Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the
stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning
of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like
predators hunting their prey in the bush.
Robert Moss, Dreamgates
Ideas come and go, flitting in and out of our minds.
In order to realise these ideas they must be grounded. As Julie Cameron
explains, ‘art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting
something down.’ For me, it is usually
enough to keep a journal in which to note a dream, a connection, a description,
a quote. . . anything to provide an
anchor for my fleeting inspirations. But I have been guilty of neglecting my
journal, believing that I would remember the ideas that came through the dreams
that permeated my restless nights, or while walking on the promenade here in
Aberystwyth, listening to the crash of the waves and the cries of the gulls.
For a time the ideas came as they always have but I didn’t ground them and
after a while they stopped coming because I had stopped listening. I forced
myself to keep writing, not my novel, but other projects that demanded my
attention. However, the flow had stopped, so that I was giving without
receiving and in so doing, depleting myself. At first I just felt drained of
enthusiasm which should have been a clear warning signal because enthusiasm, a
term that originally meant an inspired connection to God, is a vital part of
creativity. After a while I became fatigued and emptied of vitality. Instead of
joy and vigour I found myself caught up in a deadening and monotonous
day-to-day routine. And finally I began questioning my calling as a writer.
There have been a number of times in my life when
I’ve questioned my reasons for writing but until recently I have never doubted
that writing is my path in life, the form of expression best suited to me. This
doubt proved to be a wake-up call, alerting me to the process that had been
subtly eroding my creativity over many months. Since then, I have followed the
advice I gave myself in my previous post and found a way to re-engage with my
novel-in-progress. It is a tentative return though, a fragile agreement between
me and my muse, and one that could be broken again at any time if I don’t keep
my end of the bargain. And a bargain it is. For in turning my back on this
novel I have, in a sense, betrayed the responsibility I carry as a creator of
stories, a responsibility that entails being present for the creative process.
. . listening. . . trusting. . . making notes. . . following the clues. . .
asking questions. . . and looking at the world through seeing eyes. As Julie
Cameron explains, ‘in dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is
the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express.’ To a
certain extent then, our creative expressions are gifts but in order to receive
them we must remain open (see Giving and Receiving). If we turn away we lose
our connection and break our agreement.
At certain stages of the creative process, solitude
and silence are vital. We descend into a quiet place within ourselves where we
take stock and gather our energy, all the time listening and watching, waiting
for our inspiration. I am reading a good deal now, both fiction and non-fiction,
nourishing myself with the creations and ideas of others. I am walking too,
more slowly, relishing the quiet and taking time to notice everything around
me, to wonder at the mysteries of life, pausing joyfully in front of a bed of
flowers, and watching intrigued as a bird gathers twigs for its nest. It will
take time to refuel but I am on the way. Once again I am carrying my journal
with me and already I can feel the excitement of unexpected links and the
rewarding back and forth movement between my journal and the novel, as one
inspiration inspires another. As the
process continues, a sense of playfulness grows, a tuning in to the imagination
and a willingness to let go of expectations and allow surprises. Creativity
demands this playfulness, allowing us to make the necessary leap into the
unknown and retrieve our story (see Coming Unstuck). Ben Okri speaks of the ‘marriage between play
and discipline, purpose and mastery,’ a marriage that produces ‘the wonders of
literature’. For me this 'marriage' represents a perpetual movement between the heart and the head
and the intuitive and the rational as I seek to maintain a harmonious balance between
the art and the craft of writing.
Storytelling is a sacred skill and sometimes it is
hard to meet its demands. The process is one of alchemy, taking the raw
material and transmuting it into gold, finding the essence of meaning,
exploring truth through metaphor and building bridges with words that will
paradoxically enable us to escape the very limitations of words. As in alchemy, the process is not purely
technical. There is something else, a tremendous change that must be brought
about within the alchemist or the story teller. In The Philosopher’s Stone, Peter Marshall writes that ‘at all times
an inextricable link was recognised between the personal growth of the
alchemist and the development of his experiments. Ultimately the alchemist is
the subject and object of his own experiment.’ As with alchemy, a story always
leaves its mark on the teller. Both writers and readers emerge changed but for
writers that change is usually fundamental and the process sometimes frightening.
For as novelist, Maria Szepes writes in The
Red Lion, ‘by the laws of alchemy something has to die and decay before it
can rise.’ If we deny the creative process, then we deny change and in so doing
we deaden ourselves to life. But if we accept change we step into the unknown
and while ultimately rewarding, it is not a safe journey and it is rarely easy.
In his essay, The
Joys of Storytelling, Ben Okri describes ‘two essential joys. . . the joy
of the telling, which is to say of the artistic discovery. And the joy of
listening, which is to say of the imaginative identification . . . The first
involves exploration and suffering and love. The second involves silence and
openness and thought.’ As I make small forays into my novel, reacquainting
myself with the characters, building scenes and developing themes, I find
myself immersed once again in ‘the joy of the telling’. I can only hope that I
am have been stalked by a ‘big story’, one that is ‘worth telling and
retelling’.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/
