The Writing Life

The Writing Life is an audio recording of a conversation with Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg, both writers and writing teachers. After owning this for many months, I finally popped it in my CD player in the car and found it to be an incredibly inspirational resource.

Julia Cameron is one of my favorite writing inspirations. She is probably most famous for The Artist's Way or its follow-up Vein of Gold. But I love her book The Right to Write. She considers herself an artist and doesn't allow herself to be pigeon-holed as a writer or screenwriter or poet or musician. But I find that her book on writing is the most helpful and has the closest correlation to what I need.

She speaks a great deal about morning pages--three pages in long hand written every morning. This is a writing practice which gets you in the process of writing so that when you have time to sit down and work on your projects, you are not overly concerned about the marketability of the work. You just write. It's the way to get the "censor off your shoulder." While I'm not completely successful at this, I do try to stick to a writing regimen in that I write in my journal at least several times a week. This is writing just for me, not to sell, not to share. It keeps me connected to the page.

Natalie Goldberg is most well-known for her book Writing Down the Bones, another book on writing and the writing life. I'm not as familiar with her work, but I know many other writers who love it.

This audio CD is a conversation between these two authors and a moderator. In the first part, the three sit down and talk in a studio, and in the second part, they discuss writing in front of a studio audience. It's a highly motivational and inspirational CD that I recommend to any writer, wherever they are in their writing journey--whether published or not. Check it out!

How things come together

Today's poem comes from 8 years ago, but it's really a mish-mash of several poems I've written over the last few years. Every once in awhile, when I visit Colorado, my childhood home, I sense with full force the history of the place, the westward expansion, the hope for gold, the pioneering families struggling to eke out a living. There's a romance in it, but also a sense of connection to the land, the mountains, this place where my first memories were made. These thoughts over the years have finally melded into a work of fiction that I am currently writing.

June 19, 2001, Touchdown

In the flat plains
north of Denver,
our plane bumps
onto the runway
in midafternoon sun.

Suddenly, I am in 1880,
a settler
in the red dirt.
My hair, in a bun,
my dress,
long as Sunday,
my hands,
rough and calloused.
I shield my eyes from the sun
as I look for my man
through dusty wind,
waiting for gold,
settling for flour
to feed my family.

A memory engulfs me:
the claustrophobia
of trees,
leaves,
bushes,
ivy,
grass
of western Pennsylvania,
crowding thick upon me.

But now I open my eyes,
stretch out my
lungs,
wide as miles,
and
breathe.