Moonlight Musings

By Helen Patrice

That's right, we have a guest writer today. 

Helen Patrice is a poet, fiction writer, and author of feature articles for various magazines – and my friend. (You may recall seeing her poetry here in 'I Wish I'd Written This'. If not, look here and scroll down.) I read Helen's Live Journal blog and thought this recent post too good not to share with you all. She kindly gave permission.


Writing in Puddles

Copyright © Helen Patrice 2016

Lately, my morning pages (thank you Julia Cameron, and THE ARTIST'S WAY) have been about critical awareness, I think. I've been listening to books by Brené Brown, and in I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST ME, she talks about critical awareness, critical thinking, and shame.

So, I've been exploring, in tiny doses, how I talk to myself about writing, and how I treat myself.

What a harsh task master I am. I may as well be that asshat on the Roman warship in 'Ben Hur', the one who says to Hur: "Row well, and live, 41." The one who, to test Hur, orders battle speed, and ramming speed, as rower slaves die, have heart attacks, and fall from their oars in exhaustion, all while Charlton Heston gives the Roman general filthy looks, and keeps rowing.

"Write well, and live, Helen."

That's how I've treated myself from age 10-52.

Just this morning, I was nagging myself about 'writing to do', and bemoaning that I thought of something I formerly loved unto ramming speed as 'work'. A self-pompous thing. Oh yes, I WORK at my writing. My writing is my life's WORK. I put my bum on seat, and do the WORK.

You know what, I don't even like work that much. Never have, never will. In my early twenties, my only-half-joking goal was to be a kept woman. Now that I'm a kept woman, I tell everyone, and most especially myself that my writing is my work. Just so I can justify not working at anything else while my friends are still employed.

So, I asked myself to reframe the image of being chained to the oars, of trudging off in a grey suit to an office.

I came up with jumping in puddles. Each of my writing projects and ideas is a puddle, and I can choose on any given day which one to leap into and splash about.

That immediately made it feel light, and like play.

I remember being six years old, and being the only one to dare jumping in puddles at school during afternoon playlunch. Sure, the teacher cracked the shits when she saw that I had soaked shoes and socks. I didn't care. My shoes and socks didn't feel wet, I wasn't cold.

And while everyone else had stood on the sidelines, I'd jumped and splashed, dared on by all of them.

We'd been told to keep out of the puddles, like good little children.

But those puddles were deliciously dark, and splashy, and clean, just after rain. 

I am also reminded of the book 'The Magicians'. In it, the protagonist gets to his version of Narnia through an enchanted pool of water. Other pools lead to other worlds. There is an inbetween place where the pools are.

Daily, I go to the inbetween place, choose my pool, and jump in. I rise in the land of memoir, short story, flash fiction, autobiography, blog, poetry, travel writing, or something else entirely.

I'm learning to obey those tiny urges that crop up in morning pages. The small little 'oh, I should write about that', as I grumble my way through three pages of dumping out my brain.

Sometimes, the urge comes to nothing, but sometimes, just sometimes, there's the splash of something, the single drop of water that will become a puddle I can jump into.

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I hope you enjoyed Helen's musings.

How do you approach your poetry? As work, play or a mixture of both? I veer between the two. I think I do better, though, when I am playing.

Do you write 'morning pages'? I read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way a long time ago. I worked my way through it – it is designed as a 12-week course – and from time to time I return to the practice of morning pages, which is one of its key components. The idea is 'brain drain' – to get rid of the crowd of surface thoughts, and to bypass our internal Censors while we're at it, so as to bring us into our creative space. 

Inspired by this post of Helen's, I recently took up the habit again. I do it sitting in the garden after breakfast, with my cat nearby. I follow the morning pages with a 'small stone' (a short piece of mindful writing focused on the external world). It all makes a lovely way to start my day.