Jury Dismissed

September 9, 2010 at 7:38 am (The Artist Life, The Writing Life, Uncategorized)
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A couple weeks ago, I had a long, difficult visit from my Creative Judge (I refuse to give him an actual name, lest it would suggest a welcome of any sort).  I didn’t realize he had arrived until I finally put pen to paper and started writing.  About not writing, oddly enough.  

His visit went something like this:

******

NARRATOR (starla j. king)
Maybe I need a word moratorium.  If I don’t write, then I remove my Judge’s Exhibit A.

(author note: yeah, I know this guy is acting more as lawyer than judge, but this is how it came out.  work with me here….)

JUDGE: 
(to jury)
See here –

JUDGE points to first line of writing from essay blown up in huge font and displayed on posterboard for display.

JUDGE:
We have such potential in line 1, so we read on, eagerly awaiting…

JUDGE points to line 2 of EXHIBIT A, scrunching up his nose in distaste.

JUDGE:
… this. 

LOUD SOUND of expectations crashing to the judgment floor as a resulting dust of heavy disappointment rises and hangs over the jury.

JUDGE: 
Really, where is she going with this???

JUDGE pauses to let gravity of failure soak in…  then kicks shards of shattered expectations out of his way and steps over to the jury.

JUDGE:
She is NOT who she says she is.  A writer? HA!  Someone making a difference in this world? HA!

Look at this woman!

JUDGE spins around, pointing viciously at me, cowering on the witness stand. 

JUDGE:
Look at this “writing”

JUDGE crunches over sharp-edged opinions on the floor, crushing a few more.   Points again to EXHIBIT A.

JUDGE:
Do you call this SKILL???  Maybe.  But TALENT?  A GIFT?? Come on, people… there’s NO WAY!!

JURY MEMBERS nod in disdainful agreement.  

********
That’s where I ended this piece when I first wrote it… left myself cowering on the witness stand. 

I stayed there for a few days, until I decided to finish the script — with a big sendoff to my VERY UNWELCOME Creativity Judge.  It went something like this:
********

WRITER
HEY, wait a minute!

WRITER leaps over railing of witness stand and grabs EXHIBIT A off the display stand.  JURY waits in stunned silence for WRITER’s explosive reaction. 

WRITER simply walks out of the courthouse.  Sits down on the bench outside in the sunlight and keeps writing.

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Behind the words

May 26, 2010 at 8:28 pm (The Writing Life)
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“I actually meant to talk about [a different topic] but when I started writing it took a completely different direction. I think I love when that happens.”  – Rachael L. King

Maybe writing isn’t really about the words.  Maybe it’s more about giving the Universe (some call it God) a means of expression, a way to connect with us and through us.

Like Rachael’s experience of starting to write about something and then having a completely different set of words come out.   I think I too love when that happens!

My fountain pen tat (click to enlarge)

What if all it took to hear Wisdom’s voice was to open your heart, soul, and intellect and just start writing?  

I’m not talking about a refined essay or brilliant poem or carefully crafted set of ideas.  I’m talking about free-flow writing, messy writing, give-or-take the punctuation writing.  

It’s in that kind of writing — the kind of writing that’s accessible to ALL of us —  that inspiration can touch us and answers can find us.

As one of my favorite authors, Julia Cameron, writes in her book, The Right to Write (italics and color emphasis added by me):

Although we seldom talk about it in these terms, writing is a means of prayer…

Moving alone onto the page, we often find ourselves companioned by higher forces, by a stream of insights and inspirations that seem somehow ‘other’ than routine thinking.

Artists throughout the centuries have noticed this higher dimension and called it ‘God.’  It doesn’t matter what you call it.  The point is that writing allows you to contact it.  Whether you think of it as ‘God’ or ‘higher forces,’ as ‘inspiration’ or as contact with your own ‘higher self’ doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is that you can access a source of information and guidance, both creative and mundane, that will serve you.”

So really… why not write??

6 Comments

Write on

October 12, 2009 at 10:01 am (Books, The Writing Life)
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Writers write.  That’s what we do. 

writeExcept when we don’t.

I’ve let my writing slip into the background as I’ve been digging my way out of overscheduling my landscaping work (ach, when will I learn!??!?). 

I’ve written about this — the not writing — before, in my Getting it Just Write post.  But this time it’s different.  

By now I’ve made writing such a habit that when it’s missing I immediately feel the loss.  I almost tangibly feel words reaching for me, begging me to stop and write myself down. 

When my life coach (Nancy Duncan, through the Big Fish Nation program) asked me last week how my writing was going, tears burst from heart as I said “I haven’t been writing… and oh, I miss it!!!”

A few of Nancy’s discovery questions later, and I have committed to her (and me!) that I will post a new Starla’s Word Stew blog entry at least once per week.  By every Tuesday, in fact.  And now, by telling you this, I have also committed to you. 

right-to-writeI share all this with you because I fully believe in the power of writing — for each and every one of us, not just for those of us who get paid to write. 

As Julia Cameron writes in her book, ”The Right to Write” :

“Writing is medicine.  It is an appropriate antidote to injury.  It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.

Because writing is a practice of observation as much as invention, we can become curious as much as frightened in the face of change.  Writing about the change, we can help it along, lean into it, cooperate.

Writing allows us to rewrite our lives.”

Wait, read that again:  writing allows us to rewrite our lives…  rewrite-our-livesrewrite our lives.   

Do you realize how powerful that is???

What’s that?  You’re not a writer?  Ah, I beg to differ.  We are all “writers”… the act of picking up a pen and putting words on paper automatically turns us into writers, ones who write.

We all write lists.

We all write notes.

We all are writers.

So next time you’re feeling or thinking something you don’t know what to do with, try writing.  Anything.  Everything. Whatever’s on your mind.  Whatever comes out when you put your pen to paper.   Imperfect grammar, dangling participles (I still don’t really know what those are… I just I love that phrase), broken thoughts, incoherent ramblings.  Just write it all out.

And when you stop, you will likely have written yourself a golden word-thread of relief, perspective, even insight.  You will have rewritten your life.

write-on

"Life is Good" t-shirt - thank you Patti! :)

So today I cheer the writer in each of us and ask you to join me as we all write on!!    

In fact, you can start write now :) by writing a comment below about your own writing experiences or lack thereof. 
I’m listening….

16 Comments

Words

August 25, 2009 at 7:23 pm (Uncategorized)
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Words

At times they come
and pile on my tongue gentle
at first then insistent
like the kiss of a lover tasting my soul’s sweet savoury salty
mysterieswords

Tell us they say Tell us
of you through the heart you express when we
leave
and we’ll tell you back
Words

So wordless I show them
the place where I love and flames lick at my heart and
the place where I fear and its dance taunts my mind and
the place where I dream and fierce hope obliterates doubt

silently
I hand them my pen with
the places I can’t speak
telling them Please
please write me so tonight
they give me these

Words.

4 Comments

In Memory of…

July 31, 2009 at 2:20 pm (Mental Health, Uncategorized)
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AngelaThis blog post is in memory of my sister Angela Joy King, who died at age 39 after years of living voraciously with bipolar disorder/ manic-depression (and I think some schizophrenia mixed in there?).  She would have been 48 years old today — her birthday. 

How fitting that just now even though half the sky is still light, the wind just started howling and we’re getting the first real rain storm in over a month  — huge downpour.  Hi Angela!   In fact, the sky just got brighter…and the rain harder…

When I wrote this poem several years ago,  it was more about fear than about inspiration.  For years I had watched Angela step in and out of her mind and it terrified me.  But it also awed me with how courageously she lived, daily on the brink of (in)sanity:

(in)sanity*

Rumi
speaks my soul I just know it
though understanding is a stretch
It’s more a sense a knowing
the intensity of intermingled passions
tumbling fumbling over each other
sometimes beautiful other times bordering on
too intense for sane but
Reading him
I don’t care how it sounds or reads
just how it feels
The rare gift curse of unfiltered emotion
sometimes too bright too muddy
but to whom
to humans maybe but not Godde
this is the me I want to share but fear
Stops
me in my tracks whispering Angela
how close am I to that so far but
really how do I know
Always afraid the underside of intense is
insane
on the bridge between silence and words tumbling
I falter and decide to just
wait

Today, however, I gratefully realize that I no longer “just…wait” — somehow this year it’s more about the inspiration than the fear.   More about the need to talk openly about the REAL topics, the ones we tend to whisper about in small groups in the dark.  

Like what it means to be gay.   Or marginalized in any of a variety of ways.

Or what it means to be spiritual but not religious. 

Or today, for Angela, what it means to be depressed, or manic-depressive or any form of mentally ill. 

And for the families and friends who try to figure out how to handle that part of their loved one amidst their own sometimes paralyzing fears.  

Angela had no choice but to live to the highest highs and the lowest lows, and that she survived those those whiplash extremes as long as she did still baffles me.   

So today, Angela, I thank you and love you for everything you were and are.  And I celebrate you!  A whole huge family size bag of Hershey’s kisses for you… but don’t eat them all at once, remember???!?? :)

(and the rain just stopped and the sun is shining.  I kid you not!)

*poem originally published in DreamSeeker Magazine, Winter 2005 issue

11 Comments

Getting it Just Write

May 15, 2009 at 12:53 pm (Uncategorized)
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 I’ve been stuck.   Stuck in the burnt rusty part of the bottom of my un-stirred simmering word stew pot.   Doubting the value of my words, my writing, and consequently, my Me.   

That’s what happens when I don’t write.

You’d think by now I would realize how very important the act of writing is to my well-being (and for everyone else’s around me!  Just ask Sandy…). Even when my soul is crushed under the weight of my doubts, even when my mental gremlins are having a party at my expense, I doubt the importance of my writing.

I guess I find it hard to believe that something that I enjoy so very much can be so important to me. Kinda like broccoli – I love it, but it’s also it’s healthy for me… SCORE!

Yet time and time again, when I finally Just Write … about ANYthing… writingsomething shifts inside me. My longings become hopes and beliefs. My pain becomes a glimpse into the searing fire of intense beauty. My senses lose their heavy fog and become an endless supply of fuel for my soul.And my tears flow from my pen as exquisite multi-faceted diamonds.

So today I post this on my blog to remind myself that I don’t just want to write.  I NEED to write.

There’s an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s incredible book, Letters to a Young Poet, that takes my breath away every time I read it, like this morning when it coaxed out a few tears of understanding:

“Search for the reason that bids you write, find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.  This above all – -ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer.  And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity, your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.”

In the stillest hour of my night, I know without a doubt that yes, I must write. So I am. And I will.

And I ask you… what is your “writing” – that activity that can give you purpose in the still of the night?  Whatever it is, no matter how great or how seemingly small, just do it.

portrait by Jill Wiebe-King

Portrait by Jill Wiebe-King

Take the Van Gogh quote that whispers to me as I sit here writing: “If you hear a voice within you saying, You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint…and that voice will be silenced.”

So go… Just Write… Just Paint… just Express You. I know already that we’ll love it.

 
 

 
 
 

 

7 Comments

Now what was I saying again?

February 10, 2009 at 12:37 am (Uncategorized)
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I finally have my own blog…

now what...??

so now what?!?!?

There I was, just minutes ago chock full of words, ideas, and the freedom of being able to write anything, ANYthing.   And now?  Yeah, the words are gone.

It’s a strange thing that happens when you step onto the stage.  Even when the auditorium is empty.  Suddenly the freeflow becomes a performance.  Expression becomes calculated action.   Words become…   lost.
So for tonight I shall climb off the stage and read my playbook, trusting the words will be there tomorrow.

8 Comments

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