Writing from the Inside Out (25 page)

 

 

During your next writing session, take seven departures from the main idea, plotline, dominant images, and/or characters. Spend an inordinate amount of time in these seven regions, delighting in the freedom you have in doing so. Keep track of each departure, and return to each at least three times during the progression of your writing session, encouraging the act of weaving back to the departure to show the reader a fresh moment with some similarities to an experience in recent memory.

For example, let's say you're writing a scene in which a man is packing up his belongings, and he drops a snow globe onto the ground, and it breaks. Imagine spending a good amount of time on one nuance of the snow globe — that could be one departure. For a return to this image, let's say you've moved onto a scene in which a husband and a wife are cooking dinner together. Perhaps the husband is rolling out a ball of dough roughly the same size as the snow globe. Describe it in similar terms, attentive to any emotional charge within the image's invocation.

 

 

The three-act structure is intrinsically compelling. We find it in traditions all over the world. It's not the right way for all writing, but it's useful to look to this structure. In the end, each story finds its own structure and shape. The three-act structure is not the most real thing. Stories themselves are where we learn best about structure, and so I have found it best to write more in service of the emergent.

A storyboard is essentially a notecard of information about the structure within a scene. If you have enough storyboards, you can tell the entirety of your story's plot, though not the entirety of a story.

To storyboard an entire book might entail one notecard for each page — when you really include all the details. When you limit yourself in how many storyboards you have to work with, you're forced to isolate the key plot points within your story, which during the process of drafting a book may or may not correspond to the three-act structure. This style of organic book organization arranges your attention evenly among the significant structural elements.

When constructing your storyboards, be attentive to the many shapes of structure. Depending on your lens, you could track protagonist development, antagonist action, major and minor setting changes, charged objects, and the sequential effects of each scene.

1. Fit your story into thirty storyboards.

2. Next, fit your story into thirteen storyboards. Make each storyboard so that it conveys the essentials of your plot.

3. Finally, design seven storyboards to convey the essential progression.

When you know the necessary moments in the necessary order, you can make a hugely helpful revision, because the story has been mapped out. Should you ever be confronted with the feeling that you understand too much about your story, dive into the movement of images.

 

 

Napoleon Hill, author of
Think and Grow Rich
, one of the most innovative books in the field of self-development, came up with a really interesting exercise he would do every day. He was thinking long and hard about ways to overcome challenges and empower others, and he wanted to know what some of history's great minds would think about his ideas, so he would assemble an imaginary collection of deeply inspiring figures in a room in his mind. Each evening, he would spend some time in that imaginary room with his projections of these inspiring people, and before long, he was amazed at how much substantive feedback he received. One of the people he invited to his mastermind group was Abraham Lincoln — because, after all, there weren't any limits to who was able to attend. He reported that these sessions were remarkably centering and deeply inspiring.

I recently started doing this activity as well, at my wife's suggestion, and I've had such fun with it, I have to recommend giving it a shot. Almost immediately, just picturing yourself in a room with those you really admire gives you a big perceptual shift from admiring them to feeling akin to them, almost as peers. In a human sense, it's true — we all are created equal and our notion of someone being great is also our projection onto him or her. They may have had a different opinion of themselves entirely. So, I made a list, and I even drew a little seating arrangement for everyone around my table. And, whenever I like, there they all are, populated by my imagination, doing what they're doing.

I recommend that any serious artist — or anyone serious about seeing an ambitious project all the way through — do this exercise. It helps to have support, and this practice is something we can give ourselves, tapping into parts of our psychology that we project onto other personae. Inviting them to our dinner party helps to connect and ground all parts of us. Napoleon Hill did this exercise for long enough that, over time, he actually received a great deal of input and valuable advice from his group. This could be your result, too, and there's probably no harm in trying. Just assembling them in a room is a fun and inspiring exercise.

1. Brainstorm a list of your favorite things, books, music, paintings, events, writers, and experiences.

2. From that list, invite a handful of people associated with those favorite things. Select only those you really admire to an imaginary dinner party.

3. Whenever you like, you can simply enter that room and find them all there.

4. How does it feel to have them over? How does it feel to share your ideas with them about your book?

 

 

I think of old masters as the poet-monks of antiquity who lived alone in small huts in the mountains. Following the tradition of the old masters entails claiming responsibility for my attention span and reaction to life circumstances. It also means not expecting a reward for my efforts, but rather seeing the actions themselves as sufficient for self-realization and liberation. The life lived fully is the responsible one, in which love and creativity are the motivating forces, and the needs of the spirit are fulfilled through action and expression. The heart beats for a reason that I interpret through my thoughts and actions. Its rhythm, when I am attentive to it, inspires me. I am inspired as well by the fact that it goes on beating no matter what I do. Understanding this universality is to touch the sublime — that, expressed simply, it is right to do good even though we don't have to.

The further back I go, the more I tend to know the old masters only through the writing they have left. These were writers and “livers” of poetry because it extended from an overall quest for realization and the experience of tranquility.

 

 

Someday I will be clear. I will reach the point where I am self-actualized. I experience satori and the bliss of union. I recognize the wonder and beauty within and around me. As a vessel, I am full and empty. As a stream, I am freely flowing into the ocean. As an individual, I have become wise.

Then what happens? The universe and I are one. And there is work for me to do. There is a new perspective about it; the work is drawn to me. The path opens before me no sooner than I need to take the next step.

There are departures and returns, and each return finds the moment ample, wonderful. The work that the practice continues to take is self-work. I carry forth residues into my practice and rediscover clarity.

Compassion drives me to work, and I am at work in the world, expressing realization within the world's realization.

 

 

Sung, spoken, or on the page, poetry is a versatile artifice with intersections into story and crossovers with visual art that can be traced back to hieroglyphs and spells.

Free-form writing is a term for an intent, which may be thought of as artistic because it is creative and places me in a position to experience reality directly, not through the persona of society, prescribed forms of rituals, or other paths of coping with individuation. Writing expresses a moment of clarity that's not encapsulated within this clarity. It speaks through the sensory faculties within the moment in a way that is enlivening, and sheds light.

Good writing can happen through hard work and can occur spontaneously. Writing may be perceived as good for the writer, the reader, or both — one may experience union and self-realization, certainly, by surprise, a surprise that carries recognition with it.

The surprise of recognition is built into the tool of language, just as our bodies have the potential to experience oneness of being through seated contemplation and asana practice, through conversation and action in the world, through the experience of music and of human-to-human, human-to-nature energy.

Running, I am only focused on running, yet I do more than run. I retain thoughts and sensory associations. Breathing the free air in a forest valley, the forest breathes into me more than I breathe it in — the external richness exceeds my intent. Experience changes my alignment and therefore my access to vocabulary. All of it matters, though I only consciously access part of it. That conscious part is the seat where I practice.

We're accustomed to a kind of storytelling that takes us from point A to point Z. It could be that our particular tradition of storytelling accustoms us to this mode; it could also be that when human beings share stories, they do so to get from point A to point Z. However, as is so often the case in life, a need exists to find an empowering and useful sense of balance. I want to be headed somewhere, but I also need to be able to enjoy the journey. When a story imparts the journey for me to enjoy, the experience is fullest — most resonant — when the story pays attention to images that at once ring true and feel fresh (as in, “I never knew anyone could put it that way,” or
freshly formed)
, yet do not add up to anything and don't supply guidance toward the story's resolution. These are image-resonance stories; they engage a mode of attention that honors the charged and inherently wonderful facets of ordinary experience.

When a story doesn't go someplace, it's not a story, unless it's one of those stories that doesn't go anywhere and seems made to frustrate us into despair and laughter. Stories, like sentences, have structure. Whether a story resonates with me has less to do with its causation and more to do with simple resonance — the energetic relationship of forms against and between other forms.

Each image before us is similar but different. A change of image questions the images that came before. What remains consistent in our minds enacts the ritual of storytelling, whereby, once each frame has passed, it is no longer challenged by our immediate attention and is left to resonate in the pool of recent memory, coloring our interpretation of the next image in the sequence. Just as each moment is fresh, the image carried by the moment is fresh, and because each image interacts (resonates), nothing is ever the same again.

If you were talking to me about dogs, I may be reminded of a story not necessarily about a dog but that has a dog in it. When I tell that story, I take the conversation on a different tangent, but it continues according to resonance.

The purpose of this kind of story is to enliven direct experience. Story ignites upon contact with a significant image. We can't ever know where we'll end up after coming into contact with a significant image. And we don't know what brought us there, because the significant image was not crafted — it emerged.

The only requirement is that each moment be taken as its own full image, and not merely a point along the way that does “work” — foreshadows or establishes character, say. Image-resonance is also useless, as most sensory information in life seems to be useless, having no direct relationship to our goals and ambitions. Yet, when we're attentive to it, life reveals itself as far richer and more wonderful. We see new opportunities or approaches. In storytelling, resonance makes a captivating moment; in life, a mindful one.

Prose poetry and haiku, writing as yoga practice, as an expression of union, point the sentence toward the unknown, yet able to be felt. Whether a phrase strikes or turns in relation to someone has to do with his or her disposition at the moment, as well as with the fact that the phrase is there. The one right way of doing it is the way that honors truth's expression within the exact moment.

Language is connected to the body and is a visceral thing. As the mind and body are one, we relate through the mode of language, trust the moment's expression, adjust to the record kept through writing, and practice further. At some point, story breaks down. This breakdown of story structure is often the best part of the story. Image-resonance storytelling understands that all is one and yet is in love with the details and will continue to search through them.

The love of language, of storytelling, is as old as we are. Images are older still, and they call for us to dissolve into oneness, to become one around a fire, to become one by overcoming the self on a hero's quest. Let us have our expectations upended, laugh without knowing why when things “break into song” in an idea or tonal sense. Let the progression of life from one thing to another bring you along the way to flowering, to love, and perhaps to the attainment of the goal and the arising of a new one. Each pleasant diversion changes who you are. When you return to the path, it is different, because you are.

I celebrate these moments, and I fill my work with them. Continued practice raises my sense of aliveness, and increased aliveness brings the experience of pure awareness. Perceiving with pure awareness brings devotion. Devotion brings enriched attention. Attention brings wisdom. Wisdom brings compassion. Compassion, in turn, raises aliveness. Meditation is not linear.

There is an old story of a renunciate monk who is walking the street after decades of practice. He has re-emerged into the world and is overfull with bliss with all that he sees. A chariot passes by, ornamented, decked in gold, illustrious. The monk beams with joy at the passing chariot of a wealthy man. From the chariot, the wealthy man thinks he sees the joy of ownership reflected in the monk's eyes, and he is baffled. The wealthy man is indignant that this person, laboring for nothing in this world, celebrates with equanimity what he does not own — or does not seem to have purchased.