"When we do not trouble ourselves over whether or not something is a work of art, if we just act in each moment with composure and mindfulness, each minute of our life is a work of art…If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower and we don’t have to talk about it at all." Tich Nhat Hanh
Most of us who write, do talk about our art. In fact, we talk to ourselves almost constantly. Some of us talk ourselves silly, not only before and after we write, but during the very act of writing as well. "Is it art yet? Is it as good as what I’ve written before? Should I be working on this piece of writing or another one? What if nobody wants to read it when I’ve finished?"
Rarely do our inner monologues center on the task before us. Instead they focus on what has happened in the past or what might happen in the future.
When our minds become entangled in brambles of the words we have already written we become judgmental. We stop paying attention to writing itself, and begin judging the sufficiency of the words we’ve already written by quality or degree. Have we written enough yet? Is what we’ve written so far good enough? How does it compare to what we wrote yesterday or last week or twenty years ago? How does it compare to what Hemingway wrote? Not only can’t we see where we are going, we are blinded to where we are. We stumble and grope in this darkness, bumping into things we call blocks.
When we allow our minds to drift toward the future, our attention caught in plotting how we will control the next words we set on paper and our balance shifts. What will other people think of what we’re writing? Will we be able to sell our work? Will the words we haven’t yet written be good enough? We become overwhelmed by the enormity of the task before us. Dizzy and distracted, we topple forward grasping at something always beyond our reach and we begin to procrastinate.
I suspect we stop ourselves from writing in the moment out of fear. The Chinese Poet, Lu Chi, born in 261 AD called it "The Terror." He wrote, "I worry that in ink well will run dry, that right words cannot be formed; I want to respond to the moment’s inspiration."
Our self-conscious focus on anywhere but here and now as we write affords us a false sense of security against this terror. When we choose to pay attention to what has or will happen, we miss the creative instant, the union between our humanness and Mystery, which some consider holy. Perhaps, as writers, we need to learn to take comfort in that connection, rather than running from it. We can ease our fears with the understanding that ultimately, everything we write is written one word at a time.
Shifting our attention to the present doesn’t demand that we deny the past. Every second we’re lived, every breath we’ve drawn, every choice we’ve made has brought us to write the very word we are writing now. Neither are we forced to stop polishing our work. After we’ve written one word or one thousand words, we will revise, and when we do, we’ll be fully present in that instant as well.
Shifting our attention to the present doesn’t demand that we ignore that our current choices and actions have consequences that shape the future either. We aren’t forced to stop outlining our articles and plotting our novels. Writing in the present does require us to relinquish the illusion that we are the only ones in control of what shows up.
"I work with what is given; that which passes cannot be detained," wrote Lu Chi. "Things move into shadows and they vanish; things return in the shape of an echo."
Our job as writers to hold ourselves open to those echoes and to capture them on paper in the instant they emerge.
This week try taking a walk. Allow yourself not to know your destination or how long your walk will be. Carry a small notebook and a pen or pencil with you.
As you walk, empty your mind of all concerns and focus, instead on simply walking one step at a time. Think of each step as sufficient in and of itself – not for how far it moves you.
When come to a place where you feel like stopping, sit down and allow yourself to really be there. Look at what surrounds you with beginner’s eyes. Write something, anything, about this place as if this were the first moment of your life. Write in the present tense. Write as if there were no tomorrow.