An Extra Bonus Blog This Week.

It is into the third week of July. There is an old saying. Every week I feel like I am missing a day. If I honor the sabbath, then I am a missing a day of work. If I miss the sabbath I am short a day that week,mainly the sabbath. Maybe the Beatles were on to something w/ Eight Days a Week? So this week I give you an extra blog to get past the hump day and beyond. An extra blog is here just for you. Like Ben Franklin said. "Empty your purse into your head, and no thief can take it from you." Or some such. You get the idea.

Some ideas from Wild Mind/Nat Goldberg; I will pull some information that you can save for a rainy day. Remember there is more information and less knowledge so to speak by one scale/measure. There is good information, worthy of being knowledge. And there is lots of information that is not true, or does not pertain. The idea here is to build a knowledge base of writing, creating, producing, making a cognitive/emotive product/service, if you will.

We want to write. There are three stages that one can see as a tool in growth and development. It is basically; have/do/be in ascending order. We want to have the tools of a writer; word processor and flashdrive, say. Or paper and pen. Or journal/writing notebook. Maybe a sites list to visit that favors creativity and writing. The "do" part is easy? Sit down and write. It is something we are doing. Schedule three hrs. and write. Write 1200 pages each day. Something. Do. The third stage is being. We are in the 'executive thinking stage' here. We can comfortably call ourselves writers. We are being. We are living the writer's life.

Back to Nat Goldberg. Find the rules to write. Conjure up a dogma-type set of rules for writing practice. This is like a meditation practice. Find your breath. Find your own voice in writing. It is comfortable, free of awkwardness. Accept yourself. Accept others as they are as well.

Now somewhere on the journey you might be ready to ask yourself "Who gave you permission?" This is about encouragement and friendship. It is often something "deep and unspoken." It might be a silent vow to yourself, to another, others, even to a higher power unseen and redefined, like a modern Muse. The mantra goes; "I am writing. I am blissfully writing. I will write. I can write. I act to write." My list goes something like this; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Pirsig, Ginsberg, Vonnegut (remembering visiting my aunt in Indianapolis in the sixties/seventies), my father (who kept a journal while going to engineering school at Purdue), Goldberg, Cameron, my therapist, D.W. (a creative lad I met in graduate school who had an English degree and taught children creativity (as if they need it, really just support is all?)), and my Higher Power, the Creator, if you will. Some are you might notice familiar writers, and others ceatives I know on a more personal level. Many hands reached out to help.

Step forward. It is still a subjective truth. Be tough. Be sensitive. And in the long run, be tough. It feels sometimes like no one cares if you are writing. If you write, what happens? If you don't, what happens? Be tough. It gets you by in the rejecting moments. It reminds me of a person (call him S.C.) I used to climb w/, in the same pack. He said something about designing the ideal climbing shoe. Like the goat in nature. A tough hoof, w/ a sensitive sole works for the goat for "edging," sensitivity for friction where there is no hold. d'Vinci used to use animals as models for creations/inventions for man's making. S.C. was doing the same. Writing to me was like climbing. Reading a route. First ascent w/ a series of new holds was like writing something new. And it was fun to be clever w/ making up new route names, titles after a lot of hard work. Check out a climbing magazine (electronic, otherwise) and check out the route names. Grab the keyboard, journal book, whatever. Step forward!