I’ve been keeping a journal since 1959. Sometime in late 1991 I read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and really liked the idea of “writing practice.” I saw that it was pretty much what I was already doing. I liked the idea of lighting a candle and setting the timer for 30 minutes. Timed writings are a great idea, the one constraint is to “Keep the pen moving.” Spelling doesn’t matter, grammar doesn’t matter, there’s lots of room for creativity. I also began a number of visual journals, where I did drawings and collage as well as verbal entries. Most of them were never finished. I would get started with a burst of enthusiasm, and then get triggered which would stop me in my tracks. I could still write in my journal because that was a truly safe place.
For more about my journal, see the pages My Journal and Journal Background.
Most writers have had the experience of starting to write out something they have planned ahead, only to have the character suddenly say something completely unexpected and the story had to change course. Sometimes I have experiences, like the one where I was climbing up the clouds to the pearly gates with my thin harvest, that I write down afterward. but sometimes the amazing thing happens as I’m writing. This is true for “Amazing Self-Love” which I published two days ago. It also happened a lot as I was writing the “Lefthand pages” of The Feminine of History is Mystery. One writing that still means a lot to me was the one that happened as I was writing a fictional account of a solstice celebration. I wanted to be there, and I cried out “O my People, are you the past or the future?” and they said “We are both the past and the future, we are where the circle meets itself, never fear, you too are enclosed by the circle.” At the time I wrote that, I was doing folk-dance, I had even been to Brittany and danced with 100 people in a field to live music, but I had never heard of “Sacred Circle Dance.” Recently, dancing with my friends, I realized that I had found “my people” and here we were, at the place where past meets future.
“climbing up the clouds to the pearly gates with my thin harvest” I thought I had posted this story, but can’t find it. As soon as I can find it, I’ll add it to the blog.