The Writing Warrior

by Laraine Herring

  What kind of writing practice are you currently engaged in? What about it is working? What is not? Are you willing to adjust your current schedule as you learn more about yourself and your tendencies?

  How would you describe your current relationship to your body? Come up with some images that represent that relationship. Do you feel that you deeply listen to the wisdom of your body? If not, are you willing to entertain the idea that you could?

  Mentally travel through your body from the top of your head to the bottoms of your feet. Take your time. Along the way, notice any aches, twinges, tightness, or resistances. Just notice. Are there places in your body that you can’t see with your internal eyes? (For example, are you able to energetically acknowledge your liver? Spleen? Baby toe?) Just notice. Write a letter of introduction to your body, paying special attention to the parts you have difficulty accessing.

  WRITE NOW

  The following exercises can be applied to works in progress or used as prewriting. Feel free to use poetry or prose to respond.

  Take a scene from a work in progress and add the element of a disciplined practice to it. What activity can the primary character engage in in a more disciplined way? For example, could your protagonist take up a daily walking practice? What would change in the scene? What would remain the same? How does it feel to write about a discipline?

  Write a scene or poem in which there are no boundaries for the characters or content. There are no rules of physics or laws. Your characters can do anything. What happens?

  Write a scene or poem in which a character’s physical structure (body) is changing in some way (for example, through aging, illness, a bone break, or sunburn).

  Write from the point of view of a character whose physical body is dramatically different from yours (gender, age, height, weight, health). Embody that character’s flesh. Engage the character in physical activity (such as running, walking, swimming, or biking). Slow down as you write and really experience each breath, each step, this character takes.

  Write a scene of approximately five hundred words using the following rules:

  Every second sentence begins with the letter n.

  A cat figures prominently in the first three sentences.

  A character takes a train somewhere he or she is afraid to go.

  A miscommunication creates more trouble.

  What happened? How did it feel to write this way? What worked? What didn’t?

  PART TWO

  Building Your Foundation

  CHAPTER 4

  Release All Desire for Results

  He who stands on tiptoe

  doesn’t stand firm.

  He who rushes ahead

  doesn’t go far.

  He who tries to shine

  dims his own light.

  He who defines himself

  can’t know who he really is.

  He who has power over others

  can’t empower himself.

  He who clings to his work

  will create nothing that endures.

  —Tao Te Ching, chapter 24

  The Bhagavad Gita tells us, “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.” If you’re at all like me, the idea of releasing any desire for results causes a visceral response. If I don’t worry about where I’m supposed to end up, how will I know when I get there? How will I know if I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve? How will I know if I’ve done anything at all?

  I was first introduced to the concept of releasing attachment to results in yoga class. I didn’t really buy it then. I did want to be more flexible. I did want to lose weight. I did want to look like someone on the cover of Yoga Journal. It didn’t take too many months for me to see that the desire for the goal was creating contraction and suffering and preventing me from enjoying the direct experience of the class. My wanting got in the way of my experiencing.

  The first step of building your foundation for the Writing Warrior path is to release any desire for results. This is not the cop out it may sound like. Paradoxically, this letting go allows you to do more, experience more, and create more than you will if you are fixed on a specific end result. It can be very difficult to see the gifts scattered along the sidewalk if your gaze is firmly focused on a destination point. Releasing desire for results allows you to be open and more accepting of what you find along the way. You will not be as quick to discard things just because they don’t fit your planned outcome. And often, what you do end up with is far more wondrous than you could have imagined for yourself.

  We live in a results-oriented culture. It is natural to impose this way of thinking on our writing. It may feel absolutely ridiculous to try to write without knowing where you’re going to end up. That feeling is OK. Pay attention to what your mind is doing. Are you afraid that you’re not learning everything possible? Are you comparing your direct experience to an experience of the past, or an expected experience of the future? Are you worrying about getting everything you’re supposed to get from the information? Are you questioning your desire to write? Are you wondering when something’s going to happen? Where these exercises will take you?

  There’s nowhere to go. That’s the most confounding, frustrating, counterintuitive concept in this whole writing life. There’s nowhere to go. Just show up and let everything go. When we stop worrying about whether or not our writing is living up to the goals we’ve set in our minds, we can enjoy the experience of writing and, in turn, give our writing the space to live and breathe and develop.

  Don’t write with an agenda. Don’t write with a need to accomplish something. Just show up and write. Don’t try to make meaning of your writing afterward, but likewise, don’t try not to make meaning of it. Be in the experience and let everything wrapped up around that experience (what it should be/could be/shouldn’t be/might be) fall away. You’ll be quite surprised by how far you can go without all that weight holding you down.

  CHAPTER 5

  Direct Experience

  You can’t have a genuine experience of language except in language.

  —Carole Maso

  I worked for a time through the Arizona Artists Roster as a writer-in-residence for grade schools and middle schools. One Friday afternoon in late August, I sat at a too-low table in a too-short chair with four Language Arts teachers at a local grade school. I was scheduled to be their writer-in-residence for the month of October, and we were meeting to discuss what I would be covering in their third, fourth, and fifth grade classes. This was my first residency, created more out of financial need on my part than desire to spread the joys of writing to small children, but I was excited and I wanted to do a good job. The money for one four-week residency was five times better than teaching one adjunct creative writing class at the local community college. Even I could do that math. We were waiting on one of the teachers who was still outside on bus duty. These teachers were sweet people. I could see their passion for children and how much they wanted to provide a good experience for their students. One teacher, a petite, bird-like woman with funky red reading glasses opened up her folder and asked, “What approaches are you going to use for the Six Traits of Writing?”

  The other polite teachers waited for my answer, as if I’d just been asked something as simple as whether I wanted cream or sugar with my coffee. I felt the scrambling in my brain as I searched for that answer. But the overriding question in my head was: what the heck are the Six Traits of Writing? I had a BA in English and creative writing and an MFA in fiction writing. I’d been teaching community college creative writing classes for several years, and I’d already had two books published. I had absolutely no idea what the Six Traits of Writing were. Apparently, I didn’t get that memo. Oh my gosh, what did third graders know about writing that I didn’t? This was clearly not going to be as smooth as I’d anticipated.

  Because these women were sweet, or perhaps because they were used to dealing with long silences following their questions, th
e red-eyeglassed woman quickly produced a handout in 36-point font. OK, great. Now I’d be able to answer her questions. I had no doubt whatsoever that I was capable of teaching writing. There must be some new buzzwords flying about.

  The handout only made it worse.

  6 TRAITS + 1

  Idea/Content

  Organization

  Word Choice

  Sentence Fluency

  Voice

  Conventions

  Presentation

  “These traits are the qualities of writing,” said the eyeglassed one.

  Really? Uh oh. I hadn’t thought I’d be found out so quickly. I knew in my heart of hearts that I’d somehow skated through graduate school with people much more talented than I, and that I’d scammed my way into a teaching position because I have excellent people skills. But I always thought I’d be undone by the PhD sitting in my creative writing class, proving once and for all to me and the whole class that I actually hadn’t ever read a single one of Hemingway’s books all the way through. Instead, I was going to be defrocked by the third graders of Phoenix, Arizona.

  Whenever content fails me, I fall back on people skills. “Well, I thought we’d spend time actually writing.”

  They nodded in unison. I wanted to cross my legs, but it was impossible in the child-sized chairs. I kept going.

  “I thought if we wrote and then talked about what we wrote, it’d be fun. And educational,” I added quickly.

  One of the women made notes in perfect script.

  “Can you give us a list of your activities and how they connect to the Arizona State Language Arts Standards?”

  The what? What happened to the writing part? “Sure. I’ll e-mail it tonight.”

  They seemed momentarily satisfied. The bird-like woman held suspicions, I could tell, but she kept quiet. No doubt something in her background had taught her that artists were somehow different and should be given a wide berth before drastic measures had to be taken.

  As we sat together, the mishmash of color in the third grade classroom was comforting. Bright yellow suns against cobalt blue skies. Rainbows. Pictures of funny cats and monkeys. Gold stars. It had been over thirty years since I was in the third grade, but not too much seemed different. Except for this Six Traits thing. That was new. How had I managed to write anything without this essential knowledge?

  The meeting concluded well enough. I received my classroom schedule and got a tour of the school (follow the yellow footprints for the third grade hall, the green footprints for the fourth grade hall, and the blue footprints for the fifth grade hall). I couldn’t be sure these sweet women weren’t wishing they’d picked another artist—maybe the cute one with the long hair who plays drums and makes a lot of noise, then asks the kids to make finger paintings of the drum rhythms—but they’d already given me the check, so we were on for October no matter what.

  Once I got home, it didn’t take long to find the Arizona State Language Arts Standards online. Finding them, however, did nothing to ease my concern over actually talking about them. Who wrote these things? Who came up with some kind of rubric for what writing is? More important, how is this kind of theoretical discussion even possible, especially with children? It was going to require my most sophisticated sleight of hand to pull off this gig.

  I spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about the first day of my residency. I tried to memorize the Six Traits, but they wouldn’t stick. I had to keep fighting the urge to sneeze “bull$*&%” in my hand. I was continuously reminded of my favorite Jean Cocteau quote: “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.” Was the school system assuming that writing was an external thing? That if you built the skeleton the heart would just move on in?

  I tried to remember third grade. I tried to remember how I had been taught to write, but I couldn’t come up with anything. We read a lot in school. We memorized poems and parts of stories. We wrote a lot and had to keep journals. I remembered learning about organization and grammar, but grammar was something separate; it was a way of understanding what had been written, but it wasn’t writing. What had happened? I thought about graduate school. Did we ever have seminars on how to write? None that I could recall. Did we ever come together and agree on what constitutes good writing? No. In fact, we had lively debates over what worked and what didn’t in fiction and poetry. The conclusion ultimately being there was no conclusion. Literature has a big tent. Where would Gertrude Stein fall under conventions in the Six Traits system? Where would Virginia Woolf fall under organization or Don DeLillo under sentence fluency? How would Samuel Beckett deal with ideas and content?

  While I did understand that the Six Traits system helped give the students some vocabulary for discussing writing, and I did understand that the traits, with the notable exception of voice, were all easily marked right or wrong, which made grading papers significantly easier, I also recognized that this attempt to place a rigid container around what makes good writing would create a problem for students later on. Teaching students they can learn how to write by breaking writing down into manageable chunks, to be mastered bit by bit, isn’t going to work.

  I know this: one cannot dissect something before it’s been alive. The same is true with writing. Neither the Six Traits nor any rule-based view of writing take into account what really makes a piece of writing speak. Maybe we can arm our students with comma and semicolon rules, and maybe we can instill a healthy respect for some form of organization, but ultimately, like any warrior worth his or her salt, we know we have to send them out into their own jungles, their own swamps and seas, and see who’s capable of bringing back an original catch.

  As the old spiritual song says of the lonesome valley, “No one can go there for you.” This is true of your work as writers. No one can write for you. No one can share your direct experience of writing. Sure, you can commiserate with fellow writers, but everyone’s experience will be different. Each writer navigates her lonesome valley differently. And it’s in the valley, not in the dos and don’ts of syntax, where writers get lost. While theory can help you find new ways of looking at problems and activities, and help you think more critically about your own choices and reactions, what matters most is your direct experience: what you feel and hear when you listen inward. Your own feelings and transformations provide the baseline for your practical path.

  Pay attention to yourself and to your patterns. Don’t let yourself get in your own way. Be vigilant and compassionate. Be in the writing, not around it. Not under it. Not beside it. Be in it. Let the words you’re writing and the feelings you’re experiencing while writing wrap around you. Please don’t trick yourself into believing that reading about writing and thinking about writing is the same as writing. You know in your heart of hearts that isn’t true. As a Writing Warrior, your commitment is to the truth—to seeing things as they are, not as you wish them to be. From that place, you will stand in power and authenticity.

  CHAPTER 6

  Theory and Practice

  In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

  —Yogi Berra

  I took piano lessons for five years in North Carolina, from third through seventh grade. I was never any good, but I practiced, metronome pulsing on the mantel. I don’t have a natural sense of rhythm, and although I could read the music, I couldn’t breathe that invisible spirit into the notes to make them dance. I was competent enough to go to numerous state recitals and place well, and I was determined enough to believe that if I practiced diligently my short stubby fingers would eventually grow long and slender so that I could reach full octaves, even beyond. I loved ragtime music, and I wanted to be able to play a Scott Joplin piece before we moved to Phoenix. But my hands, already twelve years old, had not stretched enough to reach the notes. I could read them, but I couldn’t touch them. They mocked me from high above the treble clef.

  The point of the lessons, however, was not to become a conc
ert pianist, though that thought had flitted through my mind. The point was to learn to practice. To learn to show up and go toe-to-toe with an instrument, whether that instrument is a golf ball, a piano, or a blank computer screen. Today I can still read music, but I can’t play much. The discipline I learned, however, anchored itself in my bones.

  I remember getting frustrated with my piano teacher, Mrs. Leggett, because all we seemed to do was practice. We never got anywhere. We practiced scales for fifteen minutes before the “real” lesson began. We worked on “pieces” not songs. I wanted what I still want—to jump through the experience to the culminating event. Knowing life doesn’t work that way doesn’t stop me from wanting it to.

  There is no magic moment when practice becomes perfection. A doctor still practices medicine. A professional athlete still practices his game, even in the playoffs. We writers practice our craft, whether we are writing in our journal, writing a proposal, a novel, or a poem. We lay words one after another in various ways, for various reasons, and each path will teach us something. Your craft is not limited to your genre. Let everything you write be a meditation with words, a game, a puzzle. What would happen if you switched the order of the first and second words in your closing sentence? What would happen if you decided to make that statement a question? What would happen if you began every line with the letter r? It’s both play and the most serious work of your career.

  There really is freedom in discipline. Discipline gives you the container to return home to. Discipline picks you back up when your proposal is rejected. Discipline carries you through when your mother is dying, or your world is too full of turmoil to face. Discipline walks with you and pushes you forward. Without it, you are a kite without a string, pulled east, west, north, south, depending on the breeze of the day. Without it, you are unmoored.