What is this thing called faith? Ministers of religion preach it from the pulpit, census forms ask us to write what faith we belong to, or teachers tell us we have to have faith in our abilities if we are to do well in school. But how do you generate faith in your own writing, knowing that some days you feel like a brilliant writer while others you feel like total crap! Just keep writing, all the writing gurus say – write your way through the crap, you can always come back later and mine the dross for your speck of gold!
Natalie Golgberg reminds us in her classic, Writing Down The Bones: “Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.” I think Goldberg is onto something here. Having faith means ignoring the fear of failure, continuing on regardless, writing on through the good days and the bad, knowing you will have something at the end of your process you can work with.
Having faith in your writing means not being afraid to expose yourself as a ‘bad’ writer to other writing friends, letting them see what you have to offer in it’s raw state, warts and all; allowing them to experience its potential. Reminding yourself that you are neither brilliant nor crap, simply a working writer. It’s your job to go to the desk every day and work with words, so why not enjoy it. Take Natalie’s advice: “play around, dive into absurdity!” If you spend too much time judging your writing or judging your writing days as good or bad, you will find yourself on a treadmill of doubt, rewriting Chapter One over and over again until it is perfect. You have to have the faith to move on from Chapter One; you’ll most likely ditch it later or completely rewrite it anyway, once you get to the end.
Having faith in your writing means ignoring the doubting voice and all the other voices that come out to taunt you; the dictator, the sabateur, the resister, the avoider, the procrastinator. It means putting them in a sound proof box, closing tight the lid, and writing on into the long dark night of distraction; knowing that YOU THE WRITER are the HERO of your own quest and you WILL reach the HOLY GRAIL, YOU WILL!
Having faith in your writing means believing that if you put the writing hours in, you will will have a piece of writing at the end of it. It’s that simple. Good or bad writing – it doesn’t matter. If you keep showing up to the desk, bad writing will become good and good writing even better.
If you find this business of having faith difficult, get yourself a daily Buddha. A Monday Buddha, Tuesday Buddha etc. I found my Thursday Buddha on top of the Nat Temple near Bagan in Burma. He reminds me to have faith in my writing on Thursdays ( and even works for other days too!)
Hope to see you soon at:
June 6-16: Sacred Song, Sacred Story, Fes, Morocco (in conjunction with The Fes Sacred Music Festival).
Nov 24 -30 : Mekong Meditations, Luang Prabang Laos. Find yourself in a writer’s heaven.
Jan 9-21, 2014: Moroccan Caravan. Fez, Tissardmine, Erg Chebbi, Marrakech – a 12 day desert journey.
Feb 2014, Temple Writing In Burma – Green tea and Buddha’s in a brave new land.
March 8-15, 2014. Breakthrough Writing in Fiji – Eat, Snorkle, Write, in Fiji’s hidden paradise.
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