Begin at the Beginning

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“Beginnings are times of grandiose dreams of escape, success, change, and possibilities. This is true not only for the protagonist of your story, but also for you.” –Martha Alderson, The Plot Whisperer (25)

Maybe you’ve heard this before, as I seem to see it everywhere lately:

The first step to getting out of prison is to know that you are in prison.

Substitute any situation you feel trapped in–your extra 30 pounds, your stack of unfilled blank notebooks that you thought would inspire you to write, the relationship that hurts more than it helps, your extremely unhelpful attitude about ______. Whatever your prison is, no amount of shovels or ladders or files-baked-into-cakes will get you out if you haven’t looked around and become 100% conscious of where you are and how you got there.

In a novel, the beginning is sometimes called “the ordinary world” (See Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.) It might take up as much as the first quarter of a novel, which is utterly necessary if readers are to understand the main character’s subsequent transformation.

But if there is to be a book, a story with not only a beginning but a middle and an end, the characters can’t stay where they are.

In your own life, too, the next step to beginning is re-imagine your present circumstances as the place you set out from, your launching pad, your sturdy ground on which to set your ladder, the dock where you untie your boat and push away.

That’s what I’m thinking about today. Where am I now? Where do I go next?

 

 

 

 

Why Do We Write?

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Because the other half of my very small novel-writing group has The Plot Whisperer by Martha Alderson on her desk, I decided to dig out my copy.

Years ago when I was at sea on my draft of my novel about the further adventures of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Pearl Prynne, I read and reread The Plot Whisperer–it’s highlighted in several colors and some passages are underlined, too. Marginal notes abound. This passage from the Introduction is heavily annotated:

“My most important insight is this: All of us face antagonists and hurdles, hopes and joys, and by meeting these challenges we can transform our own lives.” (ix)

I often reflect on the question of why we write–and I think the answer is the same for why we do anything. Whether you want to apply this equation to caring for aging parents or partners, or children, or difficult friends…or a horse you can no longer ride…

Maybe it has to do simply with commitment, or maybe we suspect that there is something on the other side that we can gain only by going through it, or we know with absolute faith that where the dragons are, there also is the treasure.

“In real life, many of us shy away from disaster and drastic upheaval in order to protect ourselves from deep loss in our own lives.” (Alderson, 8)

But the truth is, there is no way to protect ourselves. I think we will, ultimately, be happier if we go out there anyway, with our hands ready and our hearts open.

Beannacht — John O’Donohue

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My good friend Francine sent me this blessing. May it bless you, too.

Beannacht / Blessing

John O’Donohue

For Josie, my mother

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

John O’Donohue

from Echoes of Memory (Transworld Publishing, 2010) reproduced by permission of the author’s Estate

“You do not have to be good” — Mary Oliver, 1935-2019

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I won’t even try to eulogize the fabulous Mary Oliver — too many people have already done it for us. But here, just in case you missed it, is NPR’s tribute, and the poem that adorned my office door back in my teaching days:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

 

 

photo by Denis Linine, via pexels.com