I: Writing Rituals
I’ve read quite a few books on writing over the years, my favorites being:
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
If You Want to Write by Barbara Ueland (that cover on Amazon is terrible, by the way. My copy has a much, much better cover).
But there have been many, many others that I have read and enjoyed; in fact I’m not sure I’ve ever not enjoyed a book on writing or for writers. It’s just such a pleasure to read about writing.
Many, if not all, of these books on writing, for writers, discuss rituals for writers to use in their practice. They suggest that, if you do not have a ritual already, then it could be very beneficial to create one.
All of these books encourage you to, above all, show up and write. Don’t think about writing. Don’t plan and then not do. Show up and write.
And a ritual for your writing practice, these books and authors often explain, will help the writer to show up and write.
Do it every day. Do it without fail.
That’s the most universal writing advice there is, that I’ve seen, coupled with the advice to have a ritual for writing.
“Do it the same time every day,” some advise.
Anne Lamott advises over and over again throughout Bird by Bird to sit down, be present, and write–show up, quiet the voices that are chattering away and distracting you in your mind, and put down words. She suggests a ritual as one way to help quiet the distractions and allow your mind to start working on the writing piece:
“Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you–an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, […] Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in.”
In If You Want to Write, author Barbara Ueland also frequently brings up the unconscious in writing, in how letting your mind free to write is very important. She writes of showing up and not beating your brain into submission, but letting ideas come up naturally, when your mind is free, wandering, being creative rather than stiff and worried. She encourages the writer to sit every day and write, for as long as the writer can manage. And not to worry so much.
Ueland also describes her own ritual for writing:
“For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day. I have done this for many years. It is at these times that I seem to get re-charged. If I do not walk one day, I seem to have on the next what Van Gogh calls “the meagerness.” “The meagerness,” he said, “or what is called depression.” After a day or two of not walking, when I try to write I feel a little dull and irresolute.”
Ueland does not specifically call for rituals or even call her own ritual a ritual, but rather points to letting your mind free itself, play, be creative. She stresses to allow your mind to become free and then write every day, even just a little bit, each day.
Both Bird by Bird and If You Want to Write are wonderfully kind and generous books, and I highly recommend them. Both Ueland and Lamott at one time describe the writing frame of mind as a child contentedly playing by itself, absorbed in the play.
The concept of ritual is to allow the mind to know that it’s free to create now, and to get it into the habit of creating every day: Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird:
“So. You sit down to write at nine in the morning, and do the prayer or the small-animal sacrifice or whatever, and then breathe for a moment, and try to focus on where your characters are, only to discover that your mind has begun to wander just a little. […] Gently bring your mind back to your work.”
This has gotten me to thinking recently, since I have never had a ritual and have never had a specific time for writing.
I never thought I needed it.
II: Self-worth
Years ago, I never needed discipline to write because I was always desiring to write and compelled to write and had no writer’s block. When I wasn’t writing, I was constructing the plots in my mind, and going over what I would write next. I was always busy with the work, and when I wasn’t actually writing, I enjoyed the downtime because I was filling back up my mental reservoir, so I could write more.
However, with age has come a stilled-ness. A cross-roads. Just keeping afloat, not producing anything, beginning things and them sputtering out and amounting to nothing. I was frustrated and sad, because I knew that I could not continue on in this way.
Writing was everything to me. It was the complete source of my self-esteem and my identity. If I could not write, then I had failed at life.
But, actually, it was more specific than that: If I could not get published, then I had failed at life.
All of my self-worth was wrapped up in that goal: to be published. Not to write. But to be published. It was the only achievement in life that I cared about. As my humiliations and rejections began to pile up, time being what it is, the more depressed and unable to write or complete anything I became.
Soon it was simply too painful for me to write anymore. It was too much. It was too painful.
But actually, it wasn’t that it was painful to write. It was that it was too painful to try to get published and fail.
And something happened. I had a paradigm shift in my life. I did some very, very serious and important deep-down self-work, and discovered quite a few things about myself: mainly, that I was following old, outdated scripts and that I no longer needed to follow those scripts, but instead could write new ones and follow those. Truly, my self-work discoveries were enormous and far reaching, and I am still working on myself today. And I will continue to do huge work on myself for years to come. But I’m only going to talk about the writing aspect for this post:
I didn’t have to put all of my self-worth into the goal of being published.
I could develop other areas for self-worth: of being of service; of doing good work; of having a meaningful, fulfilling job; of not needing to show anyone up or prove anyone wrong; of not needing anyone else’s unconditional approval or support or nurturing; of having healthy friendships; of having healthy, meaningful, fulfilling relationships.
How did I manage this? What was the secret that moved me from being a cramped, unhappy, frightened, paralyzed, frozen person to someone who has now an abundance of meaning in her life?
Well, it was a long, long process, and an intense one.
But I think for anyone else with this issue, the biggest one was this: I became my own parent. I took the responsibility away from my parents, family, friends, coworkers, all other people and gave it to myself. I would now be responsible for nurturing myself, loving myself, accepting myself, and meeting my needs. I would no longer wait for someone else to be a better person and help me, or realize what I needed, or return the favor of my own emotional help. It’s simply not practical.
III: Perfectionism in the Writer
It is a frustrating thing to have a compulsion, an almost-physical need, to write, and not be able to write anything at all. I was trapped for a long time in this awful state of paralysis, unable to begin anything, unable to finish what I’d earlier begun. Everything languished.
I was very caught up in how I was going to get people to like me through my writing, which is a valid concern, but a crippling one for me. If I wrote this melancholy literary fiction piece, would The Paris Review like it? Or would they laugh at me? If I wrote this science-fiction novel, would any agent want it, or would I just be rejected time after time after time?
Okay, then how could I write this novel so that an agent would accept it and a publisher would accept it? In other words, how could I game the system? How could I manipulate the content to make me popular? How could I angle the piece to get powerful people to like and accept me? If I wrote a romance novel, now could I write it like all those other romance novels that sell well so that mine would sell well, too?
These are all probably necessary considerations, in reality. If you want people to buy your book, you’d better make it something people want to actually buy, rather than ridicule the unwashed masses for their poor taste or feel like you’re entitled to money simply by virtue of the fact that you, wonderful precious you, wrote a book, so obviously you deserve to make money off of it. Those last two options are the options of the delusional. Better to understand that if you want people to buy your product, you’d better make people want to buy your product.
None of this was helpful to me, however, because at the time of these considerations I was still caught up in getting other people to approve of me, and also in doing everything right, and also in having my work validate me as a human being. I was crippled with the fear that whatever I devoted myself to writing would end up being rejected, wrong somehow, not good enough for others, and that would be devastating. The stakes were too high, in other words.
Then came the gradual sea change, which is still going on inside of me. The shift.
Now I can make canny business decisions if I want, without being seized with the fear that I’m betraying my pure artistic virtue by thinking about calculated marketing decisions. Now I can write something outrageous and grotesque, or small and sweet but without much plot, without being seized with the fear that nobody will like it and I’ll fail at getting people to love me.
In other words, emotional, easily-hurt me is no longer driving this bus. Adult me is. That does not mean that Adult Me doesn’t need Emotional, Easily-Hurt Me or can ignore her. Adult me must listen to and respect the emotional, fragile, vulnerable me. It’s my job to protect her and nurture her and get her needs met. But I have to do that as a adult in charge of my life and my choices, not as someone who is always at the mercy of others and emotionally compromised.
IV: Writing Rituals Revisited
Today, I have many hats and sources of happiness and self-worth, not just one. I can write without it meaning everything, without it being the sum of my worth.
This means that my writing is no longer emotionally charged to the extent that all of my happiness depends on it. I can approach the craft, art, and act of writing with a more even keel. My writing life is less fraught.
And now, for the first time in my life, I am considering the idea of rituals to help me write. I like the idea of devoting myself to a certain time every day, rain or shine, of sitting down and writing. I like the idea of approaching it like this, rather than my old way of approaching it: like a fearful suitor. Like an abused supplicant.
What does ritual mean to me now? It means that I can add discipline to my writing life. I can add perspective to it. Where before it consumed me so much that it overwhelmed me, now I can use rituals and allotted times to play with it. In other words, writing rituals could help me to put on the hat of the creative writer, and then, when the appropriate time for that hat has gone, I can take that hat off.
That is miraculous. Writing rituals will allow me to put my energy into other important parts of my life when it’s not time for writing, instead of always pushing everything else to the bottom of the list no matter how important those other things are. The rituals will let my creative mind know that it is time for that aspect of my personality, or psyche, or brain, to be exercised and given free rein. It will allow my mind to start noodling, start creating, start putting those words together. And then, when it’s appropriate, I can take off the hat of the writer and put on another hat, like efficient office drone, or good friend, or awesome bill-payer, or just as Adult Me, or just plain me. A book on writing for writers that covers all of these issues of meaning and having a life that’s not just that of a writer is Making Your Creative Mark, by Eric Maisel. I recommend it. It covers a great many topics of interest to creative people, artists. The book is especially concerned with the concept of “many hats” for a person, and making a meaningful life.
As to my rituals: So far my ritual consists of getting up before I have to each morning before work, making coffee, and writing for a bit. Then, going to work. Then, getting home and writing a little more. It’s a work in progress, it’s still in its beginning stage, but I am very happy to slowly be shaping this new way of working.
It’s pretty exciting.
I hope that some part of this blog entry has been of some use to someone: maybe a quote here or there or one of the ideas I threw into this post has sparked an idea of your own, or clarified something that had been confusing you for a while. It’s fine if not, of course, but being a human being can be such a lonely, confusing, opaque, worrying business that any help at all is a good thing.
Here’s to your happiness, fellow writer.
Best,
M
Marjorie Clavell Keane 