Fallen glove keeping its fingers crossed

As I walked along the chilly sidewalk, I looked down and overheard this glove speaking softly to itself. This is what it said:

"Of course I'm not superstitious, but I'll keep my fingers crossed for luck anyway."

"I hope the weather is chilly enough that my owner notices my absence and returns to find me. Can't wait to slide back onto that warm hand. Besides, I want to be within shouting distance of my mate."

Up in the air between Abbotsford and Edmonton

The aircraft tips into the takeoff turn, revealing Fraser valley farms dusted with snow. Above Edmonton, snow covered fields, frozen lakes and rivers. Even the North Saskatchewan is a solid white. Between, we traverse the blue sky and white clouds all earthlings share.

Inspiring words by Lozan Yamolky

Last week, local poet Lozan Yamolky visited my class at Simon Fraser Continuing Studies. This poet speaks Kurdish, Arabic and English. Growing up in Baghdad and northern Iraq, she witnessed war and other human atrocities at first hand. Lozan has been in Canada for over twenty years and she arrived as a refugee.

In spite of the difficult topics she writes about, her poetry is full of wisdom, tolerance, love and light. With three books of poetry out, she's just been commissioned to write a poem that will be set to music a Toronto orchestra creating a special performance on refugees.

A favourite line of her poetry is from a poem entitled "Go Back Where You Came From." After enumerating all the reasons why she cannot go back, the narrator addresses the reader with these words of innocent encouragement:

"But you, you can go back. Go back to the time before you learned how to hate."

Peter Selgin cautions writers against "nagging" the reader

A recent contribution to Jane Friedman's blog warns the reader about creating confusion with "Nagging False Suspense Questions" in a story opening.

Peter Selgin, a successful writer and experienced editor, offers one-page critiques and more. This book consists of short meditations on quite a large number of things that can go wrong in fiction.

The gems he offers are designed to keep authors on track. First, to maintain authenticity and avoid sentimentality and melodrama, "a story should generate its own actions and emotions organically." Writers may think they can generate emotion by choosing dramatic subjects from "drug deals and busts gone wrong" to "murder, madness, rape, war." Not the wisest decision.

With such "sensational raw material, how can writers go wrong?" The author has an unequivocal answer. "They can and they do." One danger that awaits is a "minefield of cliches." The author likens melodrama to crab sticks: "an inferior substitute" for the real thing.

Cliche is an eternal danger, and the antidote is authenticity. When Selgin teaches writing classes, he invites students to write one piece they think boring, and one that is riveting. These are then read aloud, with classmates acting as arbiters of which is which. Aspiring authors are often surprised when the readers find the "wrong" piece riveting.

How can this be? Turns out the "boring" piece has greater authenticity. Instead of trying shortcuts like "fisticuffs and shipwrecks," writers need to slow down and take the time and trouble to imbue stories "with authentic, rich, specific moments and details."

Sex scenes can prove a minefield, and should be used sparingly. If lovemaking is not to be reduced to soulless pornography, it must be handled "with respect for both physiological and psychological truth." Like other elements of fiction, sex is gratuitous when motivation is lacking.

Similarly, fictional "tears, vomit and other sentimental bodily fluids" must be handled with great care, or better still, avoided. Even so, Selgin wryly admits, "the bestseller shelves are brimming with sentimental fluids." Obviously, an author can choose to pour a book full of them, and add some "industrial-strength mush." Knowing it is "for the sake of commerce and not art," the writer can then "laugh all the way to the bank."

Authenticity is essential in fiction. A fictional "world" must be established in the first few pages of the book. "Otherwise, readers can't be blamed for trying to graft the elements of the story onto their own world, and finding the graft doesn't take." If the author wants the reader to believe that three pregnant women are about to rob a bank, some serious groundwork must be laid. Still, Selgin allows, actions, "however far-fetched, can be rendered authentic provided they are sufficiently motivated."

If you're not Shakespeare, writing about suicide, like the act itself, is "a last resort." A fictional suicide that fails to come off may be both "predictable" and "unconvincing," leaving the reader with two contradictory dissatisfactions. The onus is on the author to make this desperate act to seem "not only plausible but inevitable."

This book is full of gems, but it should be read at the right stage of writing or editing your novel. Too early, and you may forget much of the advice. Too late in the process, when your novel is nearly done, these cautions might prove so terrifying as to bring revision to a standstill -- at least until it becomes possible to face what's wrong with the draft and deal with it. If you're just copy editing or proofreading, or between novels, it's a nice ride, both for laughs and learning.

Betsy Warland shares writing wisdom with Canadian Authors

Last night, Canadian Authors hosted creative writer, teacher, mentor and editor Betsy Warland. After reading from three different works of Creative Non-Fiction, she described how Bloodroot came into being, reminding listeners that the narrative is always "the boss."

I enjoy the almost mystical way Warland talks about the writing process. "Underneath the language of craft," she informs us, "are other unnamed forces" waiting to be uncovered. She invites the audience of writers to consider this: "What are the stories behind our compositional strategies?"

Left: Betsy chats with participants.

Openings are critical. In order for the reader to follow, the writer must "put the scent down right away." Choosing the most appropriate narrative position enables a writer to tell a story that is easy for the reader to enter. Questions for the author include these: Who is telling this story? How am I identifying them? Am I using camouflage?

Another important principle is pacing. When too much intense material is packed together, the reader may be unable to process it all, and might set the book aside. For this reason, the formal presentation of the work should allow processing time for individual readers. This can be achieved by offering white space on the page.

Warland's 2010 essay collection Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing is a priceless resource for any writer. The author also calls it a "big teacher" for her. From Breathing the Page, she shares what she considers the best line she's ever written: "All lines require years of effort."

According to Betsy Warland, writing well requires enormous amounts of time and effort, and I doubt any writer would disagree with her comment that the remuneration is "ridiculous." Yet when a piece is satisfactorily completed, "a certain kind of elation makes it all worthwhile."

Christina Baldwin's thoughts on journalling revisited

I read Baldwin's 1991 book, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, shortly after it appeared. Scanning the introduction to this one, I was surprised to read that journalling as a writing practice was "not a thing" back then. But that changed, and Baldwin's career teaching journal-writing workshops took off.

Picking up this later volume, I was curious. How had her thinking on journal writing evolved? How had my practice changed since reading her work all those years ago? I've kept journals practically since I learned to write, but before reading Baldwin, the idea of applying a method never crossed my mind. This author says journals can be much more than a way of preserving travel memories or coping with sad times. Many journal writers today keep records of their inner thoughts in pursuit of self-discovery.

"There is a committee in the mind," says Baldwin, "and journal writing gives its members voices on the page." For her, journal writing is a response to "the challenge of learning responsibility," and that entails a commitment to "create a flexible, changing, updatable idea of what is in your power to control and manage." She connects questioning with responsibility, and calls it "a form of power which allows us to restructure our lives from the page outward."

Native Americans of the prairie tribes, she tells us, end their prayers with "All my relatives," and that includes "everything made of earth, air, fire and water." This is an expression of "their connectedness to life and their responsibility...a wide hoop inside which all life must be drawn in and considered."

In the same way, journal writing can serve as a way of reaching for this wide circle of connection. Alone with our journals, we can dialogue with "the greater intelligence" of our minds and even tap into the unified field of consciousness. Many writers report that they tap into this invisible source of information and "receive" or "download" the information they need for their stories.

This may sound weird, but we are told that "Writing for self-awareness implies the ability to increase awareness, and that means living at the edge of your current insight, choosing to ask for more insight." Even though asking is "risky, it is how human beings grow."

The world is changing around us at great speed and we need new insights. The only way out is in: we must look within ourselves to see what positive changes we are capable of. For those attracted by the idea of writing their way to new insight, journalling a great way to do so.

Over the past eight years, much of my own journalling energy has been subsumed into blogging. The discipline of expressing my evolving insights and perspectives in clear prose is a challenge that never seems to pall.

In 2005 Christina Baldwin published a book called Storycatcher, Making Sense of our Lives Through the Power and Practice of Story. It's a good resource for journallers interested in doing writing exercises designed for self-illumination.

Caroline Myss packed the Bell Centre last night

Last night I was part of a very large audience at the Bell Centre in Surrey. Young and old, women and men, we poured into the theatre, overflowing all three parking lots offered by the facility to hear the words of Caroline Myss. Years ago, I was introduced to this remarkable woman thorough her book, Sacred Contracts, one of many she has penned. Last night's talk was entitled The Power of Your Words. Though I wasn't sure what to expect, I followed my impulse to be there. I wanted to hear her thoughts about the words we choose and the consequences of these linguistic choices.

The speaker opened the evening with the comment that a benefit of aging is the rising awareness of the limited time we have left. Then she expressed her intention to offer the audience "something you can use for the rest of your life." Words, she reminded us, are the doors to entire universes.

She then proceeded to show and tell us how within our own subjective worlds, we all make rules for other people. You're not allowed to use that word with me. Don't take that tone with me. That is too much volume. You must not be so loud when you talk to me. Unfortunately, everyone else has their own rules, and nobody knows anyone else's. We laughed with uneasy recognition.

Boundary, she said, that word used to belong to geography. Now it's used in the context of emotions. But what does it really mean? And could it be one of the stubborn words we can't let go of? A medical intuitive, Myss informed us that what keeps us from healing our emotions and our bodies is embedded in language: the thoughts, stories, beliefs and ideas we refuse to release.

The word pride, she commented casually, "should be about lions." That word can "make or break your life." Consider the word fear, now so commonly used as an excuse for complaint and inaction. Time was, "before the therapeutic era, when people wouldn't pull out fear so easily." Where once we focused on courage and fortitude, now we discuss our fear and weakness. "We use our fear as if it allows us to deserve comfort."

Deserve is another toxic word. The objective of life is not to deserve sympathy, to have such a sad story that we will "never get over it," or "never forgive" those who wrong us. The goal of life is not to feel entitled to this or that, and be miffed when we don't get it. Entitled? (What are we -- titled aristocrats, who are owed debts of allegiance by our underlings?) Our lives would change for the better overnight, she assured us, if we made the choice to stop using words like never and always and lie and deserve. Inability to resort to those old claims would force us to think in new ways.

Our sacred purpose is to manage our own energy. One way we can do that is by choosing our words wisely, and staying open to grace. Banished along with other soul-related words, grace is a word we rarely hear today. Yet it is not medicine or even energy that heals us, but grace. Only grace stops us saying something we'll regret for life; grace alone brings the moment of holy illumination that the world is conscious and alive and that we are deeply connected to it.

Meanwhile, we are in a difficult moment on earth. If we're to make it into the coming "galactic era," we must each take responsibility, contribute our individual effort and energy to the shared goal of survival through the coming positive transformation. "It's a privilege to be alive now," but we must get over the deadly illusions that "everything out there is something we have to kill," and prayer is a magic formula "that saves us from our own stupidity."

Even though "this is the most narcissistic planet in the galaxy," Myss told us, we have enormous power to change for the better. This can be done by casting our attention on the words we are using, and making saner and healthier choices about how we talk to ourselves and others.

Everything we say, think or do either empowers or saps our life force. Stubbornly maintaining the belief that we must win at all costs, control others or earn their approval brings the inevitable consequences of resentment, angst, feelings of powerlessness. We pay with our life force. The psychic weight of such negative emotions robs us of health and ages us before our time.

We need to be humbler, and less afraid of humiliation. We need to focus inward, develop a strong sense of inner authority. A person without the need for external approval cannot be hooked into the destructive "pride game." Needing the approval of others is "a weakness, a flaw." What other people say about us, or "do to" us is never personal. Blame and shame are destructive emotions that keep us stuck.

We constantly tell ourselves stories. Since "they're all made up" anyway, it's time to choose words that help us experience the world in a more enlightened way. When bad things happen, it is futile to regret, argue, blame, agonize, backtrack. We all experience good and bad times, and loss is not personal. "Until you see this," Myss assured us, "God will send it to your door." Yet the laws of nature also mean that "God has committed himself to bringing us spring after winter." That is how the universe works.

Using words like entitled and deserve, justice and fairness sets us up to take things personally, and perpetuates suffering. Feelings of entitlement, says Myss, lead to rage at the world, and this in turn brings physical ills, especially involving the heart, stomach, and lower back. To permanently heal from such pains, we must be willing to give up the deep-rooted ideas that anchor the negative emotions in place. Entitled people resent others, are not generous. Belief in entitlement is "causing the world to go on fire, and it must end."

We must become aware of our negative thought loops, change our language habits and make room for the power of grace in our hearts. Grace is "a silent force and presence that helps you save yourself from yourself."

Separation is an illusion. We are part of a single system with nature. We need to choose to see life as a web of interconnection, because we are all one, and "in this critical time, it is up to all of us to generate light."

Tomorrow Caroline Myss speaks in Victoria, and Thursday she'll be in Toronto. Her message is well worth hearing.