In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently, there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established. There is not possibility. . .of saying, I’ll do it if I feel like it. – John Steinbeck

Woody Allen said that ninety five percent of life is showing up. This is especially true when it comes to our writing. If you have a hard time showing up as consistently as you would like, give yourself permission to return to picking up the thread of your work just a little bit at a time. Lower your standards on what you think you should be able to accomplish. Be willing to forgive yourself for all the times you have failed to show up to your work. Honor that there will likely always be a part of you who wants to write and a part of you that is resistant to the letting go that is required to really engage the creative mind. This can be very liberating. Writing is not unlike training to run a marathon. You start out running a few blocks and you work your way up each day to the full twenty six miles. In your writing this can translate into doing “freewriting” or stream of consciousness writing for ten minutes a day for a month then building up to showing up for longer periods of time where you also play with the art of revision and work on finishing a piece. In working with my students and coaching clients I focus in part on learning to fall in love with the process and to find joy in simply showing up to the creative work. Then the writing becomes it’s own reward, free of the expectations of what we think it needs to be and we learn to allow what wants to be born out of our creative spirit.

Author Ray Bradbury keeps a file of opening lines and titles of stories yet to be written. Try this. Make a list of all the stories within you that really want to be told. Then pick one and write on the theme for at least ten minutes a day for a week (or better yet for a month) and see how that feels. Have it be okay that some of what you write may feel uninspired. It all counts as practice that helps you to develop the habit to showing up to your work and evolve your own writing voice and style. The more you show up the more likely you are to hit the zone where your creativity really starts to flow and magic happens.

With an interest in providing information to writers about the options for publishing in an changing industry, I’m engaged in an ongoing correspondence with publishing consultant, Joel Friedlander, www.thebookdesigner.com.

I asked him, Why would a writer want to self publish? And what kind of work is especially suited to self publishing?

Here’s his reply:

Suzanne,

Because I’ve been involved in launching self-publishers since the 1990s, when I read your questions I immediately started to think of the many authors I’d met and produced books for. More than any “Top 3 Tips for When to Self-Publish” kind of blog post, I’m drawn to the specific personalities, histories and reasons these people became self-publishers.

Even without identifying them with names and faces, their situations speak to the many reasons people decide to publish themselves, and to what effect.

7 Scenarios for Self-Publishing
Genre switcher. This client was a professional author, and had published a string of non fiction books with major publishers. But his dream was to write a contemporary thriller and sell it to the movies. Unfortunately, no one would look at the book, and told him he should stick to non fiction. Determined to prove them wrong, he mounted a major effort to edit, print and market his book.

A long shot from beginning to end, the book never sold, although it was certainly no worse than many genre novels published more traditionally. But the client was satisfied he had made his point.

Educational consultant. A woman who was quite well known as a consultant to educators wanted to create a book that embodied her philosophy of education, something that would inspire teachers. She felt it would not be published according to her vision by a commercial publisher, and so she created the book herself and sold it through her own consulting company.

The book came out beautifully, obviously a labor of love, and the consultant had both a contribution she made to her field, and a tool to help market her consulting work.

Self-proclaimed guru. It’s a dirty world out there. This man controlled a couple of thousand followers, and had developed his own rather bizarre system of philosophy. No publisher would be interested in the book, yet the guru and his followers sincerely felt it was a “gift to humanity” and spared no expense to put it into print.

The publication of the book, even though it was read by virtually no one outside the group, seemed to give the guru even more authority in the eyes of his followers.

Poet. Although it’s notoriously difficult to get a publishing contract for an unknown author, there’s really nothing to compare to trying to get into print if you’re a poet. This poet, acclaimed and published in numerous anthologies, knew the only way he would ever get published was to do it himself. He set up a company, we published the book, although he has yet to follow with another one.

The satisfaction of having the book to both sell and share with friends and colleagues was very gratifying, and the poet gained a lot of knowledge about publishing that will be useful later on.

Exercise innovator.
An innovative thinker in the field of therapeutic exercise, this client was building himself as a brand in a calculated and entrepreneurial way. An integral part of his multi-faceted plan was the publication of a book demonstrating his own theories and exercises, with lots of drawing and explanations of his system.

This author had strong business instincts. He was marketing himself agressively, had a definite plan in mind, and used the book as a building block in his assault on success.

Political theorist.
Political theories are often impossible to get published. The very small market is difficult to penetrate. This author had been publishing his own books for years and had built a following of several thousand fans through his speaking and writing activities. He knew exactly what to pay, how many to print, and how to sell these books to his audience.

As part of an ongoing business model, the author’s book publishing perfectly complemented the deep thought and rigorous analysis he was known for.

Retired professor. After a long career teaching anthropology, this professor finally had time to put together the book he had always dreamed of writing. Because he chose an unusual form—half straight science and half an imagined narrative that was basically fiction—the book was unsaleable. He published himself to fulfill the dream.

The author went on to publish several more books of a similar style and, although sales were negligible, he had great enjoyment in creating and publishing books that expressed his ideas exactly the way he wanted to.

It’s All About Knowing Where You Are
I admit I enjoy doing these books. Whether the books are “good” or not seems not as relevant to me as the fact that these authors believed strongly in what they had to say, and wrested control of the means to launch their ideas into the world. I kind of admire that, don’t you?

Each had definite reasons that made a lot of sense to them. None had come to the decision easily, although the more entrepreneurial authors always seem much less burdened by the idea that they were becoming “authors.” For them it just made good business sense, and so they did it.

With writers, the motives for writing are so different from person to person. Just reading the entries in Maria Schneider’s Why I Write contest over on Editor Unleashed is fascinating, as each person tries to explain what it is that drives them again and again to take up their pen and attempt to make sense of the world.

To bring that vision to the rest of the world through publishing is, in many ways, an entirely natural thing to do. It’s an extension of the initial drive to write, the desire to communicate, because where there’s a writer, there needs to be a reader to truly complete the process. Publishing is, in a simple way, just that: a way to find the readers that every author knows are out there.

And bravo for every one of them.

Takeaway: Each author who decides to self-publish has a logic all their own. Some books may be more profitable than others, but in my experience this is not what sways authors to publish. The more you understand your own motives and goals, the more likely you are to succeed in self-publishing, because you will more accurately define that “success” for yourself.

Living in uncertain times, we need some kind of certain presence which is independent of our outside accomplishments, which is independent of any shallow definitions of what it means to be successful. – David Whyte

Albert Einstein said, The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. I think that is why now more than ever it’s important for each of us to embrace our creativity in whatever form that calls to us and feels most enlivening. In our schooling we were taught to focus on the left brain activities of the three “Rs” reading, writing and arithmetic with little attention paid the right brain.

On my recent trip to Ireland I told an Australian man I met about my commitment to working with people to engage with the “I” words; imagination, inspiration, innovation and intuition which are right brain activities. He smiled, and responded, you really are from California aren’t you. I laughed and said “yes”. California especially the San Francisco Bay Area has long been fertile ground to new ways of doing things and looking at the world.

An architect I know who was born and raised in the Midwest once shared the idea that all the innovation and openness to change that is a trademark of the Bay Area might be related to the hilly topography. Our minds constantly have to adjust to new perspectives as we move through the landscape. Current discoveries in neuroscience suggest that you can enhance brain function by looking up from what you are doing and changing your focus during the day. When I work with people to help to engage creatively I recommend that they make changes in habitual behavior like eating different foods, driving a different way home from work, or changing the order that they put their clothes on in the morning. Any time you do something new and different you begin to build new neural nets in your brain. It’s also why activities like daydreaming or writing from the stream of consciousness where we let our right brain run in seemingly random directions can help us to come up with new ways of looking at a problem.

If you want get more experience connecting to the 95% of our brain/mind that scientist say we don’t use, try the practice of writing a tad faster than you can think to outrun the rational, strategic mind and let the ideas spill out on the page. Or you can try brainstorming on paper by putting the central idea or question in the middle of the page and draw the related ideas that come to you like satellites around the central idea. Also once you start thinking about a new idea notice the thoughts that pop into your head while you are driving, walking, doing the dishes or otherwise occupying the rational mind. Neuroscientists have actually shown that when you let the stream of consciousness flow our brain is actually activating more neurons and brain cells. The next time you have a problem to solve try letting your mind run and be open to all the ideas that surface. Think about some aspect of the world today that could use some creative solution and see what you come up with. Creativity is a natural human gift we all have. It just need to be tended in order to be developed.

The fate of poetry is to teach us to fall in love with the world inspite of history.
– Derek Walcott

New England poet and essayist Donald Hall calls poetry, The Unsayable Said, referring the ineffable quality of poetry; the way it gives voice to experiences that are beyond words. I always think of poetry as something written by the soul for the soul. This is why I find it best to read a poem for the felt sense it offers, allowing the experience of the words to wash over you without necessarily having to understand them with your conscious mind.

Poet Robert Pinsky in his two year term as U.S. Poet Laureate established the Favorite Poem Project. In traveling around the country promoting poetry in town hall style meetings where people came together to share their favorite poems written by someone else he found that everyone, from the members of the corporate board room to the janitorial staff, all had a poem that had really influenced their life. Poet David Whyte, author of The Heart Aroused: the Preservation of the Soul in Corporation, who uses poetry to talk about the life of the soul in the workplace has consulted for major corporation including Boeing, Xerox and IBM. The person who invited David to bring his work into the corporation had explained that there was no language in the corporate world for the kind of real changes that need to take place but that he heard that language in David’s use of poetry.

I think in this time of tremendous change in the world today, poetry holds for us a timeless wisdom and language that provides an awareness of what is really important about the essence of the human experience and our connection to something bigger than ourselves. By way of example I’ve included below four of my favorite poems by poets spanning nine centuries and spawned by different parts of the world; beginning with Rumi, the 13th century Persian Sufi mystic, then German poet and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who lived 1749 to 1832,  then  Nobel Prize winning Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez, 1881 – 1958 and finally Nobel Prize winning Poet Derek Walcott from Saint Lucia in the Caribbean born in 1930. I encourage you to savour each one, let the words enter your heart and feel poetry’s power to transform and inspire.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
Where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
A strange feeling comes over you
When you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
In the obsession with darkness,
And a desire for higher love-making
Sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
And, finally, insane for the light,
You are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
This: to die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth.

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing…..silence…..Waves…..
—-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

- Juan Ramon Jimenez

Love After Love

The day will come
when with elation you will greet yourself
arriving at your own door
in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
saying, ‘Sit here. Eat. You will love again
the stranger who was yourself.’

Give wine, give bread
give back your heart to itself
to the stranger who has loved you
all your life
whom you ignored for another
who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs
the desperate notes
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life

-Derek Walcott

. . . writing is the slow, cumulative way of accepting your life as valid, of accepting yourself over a lifetime, of realizing that your life is important. And it is. It’s all you’ve got. All you ever had for sure. - Richard Hugo

I first started keeping a journal in college and have maintained that practice for over thirty five years. Expanding into creative writing followed as a natural progression of this practice of putting pen to paper along with a deep love of books and working with words. Besides the experience of deep satisfaction that comes from engaging the creative process, writing has also served my personal growth in profound ways.

Journaling differs from creative writing in that it is more a conversation with yourself. It provides a way of making sense of your life experiences and becomes a form of self analysis. Creative writing allows you to more deeply access the unconscious and the insights of your Self. The benefits of engaging the writing process on these different levels are many.

James W Pennebaker, PhD, who spent years researching the healing effects of writing. describes in his book, Opening Up, what many people who have kept a journal often discover on their own, “that if we can create a cohesive personal narrative of our lives and if we can link up our emotions with specific events, then we have the power to take control of how those emotions and events affect our lives.” As Isak Dinesan, the author of Out of Africa, said “All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.”

Evidence for the positive effects writing has on our physical health is found in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed, “that merely writing about past stressful life experiences results in symptom reduction among patients with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis.”

Poet May Sarton said that “… the only way through pain … is to go through it, to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means …. Nothing that happens to us, even the most terrible shock, is unusable, and everything has somehow to be built into the fabric of the personality ….” Through writing, we can find order and meaning in everything that has happened to us. Whichever form our writing takes: journaling, poetry, memoir, fiction, or essays; it has the power to heal us and to help us grow.

Recently in one of my ongoing writing classes a participant new to the writing process exclaimed with a sense of happy surprise, “I’m learning so much about myself” I know I am always having that experience when I write. Robert Frost said, ” No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” One of the greatest joys, I get out of writing is when I uncover ways of seeing or perceive that I wasn’t consciously aware of. I’ll stop in the middle of reading over something I had just written and say to myself, “wow I didn’t know I thought that.” It feels good to grasp the deeper threads of meaning in our lives. Writing helps us to form connections with what is going on inside us and with others, allowing us to understand who we are and where and why we do the things we do. It can help us gain a new perspective on habitual behaviors and subconscious patterns that get in the way of living our full potential. Writing can help us to get clear and make the constructive changes in our lives.

There are lots of different ways to use writing for healing and self discovery. You can start by writing about a specific event or situation or relationship. Or begin by writing a letter (that does not get sent) to a person you are having a conflict with in order to more deeply understand what you are really feeling about the situation. Or try writing a dialogue with a pain in your body and ask it what it needs from you as way to tapping the body’s natural ability to heal.

You need to write freely without censoring or worrying about punctuation, spelling or grammar or even how it sounds. Write for ten to twenty minutes without stopping. Don’t edit. Simply write and see what comes out. By allowing what wants to be written without trying to consciously control the flow, you tap into the wisdom of the unconscious and open yourself to the healing power within.

My friend Joel Friedlander, the publishing consultant, has sent me a series of interview questions about writing that he is going to post on his blog. I figured I’d post the answers on my blog as well.

Joel asked “Can you explain what “freewriting” is, and how you use it in your workshops?’

I first encountered the concept of freewriting in 1977 when I found Peter Elbow’s book, Writing with Teachers. Elbow, who had been a professor at MIT, presented this way of working on your writing that is at once simpler and more powerful than any other way I know. I’ve come to believe that most writer’s eventually figure out that in order to write well you have to learn to get out of your conscious mind in order to tap the creative flow. Freewriting helps you to do this. I’ve certainly used the technique extensively to evolve my own writing.

All you do is simply force yourself to write without stopping for ten minutes. If you get stuck you keep writing “Keep the pen moving” until you break free. Sometimes you will produce good writing, sometimes you will produce garbage. The point is to keep writing. The goal is in the process, not the product. It is the easiest way to get words on paper and the best all around practice in writing that I know. Freewriting gives practice in focusing, but-not-trying; it helps the conscious self to stand out of the way and let the words be chosen by the sequence of the words themselves or the thought. The benefits are many: it helps with the existential difficulty of facing the blank piece of paper; it is best way to learn to separate the creative process from the editorial process; it’s a good warm up; it helps you to learn to write when you don’t feel like writing; it teaches you to write without thinking; it’s a good outlet for clearing away preoccupations; it’s good for brainstorming; and it improves your writing by leading you to tap a true voice

I started teaching writing workshops almost twenty years ago, where we freewrite for ten minutes and then share what we’ve written in a completely safe and supportive environment. Group members respond to what touches them, what rings true, what they want to hear more about or by parroting back a line that really strike them; all as a way of mirroring the writer’s voice and the potential of the piece. Freewriting allows you to write a tad faster than you can think which gives you access to the unconscious mind. When you have finished you rarely have any idea what you have written and your conscious mind armed with the critic and censor leads you to believe it’s no good. So receiving feedback on what is working in your first draft helps you to learn how to do that for yourself. I write and share with the group because I feel it only works if I’m willing to feel the same vulnerability as everyone else. I’m amazed year after year at the fine writing that emerges from all the different people who come to the workshops and how I can hear a writer’s voice evolve as they continue to work with this process.

Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you. – Robert Olen Butler

About fifteen years ago while attending the poetry workshop at the writer’s conference at Port Townsend, Washington, I had a chance to talk to Robert Olen Butler who was teaching the fiction workshop. While sitting on the grassy knoll above the Puget Sound, he spoke of his time in Vietnam, when he served as military attache in Saigon, where he became fluent in the language. He loved the Vietnamese and would sit on a stoop in the middle of the night engaged in conversation. At the time of the conference, though he had a reputation as a fine writer and a dedicated teacher, all his books were out of print. A few months later, his new collection of short stories, A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain won the Pulitzer Prize. The stories, which all involve characters that are Vietnamese, reflect the importance the people and the culture played in Butler’s life and imagination.

Recently I came upon a book of his, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction, in which he really emphasizes the importance of writing from the unconscious, the dream mind. He does a beautiful job of describing the difficulties involved as well as the importance of letting go of your linear mind and engaging your sensory and sensual experiences in order to fully tap the creative process.

In my own writing classes I start with a short meditation designed to quiet the mind and drop us all down into the heart mind, making it easier to access the imagination and creative flow. We then work with exercises to help in letting go, trusting the process and allowing what wants to be born out of the well of the subconscious to flow out on to the page. Another key element I learned from Butler in a talk he gave at the conference, is that good writing was full of moment by moment sensual detail. Focusing on the felt sense of an experience, learning to let go and then writing about things that are really important you are key ingredients in developing the art of writing.

The imagination is not interested in two-dimensional reductionism or naively pitting one side against another, dark against light. It is interested in the place where the two sides meet, and what they give birth to when they cross-fertilize each other. That is the heart of creativity. – John O’Donohue

In memory of John O’Donohue, 1954 to 2008

I first met John O’Donohue about 15 years ago when I participated in a workshop he offered with David Whyte in Seattle on the Celtic Imagination. I had signed up because I admired David’s work. I had never heard of John. Yet from the first moment he opened his mouth and words flowed out on a rich Irish accent, I sensed I was in the presence of someone extraordinary. Wisdom rose on his tongue, causing revelations to flood my mind. He spoke of the lack of soul in contemporary culture, calling advertising “schooling in false desire”. That phrase particularly hung in my mind while my pen scratched out pages of notes attempting to capture everything he said. I kept wondering, who is this man? Poet and philosopher with a PhD in philosophical theology from the University of Tubingen in Germany. A Catholic priest by vocation, a role he would eventually relinquish after years of consideration because as he put it “the oxygen had become too scarce and found myself diverging from quite a few of the teachings.” Still he continued to praise the power and importance of the essence of the Christian tradition and the legacy of the great Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross and Hildegard von Bingen.

I waited for several years for the book I knew would come out of him. His first titled Anam Cara, from the Irish words for soul friend was an international bestseller. Followed by Eternal Echoes and Beauty: An Invisible Embrace. I have over the years been repeatedly drawn back to his work. His words slipping under my skin traveling I think from his soul to mine. Rooted deep in the West of Ireland, he lived in a cottage heated with peat and spoke Irish as his everyday language. He was born in County Clare in the unique limestone region of The Burren, the part of Ireland that always pulls me back. From a grounded sense of belonging his mind rode the seas of imagination as he wrote and traveled to speak and teach to a wider world. Every May John held a a ten day rambling retreat in the West of Ireland. I had very much wanted to go one year. Not this year, I had thought but hopefully the next. And now this man who was so vibrantly alive is gone so unexpectedly at age 53, a keen reminder to me to attend to what calls to me without waiting, to ask the question every day, What do I really want to do with the time I’m given, and to show up fully for my life each day.

David Whyte in this eulogy to John said, This is a man who could hold the broad spectrum of human experience together in a fierce, intimate and compassionate way, leavened with a humour that defies easy description and that enlivened everyone around him . . .John was a love-letter to humanity from some address in the firmament we have yet to find and locate, though we may wander many a year looking or listening for it. He has gone home to that original address and cannot be spoken with except in the quiet cradle of the imagination that he dared to visit so often himself.

An important part of writing is sharing. So in order to provide the writers I work with some insights and information on the current state of publishing, I asked my friend Joel Friedlander, who has been in the publishing business for a long time and has his own publishing consulting business at, www.thebookdesigner.com, what does the writer need to know or understand about the current status of publishing and the direction it is taking and what do you see for the future of publishing?

Here’s his reply

Suzanne,

What writers need to know about the current state of publishing is that it is undergoing epochal change. Every part of the publishing industry is being affected by digitisation, the rise of social media, and the unrelenting pressure on profits throughout the business.

Book publishing has been a tradition-bound business. The books themselves—where I’ve mostly been involved—have barely changed since the 15th century, they’ve only gotten easier to produce and consequently, cheaper. Technology has, until very recently, been in service to the way authors, publishers and booksellers have arranged the business of publishing.

In the meantime we continue to operate with the standard agent-publisher-author relationships, with the same consignment mentality in the bookselling world, in which all books are returnable for full credit. But the difference is that everyone knows this world is coming to an end, that most of the old structures will not survive the next change in publishing, and that the structures that do survive will be fundamentally different.

Today’s writer, even if they are lucky enough to quickly get a book contract from one of our major publishers, needs to know:

How to find resources online. The abundance of resources online is simply staggering. From writing forums to free-writing websites, from agent blogs to writing webinars, you need to know how to find trustworthy sources of information.

How to build a “platform,” online and off. Publishers are making more decisions based on the marketability of the author, rather than the book itself. Authors with huge online followings simply represent less risk for publishers today. Can you deliver a fan base along with a manuscript?

What their options are for publication. Many of the changes going on right now in publishing are due to the growing popularity of digital printing and print on demand distribution. This technology has put the ability to produce books into the hands of the ordinary person. Anyone sitting at a computer can now take a manuscript they’ve written and get very good looking softcover books a few days—or in some cases a few minutes—after putting in an order. And they can do this without spending any more than the wholesale cost of the books they buy. The explosion of self-publishing spurred by this technology is creating new types of publishers, new organizations, and new vitality and credibility for Independent publishers. Each of the different paths you might choose to get published has its own risks and rewards, and you will have to know them before you can decide which path is right for you.

What kind of personality they want to project. Many writers have taken to blogging and other forms of social media with joy and enthusiasm, and they have multiplied their options for marketing their books and connecting with their own “tribe” of readers. Less gregarious writers may need to find a way to represent themselves where they can attract potential readers. I don’t mean to say that all writers are seeking readers. I’m saying that we write to be read, and whether you have 3 dedicated readers or 3,000, every writer has an investment in completing the loop, in being heard.

How to interact in social media. Every few months it seems like there are new ways to connect to people who share our interests. But the online environment has its own social norms, and spending time on social media pays dividends if you can make yourself heard in a way that interests, instructs, or entertains people. Many writers have their own websites, they blog regularly, and may have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Writers need to know how to establish themselves and foster long-term relationships within the context of a tsunami of tweets and status updates, to build connections that are lasting.

That e-books will bring an even bigger change to publishing. E-books, readable on computers, have been around for a long time. Amazon’s Kindle has gotten people used to reading on a dedicated screen that tries to mimic a book. Apple iPad looks ready to launch us into the next phase of the e-book revolution. E-books give writers even more options. Some authors are scared of the potential piracy of their works. Others are giving away books as fast as they can, or looking the other way at thousands of pirated books because it helps them build their brand. But as digitization in all its forms spreads, e-books will eventually become the norm, and printed book will become special editions. I don’t see printed books disappearing soon, but the eventual dominance of e-books in their place looks inevitable.

How to take the long view. The one thing that’s certain is that we don’t know what will happen next. Magazines want to quit cutting down trees entirely and find a home on something like the beautiful multi-media screen of the iPad. Although it’s harder than ever to get an agent, more agents are approachable online than ever before. Sanity lies in the long view, in nurturing your own creativity above all. If you seek an audience, or publication, start putting yourself out for others to discover, and enjoy, now. You can’t start too soon.

Suzanne, it seems to me the biggest obligation writers have is to the truth of their writing. The next most important thing for anyone who thinks about publication is getting educated. Start off with a good book, be open to new influences, and learn as much as you possibly can. Get involved in the hundreds of discussions going on. The process itself is its own reward.

Yours,
Joel

On my most recent trip to Ireland, just before the New Year I arrived at the Green Door Hostel in Drogheda, a small city north of Dublin close to the sacred sites in the Boyne River Valley. In true Irish fashion, Norm the manager, made me warmly welcome. When I told him I was I interested in leading a writing journey to the area, he said “well let me call Richard and see if he’ll want to drop by for a cup of coffee, he knows a lot about the sites.” Richard turned out to be Richard Moore painter and coauthor of “Island of the Setting Sun: In Search of Ireland’s Ancient Astronomers” a book about the astronomically-aligned giant stone monuments, erected over 5,000 years ago that are older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. Despite their apparent simplicity, these ancient structures were crafted by a community of farmers who were clearly skilled astronomers, engineers and surveyors who made these shrines to honor their beliefs in an afterlife. On my tour of Newgrange, the best preserved and excavated to the monuments I was intrigued to learn that there is no evidence of slavery so these structures were clearly a community effort.

Richard who lives a few doors down from the hostel arrived shortly after and as the kettle began to steam, he referred to a poster he has created call The High Man that hangs on the hostel kitchen wall. Having lived in the area all his life, he had begun studying a map of the ancient roads and noticed that they formed the shape of a figure of a warrior that seemed to mirror the pattern of the constellation Orion. The key sacred sites in the region are located at the knees, the head, the mouth and other key parts of the body. Richard said that in studying the rich history and mythology of this part of Ireland he found the stories corresponded to different aspects of the figure as well.

Knowing something of Irish history and mythology I was amazed by Richard’s depth of knowledge and insight into the region. I was also struck by the sense that this place where myth and history bleed into one another is really fertile ground for the human imagination. Later in exploring the sites on my own I could feel, as I stood in the icy cold, a deep sense of peace rising from the land and the pull these ancient people have on my own imagination. Back at the Green Door Hostel, I mention to Eamonn, the owner, that so little is known about who these ancients were and how they lived. He looks at me with a lively smile a keen sense of irony in his tone and says, “well, we know they knew the world was round.”

Since all writers often experience resistance at facing the blank page it helps to find a pattern in the physical world that can assist you in crossing the threshold into the writing mind. Here are some the elements for you to consider.

Implements: People often ask me when they sign up for one of my writing classes, whether it is best to write with a pen or a computer. The answer, of course, is to find what works best for you.. Some people like the feel of the pen moving across the page. Others, who are fast on the keyboard, sense they can keep up with the flow of ideas more easily that way. If you write with a pen chances are you will find a favorite and stick with it. I write all my first drafts with a rolling ball pen with black ink and a good grip and then revise on the computer.

Ritual: Writing calls for us to enter a different state of mind than our everyday way of thinking, so it helps to use some kind of ritual to signal to the muse or the subconscious that a shift is called for. The most elaborate ritual I’ve heard of came from a poet who wrote only in the mid to late afternoon, in an easy chair, in his pajamas with one cat on his lap. Mine is more simple. I write first thing in the morning before I do anything else, except make my ritual single cup of coffee. I then sit down with it along with my favorite pen to see what want my attention.

Location: I used to have to leave the house and go out for coffee in order to write because I found it easier to face the blank page free from the phone calls that needed to be returned or the toilet bowl that called out for cleaning. Writing is an inherently isolated activity and I like to feel of being part of the world when I do it. I find comfort in the bustel of a cafe that seems to keep my more critical mind occupied while I slip beneath the radar into the creative mind. Other people need complete quiet. It can also be help to set up space in your home just for writing. If you don’t have a room, how about a corner of the bedroom or some other room where you are unlikely to interrupted.

Time: A lot of people write first thing in the morning before they do anything else, while their mind is still close to the dream state and can more easily tap the creative flow which has a similar feel. Doing it first thing makes your creativity a priority. It’s easier to show up for it before you get caught up in the events of the day. Still if you are not a morning person, figure out which part of the day works best. I suggest you write the time in your day planner and get in the habit of showing up on a regular basis, even if it’s only for twenty minutes, even on the days you feel resistance or uninspired. Inspiration often only comes after you have started writing.