You are in the afterlife now

 

In this part of Manhattan, on a mild sunny day, you can imagine you are in a village, even seventy blocks north of Greenwich Village. I stop into an old-time two-fisted bar and order a martini, straight up, from an approving bartender. The couple who take the stools beside me are red from an island vacation, sporting sunglasses and bright prints. They ask for piña coladas.The bartender snarls, “We don’t serve none of them fruit drinks here.” This is precious, in an era when other establishments pretend that something made with chocolate can be called a martini. My drink is perfectly chilled. 
    I see across the Big Pond to a friend who is burning juniper in an old-time ritual on a hill above the Baltic Sea. The water gleams behind her, through pines and silver birches. An eagle owl soars overhead, searching. Her eyes are searching the juniper smoke. Can she see me in the shapes that form? Is she trying to call something through? 
     I toast her, and the Sisters, with the last of my gin. I give the bartender a $5 tip. I don’t know when I’ll see him again.
     I have an appointment on the other side of the island, at The Dead Poet. 
     I walk across the park. 
     On the corner next to The Dead Poet, a panhandler with black eyes, beaked like a crow, has come up with a creative line. He croaks at bypassers, “You are in the afterlife.” 
     A well-fed lady squeaks and hurries by. A man in a suit looks aghast. He pulls cash from his pocket and drops a large bill in the beggar’s cup.
      I lean against a mailbox, watching the pattern repeat. “You are in the Underworld,” the wild-eyed panhandler riffs on his theme. People either rush by, pretending not to hear, or they tremble and throw money at him, hoping to buy a Get Out of Jail Free card.
      It’s my time. They are waiting for me in The Dead Poet. 
      Crow Man is watching my feet when he caws, “You are in the afterlife.” 
      “Finally,” I say very clearly and distinctly. “It is a pleasure to meet a man who understands where he is.”
      Crow Man looks in my face and starts to tremble. He holds out his cup, but not for me to donate. He is offering me the payment for the Ferryman.

 

[from a 15 minute timed writng exercise]

Photos by RM

 

Writing while the blue sand runs

 

 

When I approach a major writing project, I sometimes notice I have decades and decades of journals and drafts and sketches that hold relevant material. They are alluring but perilous. I can get trapped and enmeshed in them, like a tomb raider in an Indiana Jones movie when the roof of the underground temple starts coming down. I need to find how to get out of my self-made literary necropolis and write fresh words.

I often fall back on a practice I lead in all my creative writing retreats: timed writing.  I have found it's incredibly productive to tell people to do something in a very short period of time. When I say a short time, I mean five or fifteen minutes. I find that fifteen minutes is a terrific space in which to get something down.

For my own writing practice at home, I have a marvelous assistant. It is a quarter hourglass. It runs for fifteen minutes. I found it online. It has blue sand in it. Blue is my favorite color. Whether I feel ready or not, if I have fifteen minutes, I will upend the hourglass and start writing. This is especially good to do when I do not feel ready, maybe utterly uninspired. I write anyway. And I stop when the sand runs out. 

My hope is that I pretty soon I’ll be writing consecutively in these swift sessions so I may have the whole draft of a book, or at least a chapter or essay, if I keep doing this for a few weeks. I know that if my fingers go fast enough, as the sand runs down, there’ll be no time for my inner editor and my inner critics to take command of my thoughts. Some days I have no clue about what I am doing or what I want ti to come of this. That’s okay.  I write for that quarter hour anyway and sometimes something wonderful or terrifying or both breaks through – a bigger story that has been stalking me, the soul of a book I had not planned, a trickster spirit who wants to remind me that play is always the thing. 

While the blue sand runs, I do not look at those notes and digital files and piles of books and folders. I keep my eyes on the page I am writing, on paper or screen. Let me say this as clearly as I can. I'm not looking at old drafts or sketches. I'm not looking at my journals full of treasures though they are. I'm just writing. I might be drawing from my memories of things that have happened in my life and things that I've written about in some form somewhere else, but I'm not looking at anything. . I'm not struggling with the old furnishings of the mind. I'm writing while the blue sand runs.

I often say that creativity requires us to play first, work later. If you have heard me say that, you may object, “What if you don't feel like doing it?” My response is: however you feel before you get into the swim, doing something for fifteen minutes is no big deal. Make it a game. Play at writing, at being a writer. For quarter of an hour, do what writers do.

Have you heard what William Faulkner said to the wannabee writers who flocked to Ole Miss for the first and last creative writing workshop he ever gave? He looked at the eager faces in the lecture room and said, , "So you want to be writers?”. When the cheers had died down, he said, “So write." And he left the room. 

[from a guidance session I gave at a writing retreat] 

For a sample of raw product from one of my personal 15-minute sessions see "You are in the afterlife now"