What from Writing/Bones,Wild Mind?
- Jun 20, 2015
- 3 min read
"Tap the water ... table ... . Don't worry about your talent ... capability. That will grow as you practice." N. Goldberg. "Capability is like a water table below the surface of the earth." Katagiri Roshi.
Your talent? No matter what, if pressed to a situation one can always respond w/ "I am developing my talent." If someone is telling you you have no talent, he/she is usually active in their alcoholicism or other addiction. It is not productive and nonsupportive. If you are walking on eggshells around someone, it is the same thing. Who needs it? Your talent? You are developing it!!!
Capability? You have a word there that is loaded. Two parts. "Cap." And "ability." "Cap" is like "head," "chapeau," "head," "hat." Executive thinking skills and able, w/ ability go together well. Don't fear the "Reaper." Get the word count up. Put the time in, find the time, and make the time. You are your own best alliance. Get it together. Be kind to yourself. Develop your talents, skills, and capabilities. Everyone has twenty-four hours a day. Make the time. Everyone needs time alone. This is a good opportunity to focus on yourself. And it is somber to keep in mind; Don't quit the day job. You can develop/have talent doing both. It is good, solid, healthy advice.
Take time to heal. Take time to grow. Find what works for yourself. If need be, find what works for others. I started by running a 10K @ the local track, then writing three to five pages afterwards one summer. I modified it for the next five years. It worked, regularly writing keeping my regular "other" life in a state of "sweet emotion." I was living a life that was producing where I was growing and finding out lessons, many along the path. Destination Journey. I was in a state where happiness w/ my life was integral, whole. Then I "crashed." I finished a ms. and kept moving, walking through life on life's terms.
I got another system going, not much major change from what was working, fitting it into my new life. Isolated from other writers, artists, musicians I worked on myself. Like it's been said, is the place to start if you want to work on your life. Maybe you need more education? Been said, a bachelor's degree, liberal arts is what most is needed to write. Take what you want, and leave the rest. Now a-days there are many learning experiences/choices and many options for growing say, cognitively/emotionally/whatever. You can write your own curriculum, be self-drivem w/ help (No one can do it alone.) and even find a mentor and/or a supportive circle of other creatives. The following is to only help you and get a more codependent-free perspective, a better poiint of view. It's; "You got your education. Now what are you going to do w/ it? Write? Work? Study some more? Share your education/learning experiences? One? Some? All of this? Know yourself. Keep the faith. Provide the quantity. A higher energy provides the quality.
Another system I had was to sit from 10a to 10p on Mondays and write. I had built up to this, about a little less than ten years after I had seriously started to write. I read self-help books, had some writing friends, wrote, took a creative writing class, joined the Socialist party (just kidding), kept writing, learning, taking care of myself, learned about time management, applied it, and carried this for a pace. By the January First after Nine/Eleven I had five novels of substance completed, juggling writing/editing, carrying on, making progress. About six years later I took all of my composition sketches I had written for the last twelve years, used my sitting practice, and composed three on Sunday, and three the rest of the work week. This discipline cranked out two hundred and fifty compositions, thirty-two, sixty-four, over five hundred measures in 2007-2008 on the Jewish calendar. Outlandish. And true. Practice this sitting meditation, visualisation, a "dream we had one afternoon long ago."
Keep filling the well, the water table.
It is near to the rock below, a foundation, unseen? Awareness it is below is a first step. Tend your garden, set the table, take measure, let mind meet puzzle, have some fun. Grow your garden. Tend your talents and capabilities.
Wild Mind; Here's one. Read aloud. An exercise left to the ... "reader." I have gone w/ this by reading French and Dutch, dialogues on Saturday mornings. It is now home and comfortable to me. Maybe find something like this for yourself and share. Make it come out right. Remember the new world is the "mind." Find frontierland and travel, travail, traverse the (land/mind) 'scape. If this doesn't work for you ... ? Try travelling to Duluth? Who knows? Maybe just in the mind.
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