Precipice

I've decided to do something I've never tried to do before in my life, namely to devote a certain amount of time every day to the prospect of writing. Rather than allow for the build-up of five days of steam to be released in two or three weekly sessions, the idea of releasing steam every day seems absolutely the right thing to do. In small amounts of long sessions (3 per week), the idea of writing takes on an "event" feel to it, loads of ritual surrounding it and loads of pressure on results. Failing to produce means waiting several days for a chance to attempt it again. There is a build-up of ideas and a need to express that the expression gained cannot outpace. But smaller sessions every day allow for an almost trivial approach to writing. Fail to produce and you have tomorrow to try, or the next day, or the next day. 365 attemps versus 160 a year, leaving the longer sessions there to flush out ideas, or better still to get on with the process that feeds writing.

I've had this sort of thing in my head before, but it wasn't until now that I could personally see how to make it work for me. As Gail Sher says, it's all about attendance, the importance not being on what happens when you sit at the desk, but only that you sit there. It's a giving away of outcomes that for some reason I can finally grasp and apply. It has produced in term a shift of viewpoint about writing.

My shift of viewpoint here involves the fact that I am now seeing writing in its proper place, as a channel for expression, an arm of the larger mackial processes that is fed by it. In this position, writing serves in the role of translator. More important now is tending the fires of the larger process, having faith that the translators (among writing, music, movement, etc) or the expressive limbs as they were will continue to function as long as the source fire is burning hot, or the source well is easily flowing, whatever your choice of analogy. Focus on the expression alone, and diminishing returns will result.

This also accomplishes several other things at the same time. It gives me the impetus for developing a meditation/connection daily schedule, and also gives me "permission" to place tending the source higher than tending the extremeties, as well as giving me a reason to post to this blog from time to time.