Thanks to Ollin for the invite to guest post at his blog, Courage 2 Create. Click over there to read my contribution, after you’ve read what Ollin has to say about the journey inherent in this work we do:
Not Knowing Where I Am Going
by Ollin Morales
“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.” – Rosalia de Castro
The first couple of steps towards a goal is the hardest.
I wonder if every new day is just that, a new step. Never an old, tired one. We wake up, and the window’s wiped clean, and in comes a sun we had never seen before. There are new possibilities, several different ways in which things could end up, you never really know where you are going, but you do have an idea of where you would like to end up.
When I write, I often let the journey happen first. I let it all spill out, in its raw form. From beginning to end. This may be different from other authors, but I like the journey, the not knowing what’s going to happen as I travel down the path. At this point I am only a reader, a watcher, an observer of the events as they unfold. I don’t take many notes at first, I just let the birth of a new river take shape, let the water cut through the sand and anchor itself deep within the earth.
Not everything comes at once, but enough does. Enough to have a good idea of where the story needs to go, of what I need to do to return and flesh out character, create a motive, how I might have to set up certain plot shifts.
But the initial tale is set, and sometimes you feel like you are the first explorer of a brave new world. What you discover and the wonders that you find you have to keep secret and closed to those around you, because you can’t possibly describe it all in one sitting. You don’t want to. You need time to perfect its telling. It’s a good story, you know, but you have to be able to tell it well. Why? Because you are the only who has made that journey, the only one who has a key to that magical world, where everything is so different, exciting and new.
You wish you could bring everyone along with you, you wish, but you can’t. So you have to get really good at telling everyone about it. And in the meantime it can drive you crazy that you have to keep it all to yourself until the time has come. Secrets too large to fall all at once.
After the very first journey, I must retrace his steps. So again, it may seem that I am taking a first step, even though I have been there before. It’s like waking up each new day, with a new sun and a new way of seeing the world.
Writing along the uncertain path of life is a lot easier than Riding it, however.
Unlike Rosalio de Castro, I am not sure that not knowing my life path inspires me to take it, but I want to make it so. Generally, the truth is I feel great fear, impatience, and uncertainty, not much inspiration.
But I am not alone in this. Not only us writers, but we are all beginning a new path, each in our own way, and we may not know where it will lead us and what detours we may have to take to get there. We all are afraid, uncertain, and impatient, wanting to get at the end already. When we begin, the end seems very very very far away. That’s why our lives sometimes may seem too daunting, too big, too insurmountable.
I want to learn from the wisdom of this quote and take it to heart. That the uncertainty of this path, of my life, of the process of writing this story, may lead me to be excited about life, instead of dreading it. That it might inspire me, that it might infuse me with vitality and strength. All we seem to live with is uncertainty, so I’d imagine being able to cherish it would bring us great peace and joy.
Writers, out of all people, may be able to take on this idea more easily. Uncertainty is what great stories thrive on, it’s what makes us excited about writing and about reading. Maybe we can imagine our lives as a story that is unfolding. After we experience a dramatic climax, instead of fearing it getting worse, or leading to disaster… maybe we could wonder, is it time to prepare for the dénouement?
If we begin to falter, maybe we can ask ourselves: ”What kind of hero would I be if I gave up, just as I began?” So, we trudge along, enduring the worst of life’s sufferings, in order to, at least, find out what happens to us in the end.
If we seem too imperfect and hesitant, we can ask ourselves: ”How would I look to the outside world if I approached each challenge, each new subsequent event with fear and indecision?” As human, maybe.
Then good. What’s wrong with that?
Too perfect, and no one would read you. With all of your flaws and mistakes, your audience will gobble you up. So, writers, cherish your uncertainty, embrace your shortfalls, make friends with indecision. Let it all inspire you instead of bring you down.
much love,
Ollin
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Ollin Morales is a writer and a blogger. {Courage 2 Create} chronicles the author’s journey writing his first novel. This blog offers writing tips as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. After all, as Ollin’s story unfolds, it becomes more and more clear to him that in order to write a great novel, he must first learn how to live a great life.
Wandering Baseline
(Not to be confused with a wandering bass line, as might happen if Sara Lee and Les Claypool were to play drinking games.)
That dictionary sitting over on the bookshelf, full of irrefutabilities and specificities and Scrabble-argument-deciders, it thinks it knows what’s what. And it certainly makes a persuasive argument, with its thin pages and imposing size and name-dropping cover. It’s an important, multi-use tool. Use it to boost someone up to the adults’ table, to press flowers, to kill especially large spiders. Use it to make sense of something when context just ain’t helping. Use it for those I-think-I-know-what-that-means-but-I’m-not-quite-sure moments. Most of all, use it–at least occasionally–as a mirror to check yo’ self. You know, before the proverbial wrecking yo’ self happens.
What I mean to say is, despite what that hallowed tome would lead you to believe, our definitions creep. Meanings creep. The job I mean to get done with certain words or terms might not be completed, because I keep saying “hammer” when what I really need is a shovel. It happens gradually, which makes it all the more difficult to catch. Or talk about. Or see in yourself.
Case in point: “busy” is a word much-abused ’round these parts. Every time that proverbial plate gets more loaded onto it than it’s had before, my personal “busy” baseline gets shifted farther into the red. So later, when I’m just scrambling but not quite up to my eyeballs, or when I’ve got ten things on my to-do list instead of fourteen, I have a hard time using the b-word. My personal definition of busy no longer jives with Webster’s (or even reality, as at least one member of this household would argue).
Fine. But what comes next is crucial: what do you do with your new baseline? Normal creeps–it’s just something it does. Ask your grandparents if you don’t believe me. But when Square One takes up residence in a bad neighborhood, it might be time to trip the reset button. When the new normal isn’t treating you quite right, take a fresh reading and find true north all over again.
But anyone who’s ever quit smoking or changed her diet or taken up running knows how much effort it takes to alter day-to-day behavior. It’s funny: “bad” habits creep in without any work at all; “good” habits have to be pried out of bed every morning, bleary-eyed and cranky.
I’ve tried to fool myself with the labels–you know, call the “bad” habits “good” and the “good” habits “bad”–but I’m smarter than myself. I’ve tried the tough love approach, emotionally self-flagellating when every last item on the to-do list doesn’t get crossed off.
None of this works, not for long.
Right now, I’m going with patience instead of guilt-tripping. Call it self-compassion, or selfish generosity. I’m riding that wandering baseline like a wave, being rocked on the up and down and ebb and flow, not thrashing about and getting water up my nose. Sometimes you’re the windshield, as the song goes, and sometimes you’re the bug. Sometimes you are a prodigious fount of work, writing page after page, staggered by your own way with words and still getting the housecleaning done. Sometimes your fingers can’t take the feel of the keyboard or the heft of a pen, and so you take a nap or watch Law & Order reruns or pick your bellybutton lint. Being in the trough’s okay, so long as you ride that next wave up and outta there.
Inertia is the tool of the monkeymind–the crazy-overwhelmed feelings can build and build and build until you derail them, just like the bellybutton-lint-picking days can stretch into months if you don’t put your fingers to other tasks–but you can make it work for you. Nothing about Newton’s first law of motion says that the force that changes things has to be force-ful. Just a nudge can do it.
Don’t like your definition of “busy”? “Productive”? “Worthwhile”? “Can” and “can’t”? “Should”? Lean the other way. Push off of something if you have to. Change your direction; change your definition.
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Posted in Commentary + Philosophy
Tagged definitions, meaning, words