Mystery Writer's Process: Meditation

In my latest of writers' self-help books, the author says, "Get your work out there."He means sharing something every day on some type of social media platform. And he's right, I guess. "Tell people about your process, but don't tell them everything." Hmmm. I may have already done that in my first blog post. Bankruptcy? Foreclosure? Do those come under "Too much information?" Grist for the mill is more like it.

Here's a bit of my writing "process:" Because it took me 30 years to finally "find" a morning meditation regime, I hold to it. "Regime" sounds strenuous. Meditation has been the biggest gift I've ever received and I gave it to myself. But it took a very long time, saying I was going to meditate, trying to meditate, giving up. But one day in 2008, I was in despair. Here's where that bankruptcy and foreclosure come in.

I was in an MFA program, but it wasn't going well. I had been banjaxed by a woman professor who used our workshop to practice Evil Queen. It took me out at the knees in confidence and self-worth as a writer. A relationship was tanking, my work had fallen off due to the economic crash and it felt like the four walls were closing in. The house had been lost and people didn't like not getting paid, even though it was legal. My livelihood had been gutted by the fall of the refinance market.

I had taken Buddhist vows four years earlier, and borrowed Lama Surya Das' CD called Natural Radiance. And I put it on after my darling high school aged daughter went off to school, but before the rest of the house was awake. I had coffee and looked out at the ocean, right there, where I could almost touch it.

"Just sitting, just breathing, just being..." Surya Das says, in his Queens, NY accent. Lovely. Someone was telling me that "...just being rather than doing..." was okay. I have other meditation CD's now, but that one is my favorite and got me "on the cushion" every day.

Now, the writing. Lots of books will tell you to start writing first thing in the morning, forsaking all else. But the other day, I discovered how meditation helps my writing, and again, it took a very long time.

I did a wonderful Surya Das meditation, about 30 minutes, and the house was quiet: husband still sleeping, dog and cat quiet, candle flickering and Buddha smiling, closed-eyed, keeping me company. And instead of journaling, as I usually do, I thought, "This is a very soft moment. I can write now with confidence." And I wrote on my little netbook, which is easy to open on the kitchen table. I wrote 500 words in a novel I sometimes think will never be done. But that awareness and my noticing that there was a "soft moment" that I could create in, has stayed with me.

So I do want to journal, as Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way, encourages us to do, but I find it okay to journal in the evening too, when everything is winding down, and I can recapitulate my day.

Meditation is a huge part of my process, and it's soft and easy and makes everything else so much more pleasurable.