From an email: "I would like to be writing on a much deeper level in hopes of creating the kind of prose that touches hearts, inspires minds and lifts spirits. I don't particularly want to go to a sweat lodge and smoke peyote - but I'm looking for a similar, yet more accessible (& legal) experience. I'm thinking there must be some kind of meditative/creative exercises. Any thoughts?"
Over the years I've been writing, a whole industry has gotten created to fleece writers and would be writers. Magazines and agents charge reading fees. Contests charge entry fees. Writers conferences feature speakers who've struck it rich, so that conferees will dream big and cough up the money for the next conference. Free lance publicists arrange blog book tours, book signings, and radio spots, and by doing so make a better living than the writers they serve ever will. Writers of little merit hold seminars promising ways to unlock our inner whatever.
Exercises may help writers understand point of view or the value of concrete detail, but I've never heard anyone claim that an exercise unlocked anything.
The best I can offer is: I read about somebody who asked a master painter how to paint a perfect painting. His answer was something like, “To paint a perfect painting, first become perfect, then paint." So, I translated, to write a perfect story, become perfect then write.
I labored over this advice, aware that I was far from perfect. And I considered that what I know about certain writers of masterpieces of literature makes me believe they were not much more perfect than I am. The advice made no sense unless I interpreted it this way: It’s not essential to our writing that we be perfect all the time, only when we’re writing.
When we sit down (or stand up, or pace) to write, we need to cast off imperfections such as our tendencies to rush to judgment, our impatience, our preconceptions, our worries about whether we’re going to succeed. We need to clear our minds of anything that keeps us thinking or feeling out of accord with the spirit of truth and try to approach our stories in an attitude of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, so we can treat our creations with deep respect and compassion. Even if we don’t reach perfection for a nanosecond, the closer we come, the closer our stories may come to realizing their possibilities.
How to cast off our imperfections is a whole other question. Some writers take walks before they write. Others pray. Others meditate. My friend Don, who always argues with my posts, listens to music while he writes. Or he used to.
We're all different, which is one reason simple answers don't work. We need to try methods out.
