We’re all familiar with the fridge magnet adages – “Sing as if no one is listening,” “Dance as if no one is watching,” etc. But does that apply to writers? Does it make sense to write as if no one is reading?

Of course it doesn’t. What sane person wants to drag his or her sorry bag of bones out from under the flannel sheets at 5 AM to write a blog that no one is going to read. Well, besides you.

Well, me. Why? Good question. I don’t know why. Nobody’s going to care. Except me.

I’ve been corresponding with my writer friend, PJ Reece, the only person on the planet I envy. A financially independent expat writer living in a charming flat in Mazatland who, when he isn’t taking salsa lessons, lounging on the beach, or listening to live jazz at the nearby plazuela, is ” just trying to finish a fucking novel, which grows in size the more I work on it. It’s out of control, my dramatic thrust has vanished, a red flag that always indicates a problem at the beginning…I must sit back in astonishment at how I’ve manifested this sometimes shabby, occasionally chic, but actually very normal paradise.”

Doncha hate him? He’s also a fine writer, and I’m not just saying that because I’ve known him for 40 years (we were both in utero of course). Check out his blog and find out for yourself. You will be one of the few, as he admitted in a recent letter: “Are you reading my blog? Don’t worry. No one else is either. But here we go…that shouldn’t bother us.”

He’s right. It shouldn’t. Three days a week I get up at 5 AM to work on my upcoming book, “Where Mystics Walk.” It’s my covenant to myself. Will anyone read it? Dunno. I’ve got a bulging inbox full of projects for hire, but writing my February newsletter as well as this blog, neither of which pay, had to come first this morning. Like most wonderful things in life, writing as if no one is reading is not a rational act. It’s far more glorious than that. It’s an act of faith.

So get writing. No  one will care. But that shouldn’t bother you.

“Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.” Don Marquis

On January 24, 2010 at 6:00 PM, I’m going to be giving a talk at Valley View Funeral Home in Surrey, BC to a group of folks who have lost loved ones to suicide. It’s the first talk I’ve given since the launch of my book, Did You Know I Would Miss You? in November, 2008. Why has there been such a delay, given that I wrote it because people need it, and given that I’ve had a lot of great feedback on it from my readers? In fact, this is my first blog about loss by suicide. What’s that about? My hunch is that I haven’t wanted to acknowledge my loss. I was naive after producing my book, thinking that by telling the truth about my brother’s suicide and about my own grief, guilt, shame, and regret, and by charting the healing process for others, that I would somehow leave it all behind me and it would never be able to hurt me again. Talk about magical thinking. My hunch is that the sense of loss just goes underground, into the subconscious. Not necessarily a bad thing. Who wants to continually and consciously feel the pain of losing a loved one in such a sad and brutal way? We wouldn’t be able to function. But pain that is lodged in the subconscious can still affect us. It can prevent us from taking risks, from living fully, from feeling the full spectrum of our feelings, from being creative… In my case, it has prevented me from sharing my book, the single most important work of my life – at least so far.

So how do we deal with this loss that knows no bounds? From a loss that, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is comparable to surviving a concentration camp? Recognize that it’s bigger than our will or our egotistical insistence that we’re immune or have transcended it. Acknowledge it, breathe into it, and see it as a reminder of our humanity. Suffering is part of the human experience, at least for most of us. When we try to deny that, or gloss over it, we separate ourselves from our loved ones who are still living, and from other wounded humans. At the heart of our suffering is our love. Something we have never lost and never will. Let’s send love to that inconsolable part of us and to all others who have suffered loss by suicide or by some other means. Let’s send love to our brothers and sisters who couldn’t bare the pain and took their lives. Let’s share the love that also knows no bounds.

When you’re faced with a writing project, how do you deal with that paralyzing sense of overwhelm glaring at you in the unforgiving light of the blank screen?

Somehow you have to come up with an article, essay, story, blog, novel, screenplay or whatever — and you wonder how the heck you’re ever going to get past that mean little flickering cursor and come up with something intelligible, never mind brilliant. You’re not the only one who feels this way. Maybe it’s an undeclared dread of The Other, The Great Unknown, The Abode of the Damned that leaves so many of us avoiding our writing project du jour — or worse, eternally distracted by endless emailing (which I am convinced is a disguised hell realm).

I’ve been writing for a living for-ev-er and I still struggle with cursor-phobia. The famous Gene Fowler quote — “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” — is not hyperbole. It’s my life.

At my choir’s recent dress rehearsal for our Christmas concerts, our director, Gail Suderman, pointed out that we were looking like deer caught in the headlights in our collective dread of our three performances this coming weekend. “Here’s the deal,” she told us, “When you’re singing, all you have to keep in mind is your next phrase, and then your next will follow. Keeping your focus on each breath, on each phrase, will carry you beautifully through all three performances.” Hearing this, we all relaxed — and we sounded one heck of a lot better as well.

One phrase at a time. It’s comparable to what the great meditation teacher, Stephen Levine, author of A Gradual Awakening, refers to as “just this much.” It applies to singing, to writing, to all creative undertakings — pretty well everything, in fact. We don’t have to upload the whole thing in one go.

And so the next time you boldly suit up for your writing session, just take it one breath, one word, one phrase at a time. Each phrase will lead to the next, which will lead to the next, and before you know it, you’ll be done!

My secret reason for writing a blog, and maybe even for getting up in the morning, is my longing for fulfillment as an artist.

It’s an odd thing to say given that I’ve recently produced a book, Did You Know I Would Miss You?, have written award-winning TV shows and, thanks to my work as a freelance writer and editor of dozens of publications, have managed to avoid having a real job for well over 30 years.

And yet my yearning for creative fulfillment howls in my bones like a starving wolf. Gathering up material to teach my creative writing course, Write a Wild Horse, a few years back, I was relieved to come upon the following quote by Steven Spielberg: “Have I really pushed the envelope as much as I want to? Not yet. Maybe that’s why I’m still hungry.”

Hey, if the Holy Grail of creative attainment still eludes one American cinema’s most commercially successful directors, then there’s hope for all of us.

And as with all things unfulfilled, I can find my biggest detractor by looking in the mirror, where I can spot stubborn traces of old assumptions about what an artist is. Growing up in the 1950s, if my parents or any of their friends referred to someone as “arty,” it was not a compliment. The term conjured up images of someone pretentious, odd, undesirable. A weird dresser. Worse than being a person who could not be relied upon to live a sensible life, never mind a moral one, an arty person didn’t belong.

Living in a family that moved every couple of years because my father was a Mounted Policeman, my sense of belonging already felt tenuous. Being unorthodox in any way was death – worse, humiliation. Unthinkable. And so I conducted myself in ways that would please those upon whom I depended for my sense of OK-ness. I kept up reasonable grades in an education system that rewarded obedience over originality; I stayed out of trouble; I stayed below the radar. I survived.

In the 1960s, even a small prairie university like the one I attended had its pockets of bohemian life. I was drawn to them like bedbugs to a basement suite. It didn’t matter to me if I had to sit in a smelly cellar, drink bad coffee and listen to music that sounded a lot like a traffic jam, or watch European films like Bergman’s Persona, or read books like Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.  Of course I didn’t get any of this stuff. Yes, I faked an artistic sophistication that I hadn’t earned. Just like I used to fake swimming as a little girl by flailing my arms and legs while my tummy was safely on the bottom of the ocean.  But I was reaching for something beyond what I’d been taught and what I’d believed to be true. I was responding to a call from my soul.

Decades later I still am. If that yearning hasn’t gone away by now, my hunch is it won’t. And the clash between the well-brought-up girl and the avant-garde arty one hasn’t gone away either. What a relief. Without this exquisite tension disturbing my days and haunting my nights, I would be sleepwalking toward a safe and easy death.

The starving artist is not a deranged person living in a flophouse, eating cat food, and compulsively writing novels that no one will ever read. The one our parents warned us against. The starving artist is that creative call within each of us that we can no longer afford to ignore.

How do we aid and abet it? Especially when our days are full of tasks and obligations. Here are just a few of the things I do – in no particular order.

• Read a poem out loud first thing in the morning and then free write for 10 minutes.
• Dialogue with The Muse in my journal
• Go on an artist’s date, as suggested by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. The only rule is it has to be fun, creative, inspiring – and solo.
• Grab an old journal, find the phrases and ideas that I find interesting (i.e., not whiny), and enter them in the appropriate file in my computer.
• Work on my book.
• Sing a song in French – at full volume.
• Dance to R&B in my living room.
• Go down to the ocean and watch the waves.

What do you do to feed your craving creative artist within? Email me at donaleen@donaleensaul.com and let me know.  And in the meantime, keep an open ‘art.

“To all those creative people who have been ridiculed, reprimanded, and rejected because of their slightly unorthodox right-brain way of doing things. It’s payback time.”
Lee Silber