In the Summer issue of The New Quarterly, ten years ago, I was happy to see an interview with Susan Musgrave in which she said that writing for her is about the process, or at least that’s her intent.

Susan said: “Writing, for me, is, and should be, about process. But we live in a product-oriented time. It’s always, ‘What is your next book going to be about?’ when you are on a book tour, promoting your latest tour de force.”

Earlier that year (2016), Susan said she had a “real epiphany.” She set herself a task of writing a poem a day first thing in the morning. She was inspired by a daily reading from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening. Susan chose one word or phrase in the teaching, and wrote whatever was triggered by that word or words. She gave herself permission to write what she wanted to “even if it verges on the sentimental or self-indulgent, whatever. The astonishing thing is, I’ve had a whole month without being depressed. This is a rare occurrence for me. What’s even more astonishing is that I should be so surprised. I’ve known, since I was fourteen, that poetry keeps me ‘sane.’ Why do I forget, time after time, what it is I need to do?”

It may be that some of those morning poems made their way into a published book of poetry. If not, they may have led the way. Most important, was the permission Susan gave herself to write whatever came up on a particular morning and to enjoy the process. Keeping her “sane” would have been the best gift of all.

 

Silence

I’m thinking of Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying” which I’ve sometimes read at the beginning of a writing circle to take the pressure off: In the writing circles, I like us to think about the process rather than the product or outcome.

. . . .
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

The other voice could be God, in whatever form that word represents for you, or the voice could be yours: the one that doesn’t often have a chance to be heard until you enter silence on your own.

As Christine Valters Paintner has said: “Process means following the flow of what is unfolding in the moment. It means being open to a journey of discovery as we create instead of thinking we know where we are heading. It means getting out of our own way.”

Christine, who is a poet, part-time hermit, and a mystic with a website called Abbey of the Arts, says “It is a lot like prayer.”

Insights

While you may not be working on a project, you can write about your insights. I do that all the time in a journal that contains ordinary happenings, dreams, plans, and ideas.

Sarah Selecky, in her book Story is a State of Mind: Writing and the Art of Creative Curiosity, writes about “tracking progress” which, in one form, on some days, could be tracking your insights. It may be you have gained insight on a walk, while watching a movie, or ordering something at your local café. Reading books has offered me the most insight. I do a lot of post-it flagging in books as well as pencil marks, if I own the book, and I always make copious notes.

 

 

 

 

Inspiration

Some writers with projects on the go keep a separate record of their questions, insights, and problems to solve. I’ve been making notes about a project I’m calling “The Risks We Take for Love” which has me exploring emotional risks as well as those we take with our writing.

I went back to an essay by Arleen Paré, “To Carry My Family in My Imperfect Head” in a book called A Family by Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships edited by Bruce Gillespie. I was inspired to write some of my story by reading Arleen’s story and began to write a passage in the third person. These passages in my “process journal” may not make their way into THE BOOK but they are very helpful for remembering what happened, figuring things out, and honouring the process.

A Letter to Yourself

A “process journal” can be about one’s writing life such as plans and ideas for projects, drafts of poems, disappointments, accomplishments, fun recollections of getting together with other writers for a workshop or to talk about their writing lives. The process reminds me of the “checking in” we do at the beginning of a writing circle.

The late Louise DeSalvo says in her book The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity: “One of the most important items in my writer’s toolbox is my process journal.” She had first learned about keeping one when she heard about Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Milhone mysteries, saying at a talk she gave that she kept a separate journal for each novel.

Each of Sue’s journals was about four times longer than the novel itself. Before she began work, Sue would write an entry to record her feelings, especially if feeling anxious, “a brief account of daily events, helpful dreams, ideas about the direction her work might take.”

Louise describes Sue’s process: [Grafton] describes what’s troublesome in a scene, a puzzle she can’t resolve, lines she’s imagined but doesn’t know how to use, snippets of dialogue. Grafton maintains that every solution to her work’s challenges occurs, not when she’s composing, but in her writer’s journal. There, she steps back and reflects upon her work; there, she articulates problems and solves them.”

Diana Raab includes an essay by Sue Grafton (1940-2017) in Writers and Their Notebooks. Sue started keeping a “working journal” with her book “A” Is for Alibi and began to refine her method with “B” Is for Burglar. From then on she kept a daily log of work in progress “like a letter to myself, detailing every idea that occurs to me as I proceed.”

Louise DeSalvo also kept a process journal to plan a project as well as to list books she wanted to read, subjects she wanted to write about, to capture insights about her work in progress, to discuss her relationship to her work (what’s working and what’s not), to sketch scenes, to think about the work’s structure, and to puzzle through challenges and possible solutions.

 

Reflective Witnessing

As Louise DeSalvo wrote: “Our process journals are where we engage in the nonjudgmental, reflective witnessing of our work. Here, we work at defining ourselves as active, engaged, responsible, patient writers.”

Virginia Woolf kept diaries, which were published, describing the novels she was working on in the midst of daily life. John Steinbeck wrote letters to his editor about his novel-in-progress and those letters were published in book form.

Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden letters, first published in 1969, contains letters John Steinbeck wrote to Pascal Covici, his friend and editor at The Viking Press. The letters were a way for Steinbeck to warm up to his day’s writing. He would write the letters on the left-hand page of a notebook with the facing pages filled with the text of East of Eden.

A warming up and a being with could describe the process journal. There may be no “project” to get on with. Your writing may be all about you and your life in process. Sometimes the journal could be in the form of a letter to a friend, whether sent or unsent. Or, how about a blog like this one? It can be reassuring to know there’s someone else sharing in some reflective witnessing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It may be that we avoid getting back to our writing practice as we’re anxious about what will come up in the silence. Creating a ceremony as a container for your writing practice offers something predictable in the realm of creativity which can take us into the unexpected. (You can also see my previous post on “Your Own Tea House Practice.”)

In Mastering Creative Anxiety by Eric Maisel, he writes: “To create and to deal with all the anxiety that comes with creating, you must acknowledge and accept that anxiety is part of the process.” He also says: “Since anxiety accompanies both states – creating and not creating – why not choose creating?”

One of his “Twenty-Two Techniques for Mastering Anxiety” is Ceremonies and Rituals. He believes “creating and using a ceremony or ritual is a simple but powerful way to reduce anxiety.”

My love of ceremony relates to the rituals of earth-based practices and an acknowledgement of our ancestors cheering us on. I may burn some sage and greet my guides at my writing table. In writing circles I facilitate, we create a container following circle guidelines and a ceremony by beginning with a poem and lighting a candle.

Invite fear and anxiety in

Acknowledge and name the discomfort: the sore back, the queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach, the desire to be anywhere else but at your writing desk. The creative person lives through the tension, looks at the uncomfortable feelings, names them, records them and shares the insights with others. (That last sentence was adapted from Witness to the Fire: Creativity & the Veil of Addiction by Linda Schierse Leonard.)

Breathe

To become centred, focused, present at any time, anywhere, follow Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s suggestion for three breaths. This is something we do in the circle as well:

the first breath to let go,
the second to stay here,
and the third to surrender to what’s next.

Relax

I’m a fan of the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn who developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. My favourite is the body scan for deep relaxation included on his Mindfulness Meditation CDs. Listening to his voice helps to give me permission to take time for myself away from interruptions. Without the CD, you can simply lie on the floor and drop into it, letting every part of you relax. Savassana, the corpse pose in yoga, is a beautiful way to let go. (Yes, I still have these CDs!)

 

 

Meditate

Meditation, as far as I know, is accepting how you are feeling right now. (That’s what I learned from Jon Kabat-Zinn.) The resulting feeling is one of acceptance and possibility. Meditation helps you to accept your motivation and your non-motivation. I appreciate loving-kindness meditation which is repeating something like the following metta or something you’ve made up yourself:

May I be filled with loving-kindness.
May I be well.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be happy.

 Here are some other phrases from Wayne Muller’s chapter, “Fear and Faith,” in Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood:

May I be balanced and at peace.
May I be undisturbed by the changing events of my life
and the world around me.
May I have faith in myself.
May I have faith in the strength of the spirit within me.

Affirm

“The Artist’s Creed” from Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity by Jan Phillips is very affirming. Here is one of the beliefs I particularly like:

I believe that what truly matters in the making of art
is not what the final piece looks like or sounds like,
not what it is worth or not worth,
but what newness gets added to the universe
in the process of the piece itself becoming.

 Animate the Body

Take a walk, dance in your living room, drum, sing, shout. Dance to one of Gabrielle Roth’s CDs or to your favourite lively music. Let your body guide you in spontaneous movement.

 Offer Your Writing

“Envisioning your story as your personal gift is an acknowledgement of the significance and beauty of the work you are doing,” says Jill Jepson who wrote Writing as a Sacred Path: A Practical Guide to Writing with Passion and Purpose.

Begin by offering your story. You could say aloud, for example: “This story is my gift to my grandmother and grandfather.”

Second, keep your gift in mind as you write.

Three, conclude by offering your story. You can “light a candle and hold the story up toward the sky or close to your heart. Infuse it with your love. If you have a home altar, you can place it there for a time. . . Whatever you can do to ritualize your offering will confirm that you are bestowing a gift that is not only priceless, but unique in all the world.”

Fear and anxiety can come in different forms: physical manifestations, avoidance, or any number of ways unique to each individual. When ceremony and a connection to something larger than ourselves become an essential part of our creative journey, I feel we are able to make it through the tension and discomfort knowing our work is healing to ourselves, our community and the earth.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi (as rendered by Coleman Barks)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Sarah and I lived in Guelph, Ontario, we enjoyed walks from our house on Kirkland Street to the Bookshelf downtown, over at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre in the north end of town(where I had a writing studio), and at the Arboretum at the University of Guelph.

At the Arboretum, it was the David G. Porter Memorial Japanese Garden that particularly intrigued me. The garden was dedicated to past Ontario Veterinary College professor David G. Porter by his wife, Mrs. Bobbi Porter, in June 1995. It was inspired by the Zen gardens that the Porters visited during their trip to Japan in 1993. However, because many of the plants that grow in Japan will not grow in the southern Ontario climate, this garden utilizes other alternatives.

The flowers and trees in the Japanese garden include Lawrence Wisteria, Euonymus, Japanese Quince, Merrill Star Magnolia, Aromatic Sumac, Weeping Japanese Cherry, Scots Pine, Dwarf Japanese Yew, and a Katsura Tree.

Landscape architect Christopher Campbell designed the Japanese garden as “the Great within the Small.”

The elements of the traditional Japanese garden inspired me to think of the steps in one’s own tea house or writing practice. Although I haven’t visited the garden in many years, I like to remind myself, and others, of an intentional and nourished approach to one’s writing practice.

The pathway to the tea house could be a reminder to make an appointment with yourself to write in your journal or to continue with a project you’ve been meaning to get back to.

The salutation gateway is a chance to create your own writing ceremony: your own tea house practice. At the gateway, you are on a threshold of leaving your usual routines behind.

Clear a space for yourself at the table as a way to begin, like going into the stillness of the garden.

The Japanese garden is a contemplative garden. How do you practice silence? What will you hear in the silence?

In the Japanese garden, we are to stay on the stepping stones, a path that is both artistic and practical. You can design your own writing path.

A stone bridge crosses a reflecting pool. The water represents a simple lake with a rocky island. Confucius once said that “the wise find pleasure in water.” 

I am a floating reed,
waiting an invitation from the water.

Ono no Komachi, 9th century Japanese poet
(translated by Jane Hirshfield)

The Kenninji-Gaki bamboo fence is simple in design and provides a rhythmic balance of horizonal and vertical lines to help block out the world and its confusions.

Think about how you will protect your writing time away from the busyness and distractions of every day.

Ask yourself, what do I have to let go of to create more time for writing?

In the Japanese garden, the spirit rocks may represent mountains or rocky outcropppings. Spirt rocks could be your stories, your own inner wisdom.

The small tea house represents a small building in a tea garden designed to hold a tea ceremony called cha-no-yu. As an invited guest, you would wait on the bench until summoned by the host. Sitting on the bench, you could take in the surrounding garden such as the dry garden of gravel representing a body of water with three islands. The pattern of raked gravel mirrors the rippling water in the pool.

The host, or tea master,  would enter the tea house and make the tea in front of the guests, slowly and gracefully, simple and direct.

A Zen monk named Shuko (1423-1502) designed the tea ceremony to include four cardinal rules:

Urbanity – be elegant and refined;
Courtesy – be polite and considerate;
Imperturbability – be calm; and
Purity – be free from physical or moral pollution.

The atmosphere is meant to allow guests to attain serenity and harmony of spirit. The guests then focus on a certain topic such as a painting, a flower arrangement, or an art object to try to better understand it.

Some steps to think about in designing your own tea house ceremony, a soul-nurturing writing practice that is your very own.

There are more steps, prompts and questions in my downloadable workbook called Journaling as a Spiritual Practice: Your Own Tea House Practice available from the International Association for Journal Writing (iajw.org).

Here’s where you can purchase:
https://iajw.org/journal-writing-products/journaling-spiritual-practice-tea-house-practice/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The motto for the Writing Life circles I facilitate is: Nourish Yourself. Honour Your Voice. Write Your Stories.

“Nourish” is the word sitting with me these days as I’m considering rest as an essential part of the nourishment in one’s writing life. A prose poem I drafted a few weeks ago begins:

Monday, under a mackerel sky, and “nourish” is the word that comes to mind as I plot the week
ahead, etch reminders in my calendar, defy the rusted old list of ragged thoughts and mangy tasks
to embrace (rather than pine for) a spiral of divine dailiness, ongoing repair, make notes in a binder
of archetypes like nomad and gypsy – yes, the scratch of a pen rather than the click of a key or a
distracting arrow on a back-lit screen. My sanctuary is a womb of comfort, sunlit and magical, while
I embrace full-bodied thoughts of the ancient, a kinder earth-based society, vibrant and festive as well as
mysterious with an embracing shroud of memory . . . 

.An earlier writing circle motto when I began the circles almost thirty years ago was: Be seen. Be heard. Be amazed at what comes out of the stillness.

Stillness is one way to nourish ourselves. Not that the ideas stop, in fact, it’s an ideal time to have them percolate; a time to be open to new possibilities. Rather than jump on those ideas though, I’m finding it just fine to let them accumulate.

As creativity coach Eric Maisel writes: “Creative life demands more than endurance; it requires rhythms of stillness, reflection, and retreat. Artists who honor these rhythms recognize that the right to pause is not indulgent – it is essential.”

And yet I’m typing here and posting a blog! This writing began in my journal and has evolved over a number of days as I contemplate the need for rest and renewal. The natural world tries to teach us that all the time.

In a recent substack, Eric Maisel refers to a writer in Buenos Aires who took a year off and “let writing happen only when it wanted to.” That’s what I’ve been doing lately since back pain had me leaning against heat for most of several days. It’s best to take breaks before that happens.

I’m remembering Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way in which one of the six weeks of her course is meant to include “reading deprivation.” We have many more distractions these days than when Julia wrote her groundbreaking book on creative recovery. A break from all sorts of stimuli is a good rest for the nervous system. As Eric says: “Refusing to honor cycles of pause is to deny the rhythms of human creativity itself.”

Several years ago, when I also felt weary from a lot of outward-going energy, I attended a day-long workshop with David Whyte at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C.

During the workshop, called “What to Remember When Waking,” David said: “A good sense of rest is going to put you in touch with the world again.”

“Deep rest is deeply transformative,” David said that day. “Rest isn’t a non-doing but an intentionality.”

“Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be,” David writes in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

“We are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe, to walk as we were meant to walk, to live with the rhythm of a house and a home, giving and taking through cooking and cleaning. When we give and take in an easy foundational way we are closest to the authentic self, and closest to that self when we are most rested.”

Let’s take some rest as nourishment. That could mean saying “no” to some party invitations too as tempting as they are. Sometimes a one-to-one connection with someone or time spent quietly on your own, can be the best nourishment of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last summer I was very enthused about Debbie Marshall’s art installation called ‘My Name is Margaret” at the Ladysmith Art Gallery (in Ladysmith, B.C.). Now I get to be enthused all over again as there’s another opportunity to see Debbie’s show in Courtenay, B.C. at Artful: The Gallery. (The dates, August 5 to 22, 2026, specific times and events are on the gallery’s website which I’ve included below.)

Debbie has been a journalist and for several years worked on projects highlighting the work of women during wartime. She is the author of two non-fiction books: Give Your Other Vote to the Sister: A Woman’s Journey into The Great War and Firing Lines: Three Women Write the First World War.

When it came to her latest work, “My Name is Margaret,” Debbie explored wartime trauma, mental illness and recovery with mental health being a major theme running through the displays. What makes this project different from Debbie’s nonfiction books is that from her research into the impact of war on women’s mental and emotional health, Debbie created Margaret’s life. Yes, Margaret is a fictional character, a composite of many women in postwar Britain.

If you live on Vancouver Island or are visiting, you have a chance to see Debbie Marshall’s show with an opportunity to meet Debbie at the launch party on Saturday, August 8 from 7 to 9 pm. She’ll be giving an artist talk on Saturday, August 22 at 2 p.m. All events are free.

Do have a look at Artful: The Gallery’s website where you’ll find a video of the installation as well as one that is an interview with Debbie: https://www.artfulthegallery.com/

I didn’t know about “fictive art” and “hidden histories through objects” as Debbie Marshall says of her immersive art installation, and others that combine the inherited and the invented as I refer to nonfiction and fiction. This is a whole new realm to explore.

Antoinette LaFarge who wrote Sting in the Tale: Art, Hoax & Provocation, says: “I define fictive art as fictions that their makers attempt to secure as real and true by producing all kinds of visual evidence in support of the project’s factuality. That evidence could be ‘historical’ photographs or memorabilia or actual artworks ‘created’ by an invented artist.”

Debbie Marshall has collected household objects, clothing, uniforms, and medical records belonging to the fictional character of Margaret. Debbie has even written Margaret’s diary.

Rather than a prank or a hoax which are usually humorous and “short-lived actions” as Antoinette LaFarge describes them, “Fictive art projects tend to live longer in the shadows and are much more rarely targeted to embarrass someone. There is likewise a much stronger commitment to developing a rich and expansive central fiction and letting it evolve over time.”

The four pillars of fictive art according to Lafarge are: First, fictive art is visual art in any medium; second, it has a strong central fiction narrative; third, the project purports to be factual, not fictional; and fourth, the art objects and texts serve an “evidentiary purpose.”

The “intersection and interaction between the central fiction and the visual materiality is really crucial and so I don’t centre the literary in the way I talk about this work,” Lafarge said in an interview.

Just think about what fun you can now imagine while browsing in thrift shops or looking in the back of your cupboards to gather items for your own story. As Debbie Marshall did, you can even make that gathering a fictional part of the story. I do hope you can see her show!