Word After Word

Hunting for morels is writing. It’s the same. I learned how to look for them–scanning lightly, choosing a slope makes it easier to see. You want to look for something upright on all that flatness. That’s the trick. And with anything you find, you can’t really find it, it has to find you. So you scan, scan, scan, get really bored with scanning for stupid fungus, bored to the point you are thinking who ever thought eating moist dark freaky looking things made any sense at all? who put the first one in his mouth? You have to be that bored, so bored you Look Away. Only then, when you Look Back, without expectation (I’ve written about this a lot) will the mushroom appear. It’s so easy to see him. You can see nothing else.

How is this like writing? You work and walk and worry the work, pushing pushing pushing. Not writing, spewing lots of bad pages, wondering what to write, wondering where to start in again, pushing hard against it. Willing it. I MUST BE WRITING! or I AM WRITING! You have to get past that part of yourself. You have to look away, not try anymore and then when you look back–deep in the trance of the work but not expecting anything good to happen with it, either (it often takes hours to get to this place with shrooms or writing), there it is. You are doing it. Gold. Not the false morel. The real morel.

That’s what I noticed mushroom hunting. When I looked away, and then looked back, concentrating but not on mushrooms exactly, letting what was there be seen, instead of working so hard to see, I found one. It felt exactly like the writing process.

I spent all day walking around the woods and I came home tired and happy just like after a day of writing. Same work. Same process. Same fun.

My perfect Michigan weekend: I found my first morel (by myself). There he was, at my feet, like a little grouchy gnome whispering quit trying. I screamed so loud I shocked the forest, scared many morels away. I saw a loon and a bald eagle. The eagle was standing by the side of the highway in this bold shaft of light looking fake, bold, important, presidential. I was listening to a book on beauty (thanks, Minton!) and the author was talking about how when we die, we don’t just miss a place, that place misses us, and mourns for us. Across from the eagle there were the crosses marking car crashes, death. Sunday afternoon, a terrific portal. Driving home. I wonder where my home really is. I feel like I moved to Michigan significantly this weekend, finding the morel, seeing the loon, watching the moon over larch trees.

I just want to be writing. All day. I want all day to write.

But I am teaching a class–we meet every day for three hours. Here’s the thing. This is the Best Class Ever. Amazing class. Usually, it takes five sessions for our in class work to kick in. This group? First time. They go so deep — so fast–their work is blowing me away. They are not afraid to go slow. This group has been around the block. They know fast. They appreciate slow. They seem, unlike any other class I’ve had, respectful of fear, not freaked out by it.

So, I’m happy I am teaching. Much happier than I thought it would be and it’s hard, harder than I thought it would be. I get up very early and get the writing done and wish I had four more hours to write.  I do not have time for free cell, email, my super long poetry bath, dog walking, very much yoga, or laundry, etc. I just have to get in there and get started. This is very refreshing. No time to be blocked.

If I didn’t have to be out of the studio at noon to go and to go see these Focused Darlings, my May students would I be working so concentratedly? I don’t think so! I think I would probably be less focused. Spongy. I am not sure. I wonder.

So, it’s ten hour days, intense focus. (The teaching is so much like writing, so much.) But it’s lucky work, great work, comfortable good work, work that means a lot to me. Both sides of it, the revising and the teaching.

I’m happy I have six great writers in my studio half the day. And I am exhausted and it’s only Day Two.

Now, I’m going to Pizza Hut to get Jacob some breadsticks. He’s exhausted too. He has three more days of high school. He says it went way too fast, so weirdly fast. He says he wishes he would have enjoyed his vacations more because he sees the road ahead–no long breaks. What would you have done on your vacations? I said. He wasn’t sure.

But something. He would have gotten more out of them. Of that he is certain.

“One should not pray or meditate with any thought of gain. Hold no expectations. Then the rewards will come. Praying for results brings no results. The true spirit appears only when there are no expectations to hamper it.”  Deng Ming-dao

This passage fits perfectly what I want to teach my students this term–today’s the first day of May term, creative writing class. I want to remember this lesson for my daily writing, too. Teaching and books prepare us for what we will experience when we write. But teaching is always a descriptions of what we will encounter. Not something we don’t know must know.

I love this paradox. It is in meditation and love and writing practice. “Sit down with no thought of results and you will go naturally and spontaneously” to good work, the right state of mind. We know what to expect, but we must not expect it!

I had a Cinco de Mayo party on my porch on Friday night, with tamales and tulips and good friends. And some new friends. One of whom, Andre, told me, inside when we ran into each other in the kitchen, he wants so much to start his graphic novel. “I have to get my courage up and just do it,” he said.

To which I said, quickly, without thinking, “Andre. You will not get the courage. You have to start it without the courage.” Bossy Heather. Hostess with platitudes! But I was in my pretty new flowered skirt which grazes the floor (a star chart prize, it’s true!), and my turquoise jewelry and I felt like the Fairy God Mother and Luke Skywalker combined.

And I keep thinking about what Andre — a superbly talented super genius–said. And what I said. And it’s true. You have to start (I know, this sounds like my least favorite platitude, feel the fear and do it anyway) your book (project, whatever it is.) You can’t wait to feel differently. That’s a different book. To write this one, you start now. Tonight.

And you do it every day.

 You don’t get the courage. You live with mind-numbing soul-killing self doubt and it crushes you. But you have that anyway! You write underneath all this, on the sly, trying not to think about it, never talking about it. Just do it! (That’s supposed to be funny.)