mastering some secret rather than remaining curious about the experience. I have met more creatively blocked “spiritual” people than any other group. They seek “enlightenment” and become so engrossed by their idea of God that they become relatively incurious, seeing life as containing rules to be followed to ensure their safety.

Is it possible that enlightenment has to do with a widening of perspective, perhaps even developing a greater capacity to suffer by recognizing our common humanity, rather than having to solve some riddle of existence? None of us is getting out of this thing without pain and struggle, and for me to position myself as one with answers, one who has risen above it or mastered it, is a lie. It perpetuates shame, and frankly, it is immoral. The brave writer is ruthlessly curious about life as it is, not as they hope it to be. “Nothing human is alien to me,” said Terentius, the Roman playwright. An absence of doubt, which is really sentimentality, lacks true wonder, it keeps things vague, relies on aphorism and is ultimately the most cynical view because it fears the grandness of life. Life is plenty achingly beautiful without having to apply Turtle Wax to the deal. Sentimentality cheapens the whole experience by telling us that everything is going to be OK, all we have to do is know that deep down our families love us. Ironically, it is doubt which transports us. It is our curiosity, our unwillingness to be certain of anything, that carries with it the endless possibilities for a bold new world.

I always love to hear from writers. Please share with me your thoughts on this.

Transformation

The other morning, I was lying in bed next to my wife. I’m half-asleep and I can hear a dog barking in the house next door or somewhere off in the distance, and I can feel myself growing irritated. It barks in three-second intervals. It goes on for a long time, until I begin paying closer attention.

I suddenly realize that the noise is in fact coming from my wife’s nostril. Her nose is blocked, making this very quiet expulsion of air. It is actually a tiny sound coming from my wife resting her head on my shoulder, and not a wild dog barking from somewhere off in the distance. My irritation evaporates instantly, and I am charmed, delighted.

Very simply, this is a transformation. The situation has not changed, not one bit, the noise continues, exactly the same, however my relationship to the noise has altered, and once again, my world is restored to order, and I am home.

Have you ever been certain of something, only to discover that you were completely wrong?

What is Genius?

I don’t like it when people use the term genius, primarily because I think the word is misused. I believe that genius is an aspect of our nature, rather than a character trait belonging to a select few — though I do believe that some people, for whatever reason, display a greater ambition, curiosity, and willingness to be a channel for what wants to be expressed through them, while in others this potential lies dormant, and is never realized.

Webster calls genius a “natural ability” or “a strong inclination,” as well as “a great mental capacity or inventive ability.” Frankly, I’m not crazy about their definition either. I don’t think it gets to the full truth.

I believe that genius is, quite simply, our innate potential to evolve. It is universal and lives in all of us, and when manifested, can achieve feats that defy our expectations. Genius is connected to our desire for truth, our curiosity about a world beyond ourselves. I am frequently asked, “Can you tell me if I have talent so that I don’t have to waste my time writing only to discover that I’m a fraud?” There is an inherent assumption in this question that our creative gift is somehow a finite commodity, and that most probably we are cursed with too little to even bother getting started. My answer is that if you have a desire to write, then why not write? Why not let go of the result for a little while and focus on the task at hand, telling a story, marshaling your curiosity, your intuitive sense of how this world works, and putting it down on paper. You might even discover what Don DeLillo calls the writer’s dirty secret. It’s actually fun! (It is true madness when we are so result-oriented, that we would consider a joyful, invigorating activity “time wasted” because it didn’t bring us fame and riches with our first gallop out the gate). Be curious about your fears, your troubles, your foibles, but only as they work in service to something universal, something that can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. It is through our own personal transformation that we become able to help others through our art.

I prefer to think of genius in terms of a relationship. I can have a relationship to my genius nature. I can nurture it, by working with it on a daily basis. I can stop making assumptions about how I think the world works, and I can start to get curious, investigate my own humanity as it pertains to the story I want to tell.

I was asked once in an interview if I had any advice for aspiring writers.

Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff — white knuckles, on your last breath — and you’ve got just one last thing to say. Write like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

I always love to hear from writers. Please share with me your thoughts on this.

WHAT IS GENIUS?

I don’t like it when people use the term genius, primarily because I think the word is misused. I believe that genius is an aspect of our nature, rather than a character trait belonging to a select few — though I do believe that some people, for whatever reason, display a greater ambition, curiosity, and willingness to be a channel for what wants to be expressed through them, while in others this potential lies dormant, and is never realized.

Webster calls genius a “natural ability” or “a strong inclination,” as well as “a great mental capacity or inventive ability.” Frankly, I’m not crazy about their definition either. I don’t think it gets to the full truth.

I believe that genius is, quite simply, our innate potential to evolve. It is universal and lives in all of us, and when manifested, can achieve feats that defy our expectations. Genius is connected to our desire for truth, our curiosity about a world beyond ourselves. I am frequently asked, “Can you tell me if I have talent so that I don’t have to waste my time writing only to discover that I’m a fraud?” There is an inherent assumption in this question that our creative gift is somehow a finite commodity, and that most probably we are cursed with too little to even bother getting started. My answer is that if you have a desire to write, then why not write? Why not let go of the result for a little while and focus on the task at hand, telling a story, marshaling your curiosity, your intuitive sense of how this world works, and putting it down on paper. You might even discover what Don DeLillo calls the writer’s dirty secret. It’s actually fun! (It is true madness when we are so result-oriented, that we would consider a joyful, invigorating activity “time wasted” because it didn’t bring us fame and riches with our first gallop out the gate). Be curious about your fears, your troubles, your foibles, but only as they work in service to something universal, something that can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves. It is through our own personal transformation that we become able to help others through our art.

I prefer to think of genius in terms of a relationship. I can have a relationship to my genius nature. I can nurture it, by working with it on a daily basis. I can stop making assumptions about how I think the world works, and I can start to get curious, investigate my own humanity as it pertains to the story I want to tell.

I was asked once in an interview if I had any advice for aspiring writers.

Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff — white knuckles, on your last breath — and you’ve got just one last thing to say. Write like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.

I always love to hear from writers. Please share with me your thoughts on this.

First-time Novelist: Setting a Daily Word Count

Consistency is the key. Set a writing goal. Can you write 750 to 1000 words a day? If you can do that, you will have a first draft in around 90 days.

Do you have a rough sense of how long you want your book to be? Is it War and Peace or Old Man and the Sea? When you sit down to write it, you want to have a sense of proportion. If your first act is 100 pages, then you probably want the book to come in around 350 to 400 pages.

Do you have a daily writing routine?

Share your thoughts by replying.

First-time Novelists: Setting a Daily Word Count

Consistency is the key. Set a writing goal. Can you write 750 to 1000 words a day? If you can do that, you will have a first draft in around 90 days.

Do you have a rough sense of how long you want your book to be? Is it War and Peace or Old Man and the Sea – because when you sit down to write it, you want to have a sense of proportion. If your first act is a hundred pages, then you probably want the book to come in around 350 to 400 pages.

Do you have a daily writing routine?

Leave your reply below.

The Real Meaning of “Write What You Know”

Write what you know. We’ve heard this so often. What does it mean? Does it mean that if I am a mechanic I should only write about mechanics? If I am a woman I can only write about women. No, of course not. What it means is that we should write what we know to be true, as opposed to what we wish were true, or hope to be true, or even what we believe to be true.

To write what we know, means that we are being asked to write about something that we have experienced on an emotional level and come out the other side of. We have learned the lesson, and have been transformed by the experience.

In the story, Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx writes about a pair of twenty-year old gay cowboys in Wyoming. Proulx is a seventy-year old straight woman. But she wasn’t writing about cowboys, she was writing about the danger of not proclaiming your truth. She was writing about the universal challenge of standing up and being true to yourself in the face of possible resistance. She was writing about the tragedy that results when one is not willing to take the risk of loving. These are universal themes. In other words, we have all had the experience of being faced with a situation where doing something will put us in a position of receiving flak, and we must ask ourselves where our values lie.

There is a basic tension that underlies every human interchange. It is constantly at play. It is the tension between wanting to belong and wanting to be an individual. It is the constant struggle for an identity. It is a struggle that never ends. We are still struggling with it on our deathbeds. It is the struggle for authenticity. I submit that it is this struggle from which most, if not all, stories emerge. It is this struggle that begets the large thematic questions, such as, Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my purpose? What is love? We are constantly struggling between desire and fear. The desire to belong, and the fear of losing our identity or sense of purpose.

Story, like life, is this constant search for our true identity. As soon as we think we’ve found the answer, another problem arises that distracts us from the truth. The truth is that we are OK right now, in this moment. It is important, as storytellers, to understand this basic truth. When we are connected to the truth that our hero is already free, we are, paradoxically, far more inclined to put them in harm’s way, to explore their conflict.

The challenge in writing what we know, as we imagine the world of the story, is to hold the images and ideas that we write down loosely. Sometimes the first image or idea that we write down is in fact a gateway to a deeper or more specific idea or image, the real place the story wants to go. If we hold on tightly to the first image, we will never allow our unconscious to go where it really wants to go. Ideas can be like weigh stations. We submerge to a level, and we swim around in it for a while, and then we get comfortable there, and we go deeper. Our unconscious does not push us into areas that we are not equipped to handle. It takes time to become comfortable with new consciousness. Story is about this shift in consciousness. What happens (plot), is merely a vehicle to illuminate the beats that lead to this transformation.

Let me repeat. Hold your ideas loosely. Do not become too attached to what “must” happen. We are always moving from the general to the specific. If you hold onto an idea too tightly, you will become blocked and choke off the possibility of the real truth from emerging.

Do you have a theme that you consistently return to?

Leave your reply below.