WRITING FOR AIR

It’s easy to be that smug, clever, verbally glib toast of the cocktail party, to drink just the right number of gin fizzes to find just the right combination of words to turn just about anything into a joke.

Not so easy to find something sacred in your life, something you respect for the simple reason that it deserves it. And to know it deserves it for the even more simple reason that it has earned it.

People read those sacred words of yours even when you wish there were more of them, or they wish there were fewer of your words, and those readers, which is what we call people when we forget why we started writing in the first place, talk to other people, who have hearts full of searing desire, who share, persuade, love, hate, kill, hug, nurture, and sleep around because of your words, or mine, or those of their parents, who might not have loved them as much as we do.

If in that tiny office of yours that always feels too hot or cold you write This word, That word – Verb my Noun! your words move me to hate, love, laugh, think, desire, and crave, and so I share how you’ve made me feel, and in sharing shape the world atom by atom, and we both know how pesky those little atoms can be.

Your writing is sacred because people are, and our earth is, and the things we love and hate and care about are.

Participate in the sacred because we need your sacred words, flawed as they are, like you, you beautiful, immoral, uplifting, passionate, desperate, decrepit animal.

Participate in the sacred because we need your words to remind us to save,
to love
to nurture,
to judge and excoriate,
to forgive and apologize,
to dream,
to ground.
And to remind me to scream
Stop!

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Things matter. Not like people, but they’re still important.

A pen that inspires you to write beautiful words because you want to do its form justice, its feel, the way it spreads ink across that particular shade of paper you found after looking for weeks, which you’ve placed on top of that

desk you’ve always had in the family,

or just bought, and on top of which today you’ve set up a laptop instead of paper, and tomorrow maybe an iPad, although not that many yesterdays ago you wouldn’t have known what that meant.

What you choose to write with, on, and seated at will draw you in, or push you away. Writing day after day after day is hard. As in very. Make it easier by falling in love with objects that you enjoy touching, seeing, celebrating. That way, even when the writing does not end perfectly, the act of writing will.

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We have an arrangement in our house. If the door is closed, it means I’m writing but it’s okay to knock if something really urgent comes up. If I’ve also hung the Do Not Disturb sign, better not knock unless your injury is so severe it will be hard to dial 911 by yourself. Here are some things that are NOT exceptions to the rule regarding my Sacred Space:

We knocked because a delivery requires your signature (that’s why they leave we’ll try again notes).

We knocked because the school’s on the phone (that’s what answering machines are for).

We knocked because we can’t seem to remember where we put the peanut butter and crackers.

Knocking for any other reason you can think of.

Sacred space is so important that until you find a way to say my writing is more important than… (everything) you’re going to have a hard time finishing anything, because there are all sorts of worthy adversaries clamoring for your attention. The beauty of finding a sacred space is that once you have it set up, you’ll know the rules about what intrusions are allowed, and so will everyone else. Having a sacred space says This is mine, that is yours, and all the rest is ours. Or to paraphrase the late Swiss writer, Hughley Ericcson: Having a sacred space means sitting in one particular chair in one particular room, for the same reason you sat there yesterday – To write. 

I certainly have known writers who can write anywhere, and I have done my fair share of writing in spaces that are anything but sacred, but if you read Part I of this mini-series on the sacred you can probably predict what I’m going to say about that: Variety may be the spice of life, but until you have established a solid habit of productive writing you should probably be searching for rules, not exceptions. When you get to page 300, or you’ve written 300 poems, you may be able to write anywhere. Until then…

1. Find yourself a Sacred Space and claim it.
2. Get everyone you love to agree to the rules regarding your Sacred Space.
3. Sit in your Sacred Space during your Sacred Time (see Part I).
4. Do your Sacred Thing, during your Sacred Time, in your Sacred Space.
5. When you reach page 300, or finish poem 300, email me at philipdealbooks.com and I’ll give you a shout out.

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Children

Jobs

Lovers

Friends

Jury Duty

Q: What do all of the above have in common?

A: They are legitimate challengers for your time, the real people and the real reasons it is sometimes hard to find time to write.

But here’s the thing, and there’s really no escaping it: Unless you are an emergency room M.D., a soldier in active battle, or the single parent of more than six children, you have time to write. You may not have time to write and watch the same amount of football you’ve always watched, or time to write and go out with friends every night, but you definitely have time to write.

Spend more than a few minutes examining your day-to-day life and you’ll see that I’m right. The problem isn’t that you don’t have time to write; the problem is getting yourself to set aside a time that is reserved for one thing and one thing only – writing – and then doing it.

So here is today’s lesson, and you should probably start scratching these lessons into your walls in giant letters:

CREATE A SACRED WRITING TIME, THEN WRITE DURING THAT TIME EVERY SINGLE DAY.

No buts, what ifs, or I have to do something elses. Create a sacred time, a time that no one has a right to question you about, a time that you let nothing or no one steal from you. Then write today during your sacred time. Then write tomorrow during your sacred time. Repeat, repeat, and then repeat some more.

After you’ve written 300 pages, or 300 poems, feel free to take a day off. For now, for the simple reason that you have never written a book, or compiled a volume of poems, you have no reason to believe you can or ever will.  But have no fear; that is the beauty of creating sacred time. Respect that time every single day and you cannot help but add pages together, one at a time, until, one day soon, you will look up and say – I did it!

I have already done that, written THE END, not once, not twice, but five times and counting (and that includes only books I did not throw away after finishing). When you have done it just once we’ll talk about writing when you feel like it, or when the muse visits, or at different times on different days. For now, better to think of yourself as an apprentice who has something very important to prove, exactly one important thing: I can do it!

So do. Write today during your sacred time. Then write tomorrow during your sacred time. Repeat, repeat, repeat. When you reach page 300, or finish your 300th poem, email me at philipdealbooks@gmail.com and I’ll give you a shout out right here. You have my sacred promise.

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