Living With My Writer

Love everything you write, I tell Regine. "Accept your writing as permanent, a person you are in love with who has good days and bad days, cranky days and euphoric ones. Let your writing be itself. Give it love and it will surprise you."

I explain to Regine that I take my writer out for treats, that I buy it expensive coffee concoctions with foam like clouds. I take my writer on train rides to write and admire the view. I buy my writer journals, race-along-pens, an embroidered writing chair that I place by the window with good light. I try not to bully my writer or attack it. I try not to make it write only "shoulds" without also writing "want tos." My writer has learned to trust me, to enjoy my company, and to treat me well back.

- Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life

I decided to take Julia's advice. I had spent hours wracking my brains on lists of things to put into the book I'm working on. I had drawn diagrams, created options, and hashed out ideas until it was all swimming in my head. I can't throw everything I know at my reader in a single book. But how to choose, how to eliminate? I didn't have any easy answers.

So I took my writer out for a walk. When I announced that I was doing this, you should have seen the looks I got.

"That sounds really weird," said my oldest son.

"Oh well. I guess it is." There are things you simply can't explain when you write.

We drove to Carl Sandburg's Mountain Home, my writer and I. As we left the car, the wind swept us along to the lake which was like a rippling flame lapping at the grass beneath our feet. We ambled over the white bridge, under the hemlocks, along the gravel path, past the columbines like falling stars aimed at the earth, their burning tips pointed back at the late afternoon sun.

The woods enfolded us like a lover's embrace, green upon green. In the brisk breeze, new leaves waved, flipping their silvery sides up and shimmering like rain. Water trickled in nooks and crannies, along ditches and down rock faces, from last night's showers. The path soft underfoot, oh so soft, velvety and brown and musky, made barely a sound. The tall trunks of ancient trees stood like columns in a cathedral.

Scrubbed clean by the fresh air, and newly energized, we climbed up a mountainside. Near the top, I glanced at my feet. There, was it? Yes, something I'd only seen in books, had always wanted to see, just once in my life. Pink Lady's Slippers were scattered along the path -- like miniature fairy lanterns set out for a lawn party. I blinked. Looked around. Rubbed my eyes. Rubbed my arms.

Yes, this was real. I was awake and I was seeing this.

A present for my writer.

"How do you like it?" I asked. The writer was extremely pleased.

We both went home happy and satisfied and put more words together on a page.

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I'm participating in the study and discussion of Julia Cameron's The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life at The High Calling Blogs. This post came to me because I am reading the book and decided to try something Julia suggested.

What refreshes you when you're tired and unable to concentrate?

Photograph of Trees in Spring, copyright 2010 by Benjamin Frear.