On Writing. Technique. And Learning to Commit.

Spon Down, when you see that referenced or titled here, is short for spontaneous download.

It is the unedited depositing of minutia out of my head on to the screen, and an idea that came first to me via the daily meditation book Simple Abundance.  In it she suggests morning pages, or the discipline of three unedited longhand pages when you awake.  That book changed my life, but that's for another deposit.

I write one of two ways on this blog.  I either catch the words or I spon down.  By catch the words I suppose I am referencing the Muse, that undefinable shiny momentum...how the words will just roll by, a sudden sweet chug of auditory illumination.  If I happen to be in-the-moment astute enough, disciplined or paying attention, I will grab a pen and jot them down.   From that, a blog post will often, on the mere embryo of a couple lines on a napkin or receipt, birth itself full and fleshy here for you to read.

Otherwise I get on here and spondown.

Somewhere in the center I suppose the two techniques have evolved, and taught me.  Ahhh, sacred process.  I am dipping the cup with the tool of SponDown, the first thought best thought aesthetic the Beats popularized that suggested Life as the prime perfect substance and that is happening in this exact moment, unedited.  The discipline of showing up, committing again and again to write whether or not the zest of the muse is throwing echos in my mind, is what's taught me that spondown can lead to the words coming on their own.  And then there is the importance of the edit: in the end I am the one responsible for truly finessing the subtleties of my Voice.  Editing is how I hone.

The only way to write is to write, to just do it.  Over and over, again and again.  A lot of it is shit.  So what?  So's a lot of life.  Recently, to focus and move my way forward through a psychological stall in my book, I took up the technique of morning pages again.  That, and surfing, are the main reasons I've not been on the blog.  I needed the accurate privacy of only my own eyes.  I needed to shake lose the debris growing up there along the high ridges of my mind.  I needed permission to sift.

It worked.  I have not only begun again--but I have successfully moved through subject matter that felt at once dense and dull.  Impossible to traverse.  As result, I now also have chapter outlines for the center AND end of my book ANNND!!!  Last week in the shower the Muse came on, and delivered me the last three lines of my story.

IF YOU WRITE, YOU KNOW THIS IS FREAKIN HUGE!

The other thing I realized?  Last fall I decided I wanted to surf, like really learn and get good.  I hadn't been on a board since the mid-nineties, and never regularly.  The whole story of that process is awing and super-cool, but also for another post.  The point is, it's writing that's self-taught me:  just show up.  Keep going, keep going, keep going, even when it isn't good.  Writing, like with surfing, is a practiced discipline.  One part letting it out, one part keeping an eye on what you're holding in, one part always willing to fine-tune, and all parts paying attention so you're certain, no matter how frustrated, not to quit.