An author I admire has sent out her monthly newsletter. There’s an invitation to sign up for a free talk on Productivity. I’m not signing up.
On my bookshelf, side by side, are: THE WAR OF ART, and THE ART OF SLOW WRITING. They barely speak to each other. Only one speaks to me.
Last Saturday, I spent all day in a Writers Victoria webinar on maintaining a creative life. I paid money basically to be told ideas are everywhere, develop a writing habit every day, and have a support group. Last week, I did my very best to develop a 9-10am writing habit. This goes against the habit I’ve developed over the past ten years of sliding into my day, meandering, slothing fuzzy-brained. I’m out of practice getting up and getting on.
Jumping straight from bed to productivity and then into an almost-daily fitness practice is a hectic way for me to live and by Thursday I was actually glad we had an NDIS(National Disability Insurance Scheme) planning meeting at 10am, and our NDIS annual review at 1pm, so I could have an excuse to be ‘unproductive’.
I know my writing jags are just that – jags. Writing creativity comes in waves from what I’ve come to trust is an endless ocean. It’s taken a long time for me to accept that when the tide’s out, the tide is simply out, not gone. I don’t have to slide into a decline, and just before the tide turns, dramatically decide that I have to delete all my writing ever, accept that the relationship is over, and try to rebuild myself as someone else. Yes, truly. This happened at least once a year for about 44 years, with deserts inbetween sometimes lasting months or years when I barely wrote at all.
Three months ago, suddenly, I got the feeling that a poetry tide was beginning. Just as I was womanning myself up to open the memoir folder and say ‘well it’s time for another crack at The Memoir That Never Ends, no matter how painful it is to write this stuff, and revisit it’, I wrote a poem, and the poetry tide rushed back in. It carried strange creatures, long time-lines of seaweed, and the usual array of angry cockle shells, outraged mussels, and amused crabs.
I dropped whatever thoughts I had of anything else, and sailed the waves of poetry. I read it, I imitated those greater than myself, I formed a small online poetry group. I wrote on paper, and on my computer, straight into this blog. I followed prompts, joined everything I could for Red Room Poetry’s Poetry Month. I dived off the highest pier I could find and plunged into the water.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a poem that just lay there on the page like a washed-up fish. Floop. The tide had turned. Poetry ran back out of me, pulled by the Moon, the planets, the need for another wave of something to come in.
I still attend my poetry group. I write poems, but the feeling of rightness isn’t there, and I’m not talking about being all ‘arty’ and saying the Muses aren’t speaking to me. My genii who live around and through and in me needed rest from poeming, and I’m letting them rest. I’m letting that wave, that tide, be out. I’m currently writing smelly poems that I will likely do nothing with.
I quietly wondered what would come next: would poetry flow back in after a few weeks or months’ absence; some other form of writing; another passion; ooooh, maybe something brand new?
I got stuck into the gardening, soaking up information about planting seasons, the Spring tides, trimming, feeding, weeding, planning, killing off lawn and replacing it with spreading plants, buying a new fancy in-ground composter that’s a feast for worms. I got out my smart phone macro lens and wandered the neighbourhood getting up close and personal with flower stamens, leaf edges, and blossom. I went down google rabbit holes finding out the proper names of various flowers, and where they’d’ come from. I researched possible magical and medicinal uses. I went back through some of the Patreon posts of The Perma Pixie.
I can feel the gardening craze starting to wane. I’m lethargically planting the remaining seeds I have, and having to set reminders to feed the roses again, Seasol the seedlings, etc.
However, just as I started wondering if I was about to have an idle time of it, with space for reading(well, let’s face it, there’s always space for reading) and pottering, I had a conversation with SnakyPoet this week, and we mused again on writing our magical memoirs. We’ve both had cracks at this before. Both of us pulled our punches for our respective audiences. Our base fears: being called liars, being thought mad(and in my case, something being done about it, to the tune of medications, or hospitalisation), being laughed at or ridiculed. We are writing them for each other now, corralling any bigger thoughts of readers, publication, and styling our writing and experiences for the palates of the middlest common denominator.
It seems that a disciplined daily practice is exhausting for me, no matter what time of day I schedule it. Part of me runs screaming from schedules. However, the writing gets done, as does everything else. So I’ll ride the wild passion of the magical memoir, the sayings of a new age wanker, witchy happenings, until it’s done with me. There will be something else. I’ve come to know that there will always be something else.
I refuse to make war out of my art and craft. I back away from forced productivity. How very capitalist of society to insist its rebels, outcasts, and questioners conform.
Blog of A Witch 